talked-about washington after that. it talks about my style. i try to embarrass myself in both the place and the document. i read all the documents but if you are walking around dayton tennessee in the courtroom, staying in the room john scopes lived in, if you are in the place where william jennings bryan lived, if you are there, at mount vernon you can't learn things you can never get out of the documents, it deepens your understanding it is not just mount vernon there are other places, i read about the newburg conspiracy, and it was very important in american history, it covers the liberation of new york city, came down from living for a long time in the valley, the hudson valley where he was

in camp the encampment so i was at the encampment, you walk a ground and learn more about it but you understand the writing and i try to have that reflected in my work. in that sense i view myself as a historian. i don't write historical fiction but i am inspired by historical fiction and love to read historical fiction. and james mcpherson catches it in the battle cry of freedom. is a wonderful book. ft can't trust everything in it as fact but it does give you the sense of the place. ..

>> i try to use a lot of quotations because i try to make -- which makes differentiating to me from some historians, but i try to have an eye for the quote that really captures something. i never use a long block and -- [inaudible] quote. when i read, i always skip those. i figure if the author can't

summarize it why is he forcing me to do it? so i use small quotes, ones that are below 50 words so you don't have to block in denim. then i figure that's my job as a historian, to pull out the quirks of it. and if there's more than 50 words in a letter that we need to hear, well, you can use a couple quotes and use a connection the way you're talking about it. because i think you need to hear the authentic words, but you just don't want to get lost in some long quotes. you might as well read the original rather than do that. so i try to pull out -- so i'm better when i can, when i can write a book about good authors and good writers and good speakers. the scopes trial, how brilliant. i had clarence darrow and william jennings bryan. and at the top of their game. my book about the 1800 election, i could draw on thomas jefferson. who could write like him? and john adams another great

writer. they could write like angels both of them. they could also conspire like demons, and you see that in the 1800 election book of their fierce in-fighting vertebras election vicious -- vicious election. but, boy, could they write. so it was wonderful for quoting from. now, that played into -- it was surprising how good a writer george washington is. we don't think of him as a speaker and a writer, but he was a voluminous letter writer. he was writing letters all the time, especially during this period when he was pulling the country together these wrangling 13 states to make a union. so he was writing all of his friends and acquaintances from the time of the revolutionary war who had now scattered to their separate states such as john jay in new york or henry -- or knox up in massachusetts i already mentioned him the morriss down here, the

pinckneys of south carolina. he had a lot of attachments here in georgia. so he's trying to pull this place together before the constitutional convention that led to the convention, and then after it in the ratification battles, he was actually a very good writer. and so i could pull on his original letters and quote from them. of course, he was corresponding with some excellent writers people like lafayette, jefferson, ben franklin and so i can have the letters back and forth. calls many speech -- also many speeches. so i could draw on quotations. again, not long ones not ones that i think lose the readers. i always figure readers are somewhere like myself, and i get lost with too long a quotation. but a pithy one makes it authentic, so i use a lot of quotations. that's part of my style, you saw that in there. i also want to bring my figures to life. and that was one of the wonderful things about washington. i mean it's easy being tom jefferson, bringing thomas jefferson to life.

he had, he was a very human person. it's easy to bring a clarence darrow or a william jennings bryan. but george washington, we have this view of washington, for many people he's like a wax figure in madam trudeau's museum. or a carved figure up on mount rushmore, he is distant to a lot of us. i think a lot of it is that terrible picture painted on the $1 bill, that was paint near death with a bulging, he looks like a squirrel with his oversized false teeth. actually, that's not what washington was like, and i got to see that in this period of his life when he was much younger before the presidency and after he was a general when he was not in political power when he didn't have -- or military power. he didn't have an office. he was a farmer. he was a plantation owner. he was a private citizen.

and i could find out that he was a very, very affable person. he was a wonderful conversationalist. he was a great retail politician. he could tell stories at parties. he loved to go to parties, he loved to dance. he would go to a party -- of course, he was the choice, he was -- when he was young, he was incredibly handsome because he was huge 6-2 and 200 pounds and when men were a lot shorter and women were a lot shorter. his wife particularly, was a lot shorter. she was under fife feet tall. it was an interesting matchup, but a profitable one nonetheless. and they were a wonderful couple. but people loved to talk to him. he was a great storyteller. in that way he was like a hillary clinton or ronald reagan -- bill clinton or ronald reagan. even better than hollywood. and he loved to dance with the ladies. he'd always dance with every lady at the balls he went to

and he always went to balls because he loved them. he loved to go to teas. teas were popular back then so i could present washington as a person, and that's the comment that i've liked best that i've heard from so many people in the reviews and in the amazon.com comments. he said, he makes washington come alive. he's actually like he could be a human being and not this wax figure. that's what i came to see. he had personal characteristics. i think that's important because if we want to learn from these people, we can't learn from a wax figure. we can learn -- history should be relevant to us today because people don't change. issues change, we have different sorts of issues, but people are is the same. and washington had incredible virtues. he was truly a great man because of his personal characteristics and his personal virtues. but they're all virtues that we could have too.

so i could see -- i don't have one, but i could see having a bracelet what would george do, or what would washington do. you could go a long way with that sort of advice. you also were able to learn individual things about him because i was dealing with this period, and i got to be at mount vernon. first, he never had any wooden teeth. i've seen his teeth at mounter vernon -- mount vernon. they have many of his false teeth. i've seen them other places. he never had wooden teeth, i can assure you of that. what made people think he had wooden teeth is he had many of them made from -- some of them made from walrus tusks were ivory, and those pick up tea stains. and he was a he drank so much tea, i don't know how he stayed in bed at night. [laughter] southerners who drink sweet tea, and i don't know how he went to sleep because he drank so much tea. i guess you get immune to it.

but they would stain his teeth. now, not all of his teeth were -- i've seen many of them, and they're sort of interesting to look at. by the end or at least by the period i was dealing with, he only had one of his own teeth left. it was a molar. so these false teeth had a hole in them where he'd fit it over that one molar on the top and the bottom, you know, they weren't the greatest fit in the world. and that's why he wasn't -- i think -- why he wasn't a great speaker. because it was tough to speak up here like i am with your teeth sort of falling. but if you're one to one next to him, you know, you can talk fine. but to make a speech, it was sort of uncomfortable. so many of his great addresses like his farewell address when he stepped down were printed only. printed in the newspaper rather than spoken. but not all of his teeth as i said were ivory. one that i discovered when i was

