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and cornell university provided the booknotes. and now a few words she's a specialist in history and art and reserved her undergraduate from harvard and phd from columbia university. she's been a recipient in the fulbright foundation and columbia university. the dean at the school of undergraduate studies at the school of public engagement for which i am extremely grateful. she's doing an amazing job. and before i close, one of the reasons i accepted the invitations to open this event is she never gave me a job that i applied for but it was to be her driver around france visiting château's and castles.

i don't think she took me seriously but it was great and i've disappointed you didn't take me up on the offer but nonetheless, congratulations. it's been an incredible piece. i'm looking forward to reading it. please come up. [applause] thank you, everybody and especially tim. as i explained at the time the reason that job went to somebody else is it points to a scotsman that promise to wear a kilt and he did. [laughter] when we stopped at a truck stop i was the only woman in the truck stop and he was the only

one in a skirt. [laughter] so it made for quite the scene. i am indebted through all of my 12 years here and i'm also deeply grateful to the rest of the leadership at the school, mary watson and also to a particularly to pam and brandon fisher who done a tremendous job of organizing this event, and the director of the graduate writing program at the school we will be in conversation later. i also want to issue a few personal and professional thing is to the key will send my wonderful editor, britney the wonderful publicist, audrey, the wonderful assistant act cannot

as well as my husband, family, friends and colleagues who've turned out to make a completely full house which absolutely flatters me. to let you know what we are going to be giving this evening, the plan is for me to read for just about 15 minutes and then i look forward to speaking with you and with movies about the book and great lakes. the book covers lafayette's and tie your life from 1757 to 1834. so, quite a long period of time. lafayette lived a very tumultuous and exciting life and for that reason, the book really focuses primarily on the two large offices of his life that really a fine him. this was the period during the american revolution and during the french revolution. so, today i'm going to read for no more than 15 minutes from a section about the french

revolution. on october 51789, alarm bells sounded through the greater paris on as thousands of wind stream towards the hotel. the women known to their critics yielded pikes and pitchforks as they hold hold that the cannons across the cobblestones of the crowds. when lafayette reached the scene later that morning the national guard just managed to rouse the crowd of 40 arsonists from the government building. the guardsmen strained to the people pouring into the caves along the adjacent streets. by the soaring price of flour which left them unable to feed their families the women were joined by husbands, brothers and sons. they were certain that an aristocratic plot was is at the root of the starvation.

as lafayette struggled to prevent the march that was rapidly becoming inevitable. the loyalties were beginning to waver from undertaking any such action. back and forth he went alternating between the closed-door meetings and the representatives of the paris commune and high decibel debates with the crowd. the attack was imminent. lafayette refused finally between number four and number five he came to understand that any opportunity. they had the cannons towards

versailles. the weather had grown steadily worse. powerful wind have sprung up in the chilean rain was falling but they showed no sign. after the command from the paris commune who authorized and even ordered him to transport himself to verse i see mounted the horse and took charge of several regiments. together the troops accompanied the crowd of some 30,000 armed and angry among the 14 miles of dark and muddy roads. according to marie antoinette the move to the good news that the national guard while the king was hunting. the queen was lost in queen was lost in a fog and her beloved garden not far from the spot where his grandfather had taken

a fatal flaw in 1736. they left into action and they set out on horseback to encourage to abandon the hunt and returned to the palace. the government minister charged with overseeing the king sent a letter to paris and on it to the part immediately some 20 miles southwest end of the servants packing the bags and carriages to let the family pulled to safety. when the update arrived they were drawing near and verse i hadn't been the site to withstand the patriot act with now is limited defenses mobilized. they had said -open-brace entry into the were pulled shut and locked. the regimen was on the arm of the the rounded plaza in front

of the château and the guard was made ready to stand its ground in the inter- courtyards and gardens. they returned very new orders. the king king had passed the parisian women as he made his way back to the hunt if you did gratified to hear long live the came from the crowd. he called off the move and he worried that a show of force would cause rather than prevent the escalation of violence to retire to his barracks. they obeyed that as they made their way from their quarters they found themselves poe-ted and he began to reconsider his decision but it was lost. lafayette knew none of this as he made his way towards the state that was uncertain at best.

as they described lafayette marched by the compulsion are dead by his own troops. they have the attachment of the three sides and now in 1789 he is still in the composure that served him so well in 1778. not only the companions of the lives of the royal family he did everything in his power to ensure people a peaceful resolution. they heralded the approach and lafayette halted the march around 11:00 near the naturalism of the meeting hall in versailles. there he administered in a oath to remind the oath to remind the troops of their allegiances. while the officers were sent ahead to the château but not to

oust him the representative of the king appeared and with pleasure. e. happily everyone was in an agreement on one point. it filled the air as he drew closer to the palace. long live the nation and lafayette and liberty shouted then driven by fear and desperation through the miles of march 2 versailles. the truth he appeared around midnight and accompanied by the two civilians representing the paris city government. facing him from the other side of the padlock grill, the guard said he did. wary though they were of the motives they admitted him to the courtyard and from there to the château up the stairs and to the

king in 1774 when he was presented present at the court. on this occasion the room was filled with shouts and whispers. lafayette rejected the comparison to the british general but will orchestrate a prosecution during the english civil war. lafayette snapped, cromwell wouldn't have entered alone. still the accusation struck a chord and he knew all toousatioa chord and he knew all too well that with one false move instead of being a guardian as the marquee rendered the scene lafayette explained the reason. i thought that it would be better to come here then did i. louis the 16th was in no position to argue and he gave them free run of versailles.

inside of the palestinian national guards controlling the grounds very antoinette felt secure enough to go to sleep with the ladies in chairs pushed up against the door. before:30 hearing the gunshots they roused her giving her no time to dress, they hustled her through the door down the back passageway towards the king chambers tossing a petticoat after. as a id had gone awry, they reached the door only to find it locked. they knocked and they were let in but by then he was gone. he had taken the public public route the queen's bedroom at the sound of the alarm. in the adjacent royal guards faced off against the armed citizens while the queen reunited with her children and retreated to the bedroom. at last, the exchange was reaped

and the coldness returned to the château. daybreak found them comforting with a queen and king in their apartment and while the troops were now fraternized with the guardsmen. from the porch below the clamor grew louder. the people were calling and anger and the tones from marie antoinette. he stepped back inside into speaking again with the monarch he brokered another deal. if they came with him to paris as the crowd demanded, he would guarantee their safety. they agreed. with that, lafayette turned to the queen. come with me. alone on the balcony? yes, let us go. together, lafayette and marie antoinette appeared before the

crowd unable to make himself heard, he resorted to a gesture that would be cited by his enemy as a sign of doubledealing. he kissed the hand of the queen. with his pantomime, lafayette bestowed his blessing on marie antoinette and it changed the heart of the people. long live the general and the queen. to the sound of cheers they left the balcony and began preparing for the journey ahead. at approximately 1:00 in the afternoon october 61789, the royal family set out from their side in a carriage and inside, marie antoinette clutched onto her diamonds. dynamics. outside, lafayette was by the monarchs on a white horse keeping pace with the coach. 100. just public behind with the national assembly deputies while thousands of exhausted citizens and soldiers joined the journey on foot. it was a six six in the evening before lafayette reached the

view and quite dark by the time the royal family moved into the rambling sweep of the evacuated apartments in their home in the palace of that stretched along the banks of the sand just west. there really would live by lafayette's rules and under his authority. on the morning of october 7, lafayette attended what could only have been known as an awkward ceremony in the king's chambers. for better or worse it seemed that we xvi would always be at his side. the march ended so calmly with nothing short of extraordinary. october fifth had witnessed its share of fatalities. the heads of the bodyguards have been transported to paris. but the large-scale carnage had been avoided and much of the credit belongs to lafayette. his accountability to think clearly under pressure and his unparalleled credibility in the crowd about him to have control

from mayhem. that night they prove to the world that he deserves his reputation as washington's protége. but the future would bring challenges that might have been too much for any man. thank you. [applause] >> can we hear this? okay, thanks everyone. [inaudible] >> as laura is fixing her microphone and the notecards were fixed out -- passed out

before the meeting and pencil please write down your questions and then ask them from up here. is it working now? >> excellent. okay. so kind was struck yet again by how detailed the part was that you read and i know that every bit of that was researched so i wondered if you could talk us through some of that research like especially the when lafayette comes to me and says come to the balcony. >> thank you and thank you for the question. seven years of research you get a lot of detail. but the trick for me in writing this book is because lafayette