there -- other people knew this, it's not like it was an original discovery, but i've seen it. he also had teeth made, which was common back then, made with human teeth, with slaves' teeth. and they'd pull them out of, you know, they'd take them from some of his slaves. and i looked through and i found -- i was helped on this, i was helped with researchers in many ways -- but i found ledgers where he paid the slaves 17 shillings per tooth, at least during my period, for the teeth that would then go into his false teeth. they actually tried to implant some of them during my period, implant them in him. you know, make a hole pull it from the slave and put it right up in his own mouth. they didn't work for him, but they did -- some of these implants worked. there was one french dentist who came over, he came over during the revolution, and he also visited mount vernon several times and tried this procedure. and i was curious about 17 shillings. well, i suppose you don't have to pay your slaves anything for

their teeth if you really want them, but he did. but i was curious how that played out, so i managed to look through the records. he lived right through arlington, virginia, and there was a newspaper in arlington, and so when the dentist would come up and also be doing transplants not just for washington, but for others i looked what was the going rate for teeth? if you were buying teeth on the free market, how much did they cost? 42 shillings was the offer in newspapers anybody willing to sell their teeth, so i think washington got a good deal at 17 shillings. [laughter] for the teeth. i do not, i don't know whether the slaves volunteered for 17 shillings or if he asked them. i don't know that. i suspect they volunteered. also during this period he made another thing that was very human about washington. he remember he grew up. when he was born he didn't know if he'd inherit a lot of money. he wasn't like thomas jefferson or james madison who was born into wealth.

his father was wealthy, had a plantation but he was from the second marriage. he had a lot of half brothers from the first marriage, and they were going to inherit. and washington thought he'd have to work for a living, so he became a surveyor, and he was out on the frontier. he also tried to join the british navy, but his mother wouldn't let him go in the british navy. and he loved being out on the frontier, he was home on the frontier. and during this period i got to write about, i got to experience, he got to go back to the frontier. he's the most famous person in the world, here he was, you know the liberator of america. everybody knew george washington. but he had frontier holdings from before the war, and he had to go out and try to make them profitable. so he went out on the frontier over brad docks road -- braddocks road and he tried to visit his frontier plantation early in his retirement from being general, and they scared the bejesus out of him because he got out there, and the frontier -- they were, as he put it later, on a pivot. they were ready to leave the

united states. the british had never left the frontier force. they were still trading the with the indians for furs, and they need guns to shoot those furs and those are just as good at shooting settlers. spain was moving up into the southwest from new orleans pushing into mississippi and alabama which were parts of georgia back then. georgia was on the run almost. the native americans were pushing georgia back. and you were losing a lot of the federal territories because the united states had no army, because it had no taxes. there were no -- the central government, such as it was had no ability to raise taxes, therefore, it couldn't have an army, couldn't defend the frontier, and the trade was going up through canada or going down the mississippi. so these frontier settlers, they had no interest -- well they got to the first settlers, first frontier land ownings, and they

didn't want to pay him. got to the second one, there were squatters on his territory who wouldn't leave. and, in fact, he got so mad at them, he cutsed at them -- kissed at them, and -- cussed at them, and they fined him. that's how they treated george washington. and he couldn't get to the third one because the native americans were in the way and he had been warned they were going to ambush him. they had already killed his agent, scalped him and then burned him alive. you don't die with scalping apparently. and this were waiting for washington, so he never got to his third territory. so he comes back and immediately sends off letters, we have got to do something we're going the lose the frontier. we're going to lose it if we don't have a stronger, more effective union. so seeing that, going those places and many of those places where he'd stopped are still part -- and he thought well how do i connect the frontier with the east?

i write about this in the book. they need a canal. they're going to go up the st. lawrence river or the mississippi river, we've got to build some sort of canal. canal building was big back then in england and france, and, of course he knew all those people from the revolution their war. we've got to build a canal from the potomac over to the ohio so they can get their goods to market because only by commerce can we keep this country together. and so he ends up being president of the canal company trying to build a canal. but he goes out there, and he comes back. instead of following the settled route, he says i'm going to find a way to run this canal. so he got on a horse, and he was a huge man. he was a great horseman, a great horseman. and he came back just like he was a kid. you can read his can accounts of it the letters he writes of it. he just -- here he is, george washington the most famous person in the world, and he bush whacks across what's now west virginia and ohio sleeps,

sleeps out in the open driving rain sometimes just under his cloak. he drops in at country cabins, can you imagine? you're out the in the middle of nowhere in a little shed, somebody knocks on the door and you open it up, and it's george washington? you have nothing to serve him. some places, he said, there was just a little corn, nothing for his horse, but he was blazing a trail. but you can tell that he loved it. he was in his 50s, but he was like a kid again because that's where he was happiest. well, this is the george washington, you know, it could be "into the wild." there's a great book for you i was thinking he would have gone up to alaska if he could have. it's another sort of story about washington, you get to feel what he's really like. again, i got to see his clothes because i was doing his inauguration and despite all the pictures of him with a tricorner hat, he never wore a

tri-corner hat. he wore a bi-corner hat. he never cut down a cherry tree so far as i know, but he planted a lot of trees. some of them are still there. you can actually put your hand on a tree that george washington himself planted. there's some wonderful tulip poplars. so you get to get immersed in this great man who really can be his virtues can be a model for us today and also his lifestyle. he comes alive. finally, the introduction sort of shows my choice of topics the last thing i'll talk about. you see this in my books in general. there's some historians and biographers and great journalists and writers who can take a topic that has been written about and written about and written about and just do it better. i think david mccollum, who's son's -- whose son's here, who can take a well known topic and

just tell it very very, very well. i'm not that sort of historian. i try to look for p gaps in the historical record, stories that aren't told. so i wrote about the scopes trial because there's a great movie about it, "inherit the wind," great play. i think it's still showed, i think every high school probably puts it on. but no historian had ever researched and written about the scopes trial. no historian had ever done it. you can see it with some of my other books. nobody had written about charles darwin telling an overall view of science and the galapagos. people talk about the south pole but nobody talks about the science done on those expeditions and activities done on those expeditions which i think -- and i think readers of my book will agree -- are just as gripping as anything scott am mundt did. 1800 elections same way. there'd never been a blow-by-blow book about the 1800

election, so i took that topic. and by finding gaps in the literature, i could write about those in a way that would tell that story. now, that brings me to washington, how people -- people ask me when they heard i was writing about washington, how in the world could yo, who write about gaps in the literature write about? there's more books about him than any other american. but one of the things i had discovered and discovered it here while i was teaching at the university of georgia where i taught for 20 years is when you teach about american history you spend about two days or three day on the american revolution, and it's george washington from cover to cover. it's all about george washington as you're reading about it. nathaniel green too, when you're covering the south. the fighting quaker, one of the great oxymorons of all time. [laughter] buried right here, a few blocks

from us. i'm a huge nathaniel green fan. but washington you get a lot about george washington. then you get, then you have a couple days or one day when you're talking about the confederation. you talk about the utter collapse of the con confederation how everything's going to hell in a handbasket, how the states are falling apart, the frontier's being lost as i mentioned between the friend and the british and the spanish vermont is actively conspiring to join british canada, a debtors' insurrection in massachusetts, the property rights are in danger in georgia and in rhode island where they're printing paper money like it's going -- like they would have done in greece when they can, when they can print the drachma, and you have this massive inflation that's draining property rights, new york's exporting all its taxes into connecticut and new jersey like they'd like to do today if they could but they actually could do then. because there was no -- the

central government didn't control interstate commerce. every state could print us own money, could impose tariffs against other states and everyone, all these little tin pot governors were trying to expand their state at the expense of hair neighbors. and the country was -- of their neighbors. and the country was falling apart. the whole place was falling apart. and you talk about that period. but you hear nothing about washington. the last you heard was he went on back to his farm and was running his plantation. now, then you get to, of course the first presidential administration when the federalists take over, and it's all about washington again, because he's president. and i'm sitting there over time as i'm teaching this year after year because it's not mentioned in the history books and not talked about much in the biographies of washington. what was this guy doing? he was the most famous man in the world a celebrity, by far the most beloved person in america, the only one close would be benjamin franklin. he's gone back to his farm and he's just farming while everything he'd fought for for

nine years, as commander in chief nine years in the field without leave or pay? that's sacrifice. and leading men, many of his men died in his service. and he cared deeply about those men. one thing about washington, he was very very loyal and very -- he had very close friends. very close friends. people trusted him. he's just sitting on his plantation and letting the country fall apart? so i wanted to go back. so i read everything that he wrote and everything that was written to him and he was a voluminous letter writer. and, of course, a letter from george washington you never throw away. he was the most famous person. and so we have tremendous amounts of his letters. and i could read all the -- and he oh, my -- everyone wanted to visit him. so all these people were visiting his plantation. he would have 10, maybe 15 people staying there every night. these people would turn up unannounced and uninvited many times and stayed for the day, and then there's no inn nearby

so spend the night. i have this great -- there was a great letter where he mentions, he sends off a letter in the late, long time after this in the 1790s where he writes, you know -- where he writes it's in the late afternoon. no it's in the midday. he writes: if no one pops in -- yes, he did use that phrase -- nobody pops in in the next two hours, martha, my wife and i, will have something we haven't had for over 20 years; dinner alone at mount vernon. he had so many guests, he never could eat alone. now, i could follow their diary because, of course, their wrote about their visit to mount vernon. and so i could piece together what he was doing during this period. and, sure, he was farming. he was a wonderful farmer. he was a wonderful inventive farmer. he came up with new tech teaks. -- techniques.

he built the largest dis tillly in the united states -- distillery in the united states. and he had a he rotated his crops, and he innovated with fertilizers, and he changed crops. he changed from tobacco which wasn't profitable over to grains. he was a very innovative farmer. he was involved in that. but he was involved in saving the union. constant letters to governors, to former revolutionary compatriots that he knew, to individuals all over the country, what can we do to save this country? and many of them would visit him. madison spent months staying at mount vernon before the constitutional convention working out the details. he would write to people like knox and john jay saying what can we do, and he'd take their letters and compile them in his own hands about what we need in a new constitution. he took that to philadelphia. and at philadelphia he was a hands-on negotiator to pull

together and create the constitution. he wasn't a wax figure sitting up front. i came to the conclusion they often say in the textbooks that james madison is the architect of the constitution. well, if james madison is the architect of the constitution -- and i won't take that away from him -- then george washington was the general contractor. and any of you who have ever built a house or put an extension may know an architect may have a plan, but it's the general contractor that gets it done and that's george washington's role during this period. that, i viewed, as a gap in the literature. well or, i've already probably talked too long. i'm scared to look here at the time, but that's the story i was able to pull together and tell. so if we have time, we have questions, i would be delighted to take questions x. if not, i'll inflict some more reading on you. [laughter] >> yes. i don't know if i'm on or not.

>> you're on. >> it's been said about george washington that he was not a great orator. i was struck, however, when i read your book about the newburg conspiracy that he was a consummate actor. and i think the audience might be interested in your perspective. >> that's true. he wasn't a great orator but he was a great political actor. john adams, who rarely had a nice thing to say about anyone said about george washington, of course john adams was eclipsed by him john adams was vice president when washington was prime president, and he fought washington earlier over the conduct of the war he said washington had style, he knew how to command the stage. and at newburg he famously commanded the stage by giving a mumbling address but then had

what was probably preplanned pulling out his glasses which people never saw, his reading glasses, and reading a letter. and he said, you know, going gray in your service, i've also lost my sight. and that humanized him before his men. and the newburg conspiracy was a pivotal point in america history where there was a coup aboot. and he squelched the coup not by what he said but how he said it. and so many times, same way with the constitutional convention. he never spoke. he spoke privately all the time and he worked out negotiations and compromises privately all the time. in public his style was such, his decorum was such he could with an eye, with a glance he could silence a person. a famous scene in there one of the few times he spoke was there was a code of version. nobody could -- there was no recording of what was happening in the constitutional convention

because it was believed if the word got out, the pressures would come from the outside. so they were kept secret for two and a half three and a half months while they met which was very tough to do with ben franklin who liked to to talk. they ended up sending guards out with him to the pubs at night so he wouldn't say anything. one time a private draft was left outside and found outside, and fortunately, the sergeant at arms found it and brought it to washington and washington just looked out to the audience. it was actually the delegates from georgia who wrote this down. he said washington looked at us and said: this document one of our drafts, has been found outside. it was brought to me. i don't know which of you left it. whoever left it should come up and get it and never happen again. and he threw it down, and he walked out of the room. and the delegate from georgia wrote, nobody had the tenacity

to go up and claim the document. and he himself ran back to his room and said i was never more relieved to find i still had the document in my room that it wasn't my copy. so he could command respect. he did it during the revolutionary war, he did it in the constitutional convention, he did it as president. he was a tremendous friend very loyal, but he he had a sense of dignity about him that commanded a situation and commanded men and commanded people. question? >> yeah. i'd just like your opinion on given the situation that you've written the book about and the situation that began and during the civil war, who had the more -- [inaudible] do you think, washington or lincoln? >> who had the more difficult job, washington or lincoln? you know, the times helped create the man, and i think with the case of lincoln it was the tremendous challenges he faced. washington helped create the

situation, because washington helped create the union that both by his service in the revolution and after. so they played a somewhat different role. i think it was a very difficult situation for both of them pulling things together and that's one reason why those presidents and later fdr who faced the depression in world war ii -- and world war ii could stand out. virtually every listing i've ever seen of the top presidents in the united states, those are the top three. there were different situations and, you know, i can't put one over the other. washington created an answer by working with others. create the constitution and then instigating it. i think that both of them faced challenges. i suppose lincoln in some ways faced the more immediate challenge because he was thrown in the middle of a challenge as opposed to working it from the the beginning.