did live so long and his wife was full of adventure the trick was figuring out which episodes focus on and then try to bring those two life as full as i could through as much detail as i could so it comes from newspapers or journals and in this case that particular piece of detail comes from the memoirs of lafayette and there are many different accounts of that same event written by many different people and so part of the trick has been to sort out what seems most credible and what doesn't and that seems to be verified by a couple of people but it is presented. >> when you're writing a book like this to you only put in

elements that you've verified? >> there's been so much written about and what you find is there's a lot of untruth or half-truths all of the above so that it becomes -- i became somewhat obsessive about trying to verify the sources for each one of these anecdotes. >> there is a building at the college and it says that they changed the motto which is a very nice story so i guess if you could talk about the scope

that his life look like when he came to the united states in the colonies when he was 19 and then what does the rest of his life look like? >> it's important to think about why he came to the colonies and it is one of the things that i don't think is necessarily bad fully understood in the fact that he was 19 and that in fact he had never seen a day of battlefield action before he came here so it is not as though he was a general who was just coming over to share his knowledge, he was also coming to america to reinvent himself in the same way that many millions of americans have before and come since to create a new life. it turns out that he was somewhat of a fish out of order where he was. he was at versailles but he was

into the courts will mobility that he came from the provinces and he came from the rustic family and he didn't have the grace that he needed to succeed. so he found his second chance and hear george washington gave him an opportunity to hone his skills as a military general and he became a hero both in america and france in the great success. he went back to france and as an american hero part of the story that is interesting is that in america he was beloved as a frenchman in america but in france he was seen as an american in france. so she sort of lived his life almost between the two worlds. that became apparent when he

tried to chart a middle course between the radical republicans of the one side and the people that wanted to create an american-style republican france and on the other side, the people that support the monarchy and didn't want to get over the power so he was trying to begin chart the path and ended up having to flee the french revolution for the life when he fled. he lived for many years after that. and revolution started in 1789 and he lived until 1834 and he was involved in many more episodes and political events but none of them ever compare to his moments that came to define his life and legacies on the

atlantic. >> how did you come here as a subject? >> he traveled about the same that i wrote in my first book and nobody has really heard of her but they should have because she is a wonderful painter and they if they have what is probably the masterpiece and she's behind this enormous beautiful best. but if she traveled in the french revolution and the same in the same circle with a moderate circles that wanted to reform but not abolished the french monarchy. that got me interested in this area of history because it seemed to me that that middle ground had sort of dropped out of the story. we know about the reign of

terror and we know about marie antoinette but we don't know that there were people in between. my particular approach came and was formed by my interaction with people in france and of the book actually opens up with my conversation with it. her efforts i has devoted a portion of an afternoon to bringing me. it wasn't kept in a place anybody would actually go. they couldn't find the right key and this is something that he'd never been asked to do before to locate. nobody had been there in a while i'm looking at the bus and the

curator says. i thought that maybe my french was slaughtering so i said pardon and he said it again but louder and slower. [laughter] so i started to tell him why we should have a us vast and that he was a hero and that he was not impressed. he then gestured to the plaque installed a few feet away and this was the french soldiers and sailors that have died during the american revolution american revolution adhesive and he said look, thousands of men died for frenchman died from the revolution. we don't know their names. they bankrupted the country for the american revolution and he received his deities and they led the forces in america and

nobody knows his name. when i started to understand was his actions and reputation to think the french the french revolution [very, very different legacy than he has here so that in france as i eluded to key was seen as a double dealer. the monarchists thought that he was a traitor because of the role they brought the crowd at the door and at the other hand, the small republicans in france felt that he was too close to the monarchy and perhaps replace it with himself.

so they had a very similar principles throughout his entire life could have possibly developed that two such different reputations was really what motivated me to write the book as i did. >> thank you for mentioning that. yes, i was out of college last week the first place i spoke to days after the book came out in a man in the audience came up to me afterwards and it was extremely interesting. he said you know, i came here cause i was in france this summer and he surprises there for ten days and i took one of those buses you take in paris and the hop on hop off bus and they said this is the part where

it's situated into this is where lafayette tired of the people in the french revolution. and he sort of had a point. lafayette was the commander of the french national guard, which due to the series of very unfortunate circumstances did in fact opened fire on a group of people who were clamoring to defend the monarchy in 1791. it didn't seem to him to be possible that it could in fact be true. it's so tremendously different from any vision that we have with him in america. >> look at the eiffel tower in a different way, too.