we were fortunate as a country to have those two men at those times. washington always would attribute it to providence can. washington deep -- to providence. washington deeply believed in god. he deeply believed in god and a great sense of providence and he thought he was called to the revolutionary war and that that was a cause that was a new experience. he believed america was something new under the sun, that there'd never been a government of the people. that was a phrase he used government of the people. lincoln later added by the people and for the people. and there had never been one with like that. there were a few isolated republics like switzerland or something, but no extended republic. it was a new experience. and at that time everything was led by kings and monarchs or military dictatorships or some sort of an aristocracy. as the russians would say, a government of the few, and we're a government of the many. and trying to make that work was a novel experience. and that's what inspired him

most of all. you can see that in his letters that he's writing to others. he would write who but a britain would believe what is happening to us now? they said this could never work, they said we couldn't have a government of the people. you need a monarch because of the fallen nature of people. and now -- he's talking in the confederation period -- now we are becoming the laughingstock of europe. everything they said about us is coming true. we need to show them that this can work. and that sense of urgency that he conveyed in his letters and that he felt and others shared like john jay or the pinckneys or the morrises, that sense is, what that sense -- we have a purpose. and he believed in this experiment. because he believed we would be a model, and he would write -- he said that in his inaugural address and in his letters. people flocked to america

because of the type of government we have. and it's that sense of what he had -- and i think lincoln had much the same sense. and it made a lesser president, the south would have gone free because he couldn't have rallied this sense of what america could be. and washington had that. and that's -- this is the time where it shows more than anything. next question. >> there have been many biographies and autobiographies on washington schlesinger and fdr. jefferson and fdr. in your opinion who has written the best two or three biographies on a president? >> autobiography, nobody did it better than grant. i know i'm in the south and i -- at least i didn't say sherman. at least i said -- [laughter] at least i said grant. grant's memoirs are truly a wonderful book. now, he had help. the story goes he got some ghost writing for mark twain so you

couldn't do much better than that. but that's a wonderful book to read even in the south. so i'd always direct somebody to grant's memoirs. as for biographies, there are so many. there's so many, and they keep coming out. you mentioned flexner's multi-volume biography of washington. chernow has a very good volume, the best one-volume if you want to cover the whole of washington. there's some great books about periods of washington life. washington's crossing is a really good book about washington crossing the delaware. i hope to do a little bit like that, i hope in my own short way dealing with another period focused periods many washington's life when i'm dealing with him is his return his period between his service as president -- as general and president. when you bring it up-to-date you know, i don't think there's a better a historian's historian than the current biographies or that are coming

out about lyndon johnson. he is, you know there's nobody who writes -- nobody -- historians love his work because it's so detailed. now, you debt -- you get a lot about lyndon johnson. caro four volumes out now? tremendous, tremendous books. good books about, several about you know, teddy roosevelt seems to attract wonderful biographers. some wonderful books about, about him. so it's a little bit who you like. jackson, some great recent biographies about andrew jackson. so it depends on who you're interested in and what you'd like. but i -- as a historian, i'd read the new ones coming out about he keeps bringing out one about every five years on lyndon johnson. i wouldn't have picked lyndon johnson myself, but you can sure learn a lot about the passage of

power by reading those books. so those would be a few suggestions. they attract many great biographers, and that'd be a start. any other questions? yes. >> maybe not exactly on the washington topic but the constitutional convention. >> yes. >> one of the things that i find groundbreaking about that is the system of checks and balances. and i'm just wondering if you know what the philosophical origin toes of that -- origins of that -- [inaudible] >> that's where you get, we asked about checks and balances in our government, and that's where you truly get madison as the architect of the constitution. i think that would be one element. george washington was a great man partly because he was very comfortable in his own skin. he knew who he was. and he trusted orrs, and he list -- others, and he listened. he didn't think he had always answers. he knew he could do certain

things, and other people could do other things. and he would draw on expertise from other people, and i say this because it ties into your question about the checks and balances. washington probably wouldn't have thought about checks and balances himself. but he was, he was open minded, he would listen. you'd see that in every stake of his life. you'd -- stage of his life. you'd see he wouldn't just run out into battle. he'd always call a council of his junior aides as well as his senior aides. so young people like hamilton and lafayette could be part of these conferences. henry lawrence from south carolina. he'd listen to them. he'd listen to the more senior people. and as president it was the same way. he invented the cabinet for that reason. can you imagine -- doris kerns goodwin, another great rival, writes about "team of rivals." whatever you want to say about his team of rivals, immaterial doesn't match having jefferson

and hamilton in the same cabinet. and then you add henry knox and then you add in randolph from virginia. you talk about a team of rivals pulling them together, because washington would listen to them. he would listen to them and get advice to them. and so there's another thing about the cabinet in the -- nothing about the cabinet in the constitution, but he invents it because that's the way he was a general. he was also that during the runup to the constitutional convention. he would listen to others. and james madison had asked thomas jefferson to find him all the books he could find about constitutionalism, as it were, and send them to him. and james madison was a bookish sort of person. he was one of the sort of people when he was talking to you was probably looking at his own shoes or maybe in an extroverted moment be looking at your feet when he was talking to you. he was sort offer nerdy and he'd sit there and work out things. brilliant though. he was thinking about checks and

balances within the government; that is, between the branches of government as a he called them. it came out during the convention that others like roger sherman pushed him to also think about checks and balances between the states and the central government which madison didn't initially think of. and washington was sort of slow to pick up on that but he trusted. he trusted his aides and he listened, and he knew he didn't know everything. and he absorbed these ideas. and he only gradually figured out all this, and he picked up on that the idea of checks and balances. and when he receives he encouraged -- after the constitution was sent out, he encouraged people with -- he would write to people asking them to write essays about the constitution, to push ratification. and the ratification debates. and among them he asked john jay and alexander hamilton and james madison to write. and they all wrote something called the federalist papers which he thought was the best

collection of papers he'd ever read on government. and there you could see in his letters back to madison that he finally figured out exactly what madison meant by these balance of powers, because it's so nicely explained in the federalist papers. and so with that he adopts, he sort of understands this notion of the balance of powers. but he trusted madison initially enough to run with that. and so that's where this idea of balance of powers between the branches comes from. now, he had such a strong presidency because -- we hear we , we know this because of what they wrote -- because washington had been willing to give up power after the revolution. the british propagandists constantly said why are you revolting, they'd say to the american, to give up one king george king george iii for another one because every reeve pollution their leader -- revolutionary leader always becomes a tyrant.

look at napoleon. washington always said he'd resign when the war was over. people didn't believe him. he did resign whens it was over. when george iii said if that man resigns, he will be the greatest man in the world, and he did people knew that. jefferson wrote from france when it happened, he said this act is what sets our revolution apart. so people could trust washington with power because he chose to give it up freely. that was captured a bit in the newburg conspiracy. and so they trusted him with more power. that's probably why they gave the presidency as much power. no other country has really followed our route. other countries, they did follow being governments of the people. they tend to be parliamentary deck accurates with the prime minister running things -- democrats with the prime minister running things. madison thought that that would be helpful for preserving individual liberty. and what washington wanted the reason why he thought we needed

a constitution was he felt what was a threat was individual liberty, private property rights in states like rhode island economic prosperity because the country was split into bunch of pieces and political independence itself was a threat. and he wanted a constitution. and he pushed for its ratification on those grounds. we need to protect individual liberty and a big step of that was balance of powers. we need to protect private property rights, hence the constitution has its features that prevent states from infringing contracts. this was happening in rhode island and limiting the printing of paper money. we need to have, we need to have a national market economy that can roll the economy rather than each fighting. so you have the central government with complete power over interstate commerce. and, of course, you have a government that can raise taxes and have a military force so they can secure and protect political independence and open

the west. washington always wrote about we need to open the west because that is our frontier. that's who we are. if we don't have the frontier america would not be america because that's an open valve for people who don't have opportunity in the east to go west and make a name for themselves, make a place for themselves open land and also where easterners can invest. so it's those notions. and those were the things he cared about going to the constitutional convention. and so many of the things madison wanted that are in the virginia plan never came to be in the constitution. everything washington set out to have in the constitution, everything was there. so that shows how these ideas and the way he could communicate these ideas and balance of power was an important feature for part of it. i've probably gone too long. so i thank you very much for coming here. [applause] and it's a pleasure to be here. thank you. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] >> mr. hoffman was here today courtesy of yerly and norita thorne, and we should thank thank them too enormously for what they did for us. [applause] we're going to take a break now and have some lunch. there are several places that you can go, the savannah coffee roasters wiley's barbecue and chick-fil-a, and they're in the square. we will be back here at 1:30 this afternoon to hear author dr. zahn deep jauhar.

[inaudible conversations] >> and that was edward larson talking about his newest book on george washington. now, mr. larson has appeared on booktv on several occasions. if you'd like to see some of his other appearances, you can go to booktv.org, type in his name in the search function and you can watch it directly from our video library. now, the savannah book fest is taking a lunch break at this point, and our live coverage will continue again in about 45 minutes with dr. sandeep jauhar, "doctored: the disillusionment of an american physician." live coverage from savannah continues in about 45 minutes.

[inaudible conversations] >> you're watching book tv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. booking tv television for serious readers. >> and you're watching booktv on c-span2, 48 hours of nonfunction books and authors every weekend -- nonfiction books and authors every weekend. we're on location at johns hopkins university in baltimore talking with professors who are also authors and joining us now is andrew cherlin. what do you do here at the university? >> i'm a professor of sociology in the school of arts and sciences. >> host: and what do you teach? >> guest: i teach courses on the family children's welfare. >> host: what does that mean? >> guest: that means i get to boss around a number of people who have lifetime tenure, and i can't tell them what to do. [laughter] >> host: so we want to talk to you about your book, "labor's

lost love: the rise and fall of the working class family in america." how do you define a working class family? >> guest: it's pretty hard. used to be easy. it was that family where the guy was working in factory or maybe a construction job, the wife staying home maybe working part-time with a couple of kids. that was what the working class was like in the 1950s and '60s at its peak. what i've found is you almost can't define can it these days, because it's really kind of fallen apart. that's the issue here. what we've seen over the last few decades is the decline, the deterioration of a distinctive kind of american family, the family that we used the call blue collar with the guy working, the wife staying home, a couple of kids perhaps having a union job making good pay. that kind of family was very common in the 19 50z, and it's fallen apart. i feel like i've watched the slow motion disintegration of it. the reason it's fallen apart is, number one because our economy has changed. in all those great factory jobs

they've either moved overseas or disappeared into computer chips. meanwhile, ideas about marriage and having children have changed so that it's more acceptable to live with somebody, have a kid outside of marriage. and what we see today is a generation of young adults, say with a high school degree but no four-year college degree the people who would have taken those working class jobs if we had them we see that generation kind of drifting because the jobs that supported those kinds of families have really gone away. and we see a large number of young adults in this country who seem unconnected, unconnected through jobs unconnected through marriage unconnected through church attendance drifting away from the college-educated middle class. so i started writing "labor's love lost" because i saw the decline of a way of life that had its problems but which worked for some people. >> host: is there a solution to what you call the drift today? >> guest: yes.

i think there is a solution, but it's hard. s it is to im-- it is to improve the educational qualifications of people who might take the middle-level jobs that are available. let me try that again. if you're a high school graduate, you used to have lots of options. here in baltimore there used to be a steel plant that employed 30,000 people. paid good wages. last year that plant was sold for spare parts and scrap metal. you don't have those options anymore. but there still are some jobs that you can get without a four-year college degree. not as many. medical technician jobs, jobs that require some kind of computer skills. those jobs do exist still, and what we need to do is get people to the point where they can take them. so what we need to do is work on education, first of all, but not necessarily a four-year college degree for everybody. maybe what we need is to work on

community colleges to improve the kind of education we give to people who might take a good mid-level job with decent pay if they could get the training. maybe, maybe we need to improve apprenticeship programs, do innovative kinds of educational work that'll help people without college degrees get what jobs are left. that's the first thing we have to do. but i don't think that's going to be enough. i think in addition we have to work on what we call the institutions of work. things like unions like wage laws. i think we have to directly attack the ways in which we organize workers and pay them. i think we ought to have an increase in the minimum wage. i think we ought to do something to try to strengthen unions. because those kinds of efforts really cause the middle group to have a decent income 40 or 50

years ago, and they're not there today. professor cherlin walk us through what baltimore was like in the 1950s and perhaps what baltimore's like today and how that relates to "labor's lost love." >> guest: baltimore had what's called the sparrows point steel works about 7 miles east of here that started in the late 1800s. by about 1960 it was one of the largest steel mills in the world. maybe 30,000 people. it hired whites, it also hired blacks. they didn't get the jobs as good as the whites did but they were hired. it was a big source of employment. baltimore had a gm assembly plant that had several thousand employees. those members the employment levels of those kinds of big plants went down very sharply after the 1960s. starting in the 1970s when our economy started to transform, those jobs went elsewhere as steel was produced elsewhere, as we bought foreign cars.