it happens below the eiffel tower. >> it really was the national guard fired on the people. how did your training informed this book? enabled of the detail that you've noticed in other people noticed the detail that you find is details of what interior's looked like if how the furniture functions and so forth and i wanted to pay attention and bring to life the visual and material experience of actually being there so i spent a lot of time driving through and visiting the different places at capture in words what the historians were trying to do to translate from the visual to the

verbal surtout bring to life what the place looked like or don't like or what it might have been like to walk through the bases for example. >> what were some of the exciting things that you found when you were doing this? >> the books will be for sale. >> stick and where did you find them quite >> on the internet. [laughter] in this case it was the archives digitized with a large number of their manuscripts and images and there's a fair amount of pornography from the revolution

motivated. marie antoinette is the focus of much of it and that has been fairly well written it off because she was not a popular character but i didn't realize that lafayette was often cast as the paramore in some of these episodes and i don't think that i can describe them because i think that we are being taped for tv. but i will just say that some of them are i.e. opening. [laughter] >> because you have to decide what to put in and what not to put in there or so many that are horrifying with another sister and grandmother were told that

they have their heads chopped off by the guillotine on the same day but that's one little moment. you must have had many moments like that. >> when you are reading about and visiting the places of the french revolution there are so many details when you learn about them in their history classes the tenth two seem like a part of the grand sweep of history but when you read them in the personal narratives and imagine what it i'd have been like to watch her daughter and that her mother-in-law executed before her eyes and knowing that she herself is going to follow in the path that there are so much packed into that and in order to make the book a reasonable length i can't find a way to go into great depth and

this i would hope that less is more it would be powerful enough to convey. i tried to convey what it must have been like to live through the terror at the time that the people that instituted. that's something that we know what it's like to live within terrorism and i guess i tried to bring some of those details to life to get the a sense of what it was like then into something that we can relate to now. >> lafayette starts off well off in comparison and then he inherits a lot of money.

did you think about that when you were writing this? >> it plays a very large role and this is some of the mythology of lafayette bankrupted himself but it's not really true. that was entirely normal for the generals. that's what they did. he bankrupted himself by looking beyond his means as many members did in 18th century france. reading through -- this is one of those things where the library of congress in dc and these include letters and so forth and one was looking at the account books and realizing his

own personal expenses were things like the box at the opera, his habit beast writing the axles of the carriages in the process, but they were so over the top that we actually had a letter from the person that kept his books saying i know that you're interested that they have to start with you and we have to start tomorrow and they say that is the only way that you will find your self in that happy state in which a man dies and bequeathed to his children a portion of his fortunes. so the accountants had clearly lost it.

i think that's the point of the whole book in a sense we know him as a statue, we know him as a hero but before he was a hero and a statue he was a man and he made mistakes. a lot of us do and i think that understanding that his humanity is i think import into appreciating what he did and what he accomplished. >> one of the things that comes up is what jefferson called the canine appetite for popularity. you can also call it enthusiasm and then he's also very

idealistic for 20 think about a 19-year-old is enthusiastic and idealistic and wants to be popular that paints a very clear picture about it's also the portrayal that gets him into trouble. can you talk about that at this? >> sure. thomas jefferson did in fact say that this was the greatest flaw is the popularity. he wanted to be liked and loved and it was actually very important to him. his reputation was important to him and important that he be remembered for having made a difference in the world. and he pursued that in ways that backfired.