and little by little they've been eroded. so today those jobs don't exist. the steel plant is closed, and in addition the general motors plant is closed. we have some good news in baltimore, coming in in the parking lot where the gm plant used to be is a big amazon.com distributership. it's going to have 800 jobs. that's terrific. but those jobs are going to pay maybe half maybe a third of what the unionized jobs at the general motors plant paid. so we're replacing jobs but not with the kinds of benefits and pay that can support a family easily. so what's happened in baltimore is that the old time factory jobs have been drying up just as they have elsewhere in the country. and they're either not here or highly mechanized with one worker operating a machine. instead were the newer economy the amazon.com economy. the economy where you're making less money perhaps not even working 40 hours a week, trying

to make it in a way that's very much more difficult than it used to be. so it's not that there are more jobs in baltimore anymore but the kinds of good factory jobs that were unionized ask can pay a lot of -- and pay a lot of money, those really are largely gone in baltimore and in lots of other cities around the nation. >> host: i just want to point out i got my ls mixed up, "labor's love lost," not lost love. i apologize for that. isn't change inevitable when it comes to economic matters or community matters like that? >> guest: sure, change is inevitable. we can't go back to the factory era. we're never going to get those jobs back, and you can argue that we shouldn't. we need to produce things more efficiently than we used to. but what do you do then with the large group of people who used to take those jobs and for whom that used to support family life? i'm not nostalgic for the 19 50z. the 19350s family had its problem. it was very restrictive for what women could do, for example. i don't want to return to the 1950s, but the problem i'm

writing about in my book is the decline of this kind of working class family has left with nothing stable in its place. we don't have a new way for people to live the kind of lives they used to do. so sure, let's go off into the future, let's not try to go back into the past. but as we do that, how do we build in, integrate in young adults who don't seem to be able to fit the way they used to? that's the problem for us. and unless we can solve that problem, we're going to have a lot of people who just can't make it the way we'd like to and just can't be connected up with the college-educated middle class the way we'd like them to be. >> host: has this generation of unconnected young adults, as you say, created other issues that we need to address? >> guest: here's what this generation's doing, they don't get married as much as they used to because they don't think they have the economic basis to do it. but what they will do now is

live with a partner. because that's more acceptable than it was, say, 50 years ago. and what they'll do now is go ahead and have kids in those partnerships. so we have high school-educated young adults living with each other and going ahead and having children without marrying just as we're used to seeing among the poorest of the poor. those relationships don't last very long. what's replaced the working class family is temporary, short-term relationships often with kids that last for a couple of years, then they break up, they start new relationships maybe have another kid with another partner and build very complex families. the reason i'm concerned about that is i think the instability of those families -- the fact that kids are seeing parents and parents' partners move in and out of their households -- aren't good for them. if this were france or scandinavia, i wouldn't be so

concerned because in those european countries there are long-term, cohabiting relationships that last for decades. and that function just as we might think marriages would function. but we don't do that in the u.s. as yet. we have the shortest duration of living together relationships. so i've seen a huge growth in the last few decades of cohabiting relationships with kids among the high school degree population. that's new. we didn't used to see that several decades ago. and i'm concerned about it because of the extreme amount of instability and churning and turbulence in the lives of those adults, and perhaps even more important, in the lives of their kids. because it's the kids, we really have a social and public concern about them. >> host: has this new generation has it contributed to a perception that we're becoming a have and a have-not society more so than a working class, when we had a working class population? >> guest: yes. i think a four-year college

degree is the closest thing we have to a social class boundary in this country. certainly from the standpoint of family life, it is. there's an enormous difference now between the way college-educated population lives its family life and everybody else. what the college-educated population does is the husband and the wife join two incomes make a firm foundation for a marriage and wait until after they're married to have kids. they can do that because the college-educated people are the winners in our new economy. they're the ones who can still get decent jobs. they're pooling two incomes, and they're confident they can have a future together. they get married, they may live together first but they'll wait until after they're married to have kids. they almost look kind of traditional. the wife works outside the home, that's not traditional. they may live together but we recognize that kind of family. for everybody else -- that is, people without a bachelor's degree -- we're seeing an

increasing number of short-term relationships, most of them non-marital relationships with kids creating a very different kind of family life. it used to be 50 or 60 years ago that most everybody was married including poor people and rich people. now it's largely rich people. professional and managerial workers in this country are about twice as likely to be married as somebody with a low-revel job -- low-level job. that's a very big difference and it's happened in the last few decades, and it's connected up with what i call the decline of the working class family because the middle of that distribution, the middle group has seen their job base disappear as industrialization has faded into de-industrialization. >> host: are we finding working class populations growing in other countries, perhaps in china? >> guest: yes, we certainly are seeing it in other countries. we're seeing it happen in europe too. many of those countries provide more family assistance than ours

do. so the single mom here who has a job and needs to take off some time when she might be having a kid or when a child is sick, in most other countries in the world would get paid family leave. not here in the u.s. in many countries there's much more support for people at the bottom than there is here. so while we see lots of working class populations emerging in other countries, what we see is that they have more support than people do in this country. we kind of let people sink or swim here. and most of us swim most of the time, but not all. and i'm seeing a growing number of the so-called working class sink rather than swim. >> host: besides education what's another policy that you would like to see implemented? >> guest: i would like to see an increase in the minimum wage. now, i'm not an economist so i've been asking all the economists i know is this, could we do this?

clearly, if you raised the minimum wage to $50 an hour you're just going to ill -- kill jobs. could you raise it from what it is now? and the answer that i hear and that i trust the most is you could raise the minimum wage several dollars an hour at least without hurting the job picture because the minimum wage is worse -- worth, i'm sorry, a lot less than it used to be. counting inflation the minimum wage used to buy you more goods and services 20 or 30 years ago than it does now. ..

it is an interesting program. i did like to see it extended to thats cannot living with their children so they have an incentive to work, employers have incentive to hire and them. you have more child-support paid and more families working together. this is something to help this population of little but it is really hard, very difficult because the factory jobs we saw in baltimore are not coming back. >> "labor's love lost," the rise and fall of the working-class family in america, andrew cherlin is the author, here is the cover.

>> booktv is live today from savannah, george at their annual book festival. live coverage will continue shortly. [inaudible conversations] >> here's a look at the upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country. on march 14th and fifteenth booktv will be at the university of arizona with live coverage of the seventh annual tucson festival of books. the following week the va festival of the book will be held in charlottesville, virginia and march 25th through 29 the city of new orleans will host the tennessee williams literary festival and the los angeles times festival of books will take place on the eighteenth and nineteenth of april. it will also air live on booktv. let us know about book fairs and festivals in new area and we will be happy to add them to our list e-mail us at booktv@c-span.org.