but on the whole i think that it was a pretty noble desire ultimately that fueled it. i think that he didn't want to be popular just for the sake of being popular but he wanted to be popular because he had read a great book of greek and latin history and he had learned to emulate the heroes of antiquity and he envisioned himself, he was aware of the historical circumstances in which he lived and he envisioned himself as taking the place and coming down to us as history as he did. >> he was also very influenced by the ideas of the enlightenment. where did he get those ideas? >> it's interesting, he was born as i said in rural and he was raised on the education that consisted of of the slightly overblown tales of his ancestors

glory. some of them turned out to be less glorious for example he captured a soldier and put him on the back of his horse in the saddle behind him but he neglected to confiscate the captives gun. he was raised on details of military glory. when he came into money he was sent to paris to be educated and he attended school that was infused with enlightenment ideals and he was very much influenced by the same ideals that implements jefferson and washington and madison and monroe and he was someone that read all the documents and they read their documents and then he

went on to craft the foundational documents into the declaration of the rights of man that were based on. we have copies of them and this is a strange thing that you discover they draft with jefferson's handwriting annotation and he took some of the ideas and ignored others but yes he was very much a man of the french enlightenment. that is the first question that we have in the audience. >> well done. do you think that your book will change how you think of lafayette? >> no. [laughter] >> turning to historical and

biographical into the narrative. i know my audience. talk about turning -- >> turning the details into the narrative. >> i have to say for me that was one of the most challenging and fun parts of writing this book as an academic and a trained artist you are trained to care less about the narrative and to give the facts and just the facts. i took this opportunity since i was fortunate enough to be able to write for a trained publishing house i was divided to have the upper trinity to write a book i thought people might want to read and that i might want to read and that took all of these seemingly dry yet

potentially uninteresting details and really turn them into a rich tapestry through which you can start to understand the look and feel of the place and through which i hope to try to help people understand and imagine what it might be like to be like lafayette or one of the people in the circle looking so long ago but their lives were like ours in very many ways. it's different and the same and so i try to bring those details together on those statues. >> what political figures would you compare?

>> he would be a rockefeller republican. [laughter] what is or favorite memory or rude favorite memory or episode from the experience of this book? >> aside from the scotsman and the truck stop my favorite moment is is bad but i account at the very end of the book in the authors note in which i attempt to go and visit the grave in paris over which an american flag flies. as you might imagine based on everything that i said is not a big tourist attraction. it's open for a few hours a week when the custodian is home maybe

needless to say i arrived at the moment of the custodian wasn't home so i found myself wandering aimlessly and i sat down and that is where i found myself looking at the walls and that's where i discovered an engraved the names and occupations and the dates of everybody that was executed on the one side in paris and it turned out that they were all buried there. while i was looking at the wall and thinking about this coming on the team in and i had this wonderful conversation with a wonderful sister with whom i spoke about this question of why

do you think it is the lafayette is a hero in america and not in france and something in her conclusion is basically that lafayette is a complicated figure and the french revolution was a complicated time and people don't like complicated stories and people don't like to remember the french revolution and the complexity that there was something about that moment if place is a this is a nice bookend to my experience because the book starts where i started with this conversation with a curator. why should we and then it did ended with my turning the question around to the french sister saying why don't you and there was something in those moments that were beautiful to me. >> you take on the complexity of

his life very well. a question i had at the beginning is when a slavery going to rear its head and you take it on. could we talk about that? >> it appeared in 1777 when lafayette had arrived in south carolina as the ship was actually lost and they land and they are actually greeted by the men that are out fishing at that moment. so his first encounter with anyone in america is actually with the poor slaves. he becomes a non- religionists in the movement in fact he even goes so far as to attempt an experiment in gradual emancipation of slaves.

this part tied me up in knots because what he did is purchased a plantation with the intention of freeing the slaves. but when the french revolution came and all the property was seized, they were also seized as the property. so they purchased a plantation intended to free them but then he didn't. the complexity of that kind of situation, i think that only takes up a small portion of the narrative but it was probably the hardest part for me to write because it was the single most complex and morally difficult.

>> this is a different topic from the audience. after five years in prison -- >> napoleon did have lafayette liberated but only under extreme pressure from international government and popular opinion around the world. what i actually think god can liberated had liberated was his wife was very clever. and when lafayette was in prison at a certain point, once he became apparent that adrian, his wife, was going to be able to survive the revolution, she took herself and her two daughters to the door of the prison in austria and said to the austrian authorities if you're going to keep my husband, you are going to have to keep us, too.

they let her in that it became a cause of love throughout the world that the austrians were keeping three innocent women in prison, and it became a story that circulated in the images and debates in the house of parliament in england and it really placed the pressure on napoleon to do something about getting lafayette out. napoleon had no love lost for lafayette. he brokered a deal in 1799 napoleon brokered a deal in which he said okay thank you for coming back but he cannot come anywhere near paris. he has to stay at a distance of some 35 miles around paris because napoleon didn't want to have a general account. so for 15 years during the

napoleonic era he created his own format the wife's family estate and he had tried to re-create mount vernon so he created a far that was an experimental farm that was at the place for agricultural improvements and he saw this as a way of contributing to the end that are meant by helping them to experiment and learn about the growth growing and harvesting their crops. so napoleon really was not a fan >> i love the kids names, george washington and lafayette is one of the kids.

another one is named after virginia. >> those of you those are the only two born after the american episode but there that there is a great quote from benjamin franklin he lived in paris at the same time and they were quite friendly they wrote to him and i got into the papers but he wrote a letter saying that he hoped they would have 13 children so they could name one for each of the colonies. but he also said that he did feel sorry for ms. connecticut. [laughter] who might have to go through life with a rather difficult name. >> do you think that america would have lost the war without

lafayette and why? >> i believe that we won in large part thanks to the french supports both naval and ground support from france and the french support had been very quietly sending guns and ammunition and a few engineers here and there to the american side site but france did not want to come out in favor. they just ended the french and indian war and they wanted to maintain an appearance of neutrality so they did not at all want to come out publicly in support. when lafayette (-left-paren, he

did so with a clock, he made a splash and he made it impossible for the french government to look the other way or to pretend they were not supporting the american cause you to so in a way he really forced the french government out into the open with their support of america and then in turn that was to the support that led to the war. >> just to finish things off, what is your favorite story about lafayette? >> there are so many good ones. i think it is the one involving the great tierney's of dogs because he was very active so during this period of time when he was enacted in french politics and even a little bit after that, he kept in constant contact with americans and he

was constantly exchanging things with americans. he was exchanging animals, he was exchanging plans, he was exchanging innovations in technology and so forth and my favorite letter i think that i've ever come across was from a baltimore farmer who said i just received from the general for puppies of enormous size from the region of france. [laughter] and as a dog lover, i love the image of lafayette with his great dogs and i think that is my favorite. >> thank you so much. the book is for sale. it's a great book. you must buy it and read it. you know so much about the american and french revolutions. thank you, laura. [applause]

>> of the c-span city tour takes booktv and american history tv on the road traveling through u.s. cities to learn about their history and literary life and we partner with charter communications for a visit to madison wisconsin. >> [inaudible] >> the service for the country the call comes to every citizen. it is an unending struggle to make and keep the government. >> he is probably the most important figure in history and one of the most important in the history of the 20th century and the united states. he was a reforming governor.

he defined what progressivism is and was one of the first to use the term. he was a united states senator recognized by his peers in the 50s as one of the five greatest senators in history and he was an opponent of world war i and he stood his ground advocating for free speech. above all he was about the people. after the civil war america changed radically from a nation of small farmers and small producers and small manufacturers and by the late 1870s, 1880s and 18 '90s we had concentrations of wealth, and we have a we have a growing any quantity and we had the concerned about the influence of money in government so we spent the later part of the team 90s giving speeches all over wisconsin. if you wanted a speaker for your

club or your group he will give a speech. he went to county fairs and every kind of events that you could imagine and build a reputation for himself. by 1900, he was ready to run for governor advocating on the half of the people. he had two issues. the direct primary no more selecting candidates in the convention, number two, stop the interest. specifically the railroads. >> here's some of the latest news about the publishing industry they released selections for the best books of 2014 the list composed of five fiction and five nonfiction titles includes laurence

writes's account of the camp david accords 13 days in september another under the look of childhood vaccinations on in unity and the recounting of the chilean miners trapped underground for 69 days and 2010, deep down dark. "the new york times" reports on a monthly book club that doubles as a political fundraiser the first tuesday luncheon series held at the national republican club of capitol hill who stay different congress person each month we select the book for discussion and is the recipient of campaign donations and a crowd of funding publisher unbound started a campaign to get more female authors to set up their writing dad women in print the initiative is in response to the disparity and submissions the publisher has received one third from winning. stay up to date by liking us on facebook and facebook.com/booktv or follow us on twitter at the

booktv. you can also visit the website booktv.org and click on news about books. .. the book is about the coloration of america, which is