>> booktv is on location at johns hopkins university in baltimore, maryland where we will be talking with professors who are authors. joining us is a professor of the history of medicine at johns hopkins and daniel to notice --tois --tois. to deity to and why is it important? >> here at hopkins to be able to teach it to an undergraduate two wonderful groups of graduate students and and medical students why is it important? i think it is important because science and medicine are so important in our culture today and science and medicine and other products of human beings and human activities so if we understand science and medicine and how it has really produced real human beings, not textbook

definition of scientific medicine we ended stand the product and may understand the things it can do for us and has been frailties' so it is an opportunity to reflect on the nature of this important part of our culture. >> area from the history background or medical background? >> come from a history background. in fact as high school and college student i shied away from science a bit. i came to the history of science and medicine because i was interested in the question how do humans being make up their opinions, how did they come to opinions on things? so i studied the history of ideas, a little psychology a little sociology and came to the history of science because they deal with how far they make up

their minds about things nature is infinitely complicated, two different scientists looking at nature, different kinds and places looking at different ways depending on what their values or investment for philosophies, so draw a very different conclusions about it. i found the process really fascinating for 40 years. >> host: daniel todes, we invite you to talk about this book "ivan pavlov: a russian life in science". was ivan pavlov? >> he was a great scientist. he was a fascinating and and a man who lived a long and rich wife for almost a century was

born in 1849 in a provincial city, before the serfs were in anticipated and he died in stalin's russia in 1936. one thing he was not was a man who taught a dog to salivate. that is just what myth. and american myth largely. >> host: how did that come about? the first line in your book is contrary to legend, ivan pavlov never trained a dog to salivate to the sound of a bell, everyone who hears his name watching this interview said pavlov's dog. where did that come from? >> the short answer is that it came from the usual condemnation of structure and contingency in american life in our history. the contingency was it was as

simple missed translation problem for instance. the russian word was mistranslated as dog and was picked up and popularized. when we talk further about have law's work, you will see i could have used the dog but the structure part, the historical part is when pavlov was doing his work, all the rage in western psychology was behavior behavior rests believed people like john watson who got his start, the behaviorists believe that to be a science, psychology for joy -- should forget the inner world because it couldn't be studied objectively and instead should just focus on one visible thing like behavior is. they interpreted pavlov in their image. for them what was important was

the physiologist talking about conditioning, had provided supposedly the physiological basis for mechanistic acting out of behaviors but pavlov was not behaviorist. he was a russian who was deeply steeped in russian culture as a young man he worried about the problems of human morality. he read dostoevsky's brothers of and was seeking russian discussions about human morality, human morality and what science could do about it. so actually what he was trying to do was come as he put it, is to study the psyche to

understand our consciousness and its torment exactly the inner life that the behavior rests were paying no attention to. back to the dog as pavlov was the first to admit, many people before him had noticed that for instance a dog will salivate when a person that usually feeds it walks into the room, let alone that it could be trained to celebrate to certain things and if you think about it, why would a talented scientists need for 30 years, three labs and scores of co-workers to do something you and i could probably do in an afternoon or so. pavlov realized he never called any credit for that realization.

the conditional reflects, ms. translation is not conditioned, it is conditional and it is important to understand what he was doing. it wasn't just a phenomenon, it was not met that. what he meant to do, a three step method to do what one russian characterized this way, to use saliva drops and logic to understand the inner life of the dog and the human being so what did he do? we can start with not a bell but a buzzer. after a while, the dog is going to salivate. everybody knew that. that is the beginning, then tens

of thousands of different experiments playing to with the interval between buzzer and speeding and to a metronome, tens of thousands of experiments using the dog's pattern of salivation as low window is the dog expecting to be fed or not is the simplest sort of beginning with the simplest experiment so we do those tens of thousands of experiments generate all this data. the second step is try to imagine the processes in the brain that would lead to patterns like that so this conceptual nervous system, excitation, irradiation, concentration across the brain, and developed a certain number

of processes to explain those patterns and also that he uses that consensual and nervousness to understand the aspect and emotions and personalities on dogs and humans. one dog characterized as a freedom fighter because he didn't want to be confined in the stand so how could he explain that based on this conceptual nervous system, why are there different types of human personality? wide to people he fought like many people in his time, the english, the germans, russians had different personalities so that was his goal, to understand our psyche, our consciousness and maybe, just maybe, he thought, in the end, to give

human beings the capacity to control themselves a little bit and improve society. >> host: was the well-known in his time? >> guest: yes. >> host: celebrity? >> guest: yes. you, was certainly a celebrity and that was an important part of his life. i should mention success didn't come easily to him. he was supposed to be a priest five generations of his family had been in the clergy but in the 1860s when he was a teenager science was all the rage in russia, russia was modernizing so he abandoned his father's plan for him they never had good relations afterwards. to leave the seminary go to the shining city of st. petersburg the center of russian science comment and there he was a terrific student, he found a great teacher who taught him his

basic style, physiology. pavlov felt he was that, but he was chased out of the university by student demonstrators so he found himself without a mentor, without a patron and there were 15 long years in the wilderness. he got his first job at age 41, a chance circumstance and in the 1890s he did his work on digestion where he tried to analyze the digestive system, as the factory, here again why a factory? factories were springing up, russia was having its industrial revolution and so often scientists draw their conceptual framework from the world around them so he wanted to look at the digestive system as something

that produce precisely the amount and quality of secretion to digest -- nt won and nobel prize for that in 1904. the wild card is he realized that in fact two different dogs gave him the same amount of the same food would secrete different amounts for instance of gastric juice, different personality, from the psyche, was the ghost in his digestive machine. he decided shortly about the time he got his nobel prize for his digestive work, that he would take the psyche itself. so 1904, russia's only nobel prize winner and that ended up having really important significance through his life

because 1917 of course bolsheviks' seizure of power, his politics were very interesting. before the revolution his basic politics which becomes important for understanding is evolving view was the system of government doesn't matter that much. what is going to matter is science. as science develops will symbolize all of us, rationalize and humanize mankind so whatever was good for science, pavlov was happy with. under the czars, it was also a gradual, always against any kind of revolution. these ares didn't support science very generously and pavlov didn't like that but he was against any kind of revolution before 1917. he was hoping russia would

evolve into unconstitutional on our feet. he was against the democratic revolution in february of 1917, and and horrified by the bolshevik too, that over through that sort of left liberal government in october. so when the bolsheviks took power reconsidered and the grading seriously especially since all of his friends and colleagues either died or emigrated, 30 years of civil war, 1918 and 1919, there was nothing to eat dogs died of starvation. he love russia and wanted to stay there and his western colleagues one of the things that surprise me in the research, they wanted to help him, sent him food and money he

was a 68-year-old man whose nobel prize occurred a couple decades ago, they knew little about his conditional reflects, so they did not want him to come to the west. linen on the either hand decided that okay, this guy, he is criticizing us right and left and he did in public at the very beginning. but he is russia's only nobel prize winner. >> host: to that protect him from prison? >> just the point. he is russia's only nobel prize winner, he is internationally welcomed and connected and is of materialists developing a world view that when the bolsheviks fell, supported their own views although there were important differences between pavlov's brand of materialism and

dialectical materialism, so exactly so for the bolsheviks idea of building socialism they needed science and technology and productive forces. he has propaganda value and when and after the civil war ends, doesn't want all the russian scientists, pavlov rights in the letter saying basically i want permission to decide if i want to leave and it is my right to be if whatever you say and russian scientists dying and you better do something about it. been in decided he was right and at the same time his colleague said he was a wash tub old man went gave him carte blanche and the soviets gave them carte blanche for the next two decades, gave him everything he

wanted in his lab offered all sorts of special privileges which he intended to turn down except when he was late in life accepted the fort lincoln to drive him around, between his three different labs so playing this game pavlov and the bolsheviks, it is an interesting one. the bolsheviks he is a reactionary a famous scientist who objectively is developing good science and helping them in russia. for pavlov the bolsheviks are barbarians, criminals he denounces his suppression of religion, terror, and also as heat put it in 1926 in france and they understand science.

science under the bolsheviks, and believed the way the government didn't. that included huge things for pavlov including the village they built for him and outside leningrad. toward the end of his life, the bolsheviks became a little more complicated. keane never ceased criticizing the terror, save people from the gulag, wrote letters and gave public speeches denouncing the terror and suppression of religion. somebody by his lab to encourage his lab. kicked the dog down the steps and out of the building.

on the other hand -- >> italy protect you so much. >> guest: under stalin times. on the other hand he saw science developing. in 1933 it there comes to power as he did under the czars. against the fascist threat. at the end of his life my wonderful experiences was finding the last two manuscripts he was working on when he died and never finished them. science and religion christianity and communists and basically this is part of what is an essay, corresponding with stalin's right hand man trying to convince him to end

suppression of religion. pavlov by this time is an atheist but is defending the local church, giving them money under the table because the bolsheviks are trying to tax them to death. the clergy are removed, he sensed a crate of oranges but he tells the bolsheviks, basically for all your crimes and blunders there is something you have in common with christianity which is this belief in the quality. he says instead of suppressing christians you should celebrate because jesus was the first communist on earth, he said. >> host: you say there, where did you do your research on ivan pavlov? >> where did i do my research?

this is another story about contingency and block. when i finished my first book and decided to try to write this biography it was gorbachev time and the archives were opening up in russia and so i got injured in russia thanks to grants from national endowment of humanities and a full year 1990-'91, just as the archives were opening up, friendly relations between the united states and russia pavlov's main personal papers since he was elected at the academy of science, in the academy of science, archive in st. petersburg, i got there and i couldn't believe it. it turned out some soviet

historians had been able to look at some of it but not to publish because the archives showed him to be a much more complicated man than the icon that had grown up around him in the soviet union. it was impossible to use these materials to write a biography until gorbachev's time. >> host: what is ivan pavlov's lasting contribution to science? >> guest: the questions that he was addressing a i still very much under debate by scientists today. what i call in the book pavlov's quest to understand the subjective emotional

intellectual life of human beings, simply by reflexes and nervous, very problematic. that is where the solution lies. others don't. today, pavlov watched saliva drought and trying to reason into the inner life and you and i can look at the oxygenation of morons when they have ir -- and our eye when a person experiences love it is very striking because you see is that movement. right before the monday reaches but what is the relationship between the two? his methods the use of the conditional reflectses to

analyze and treat such things as depression or drug addiction or certainly showcasing a lot of important life a lot of important light on us as organisms. but his overall quest, the quest to understand human consciousness, its relationship to bodily processes, what i found most inspiring about him was not just the amazing science he did but at age 86, of few weeks before he died, that second manuscript i mentioned, he was changing his mind on a bunch of important things so for me, have law is not model for a

thinking individuals at however -- he was always a certain in public but in private he had his doubts. he was alive intellectually to the end and that is something scientists or historians can learn a lot from. >> host: here is the cover of the boat, "ivan pavlov: a russian life in science". on top and professor daniel todes is author, publisher of oxford university press. you are watching booktv on c-span2. >> a look at the current best-selling nonfiction books according to the new york times.

>> author and medical doctor sandeep jauhar starts now on booktv. we are live from the eighth annual book festival in georgia. his new book is called "doctored: the disillusionment of an american physician". >> if i said anything you forgot. i am delighted to welcome you to the eighth annual medical festival, and 2015, georgia

power involved in -- we are blessed once again to host such a celebrated authors as united methodist church, a beautiful historic venue made possible by the generosity of the international paper foundation the savannah morning news and the savannah magazine and we would also like to thank c-span for coming to the festival and filming live here today so you might be on tv. we have a dynamic office again this year. in order to keep this festival free and open to the public we depend on our sponsors and individual donors. if you would like to lend your support to the book festival we welcome your donations and have provided yellow book buckets at the door. before we get started i have a couple housekeeping notes, please take a moment to turn off your cellphone. we also ask that you do not use flash photography and it is important for the question and

answer portion that you line up down the center aisle and come to the microphone to ask your questions because otherwise you will not be heard you will not be heard on tv so please come to the front and the ushers will help you to the microphone. if you are planning to attend the closing address please remember it is tomorrow, the correct time for the presentation is 3:00 at the trustees' the air. immediately following this presentation, sandeep jauhar will sign copies of his book but now we welcome dr. sandeep jauhar who is here through the generosity of the marshes of skidaway. when sandeep jauhar went into medicine he experienced a gradual and deepening disillusionment as he confronted the hard questions about human side of modern medicine. he has reached surprising conclusions currently he is director of the heart failure

program at long island jewish medical center and writes regularly for the new york times. in an acclaimed memoir, he chronicled the harrowing years of his residency at the new york city hospital doctored his recent memoir and a focus of his talk is a follow-up that presents the crisis of american medicine through the life of an attending cardiologists. sandeep jauhar writes about sobering medical truths such as doctors's lower more out getting lower. naked cruelty is in determining patient referrals, industry partnerships distorting medical decisions and unnecessary tests being routinely formed in order to generate income. provoked by his unsettling experience is sandeep jauhar has written an introspective memoir and an impassioned plea for reform. "doctored: the disillusionment of an american physician" is the important work of a wider unafraid of challenging the

establishment, admitting fault and inciting controversy and we are delighted to welcome dr. sandeep jauhar. [applause] >> thank you so much for that generous introduction. i want to say what a pleasure it has been for me to be here this weekend. i brought my family. my children are actually now probably connoisseurs' of georgia book festival because we were at the decatur festival in august but they have given so that not a big thumbs-up as have i. and i also very quickly want to acknowledge the organizers specifically robyn goals and linda you are so helpful in bringing us here and our

wonderful host beth logan, the paragon of southern hospitality. when robyn invited me to come here, she gave me some parameters for this talk and she said talk mostly about yourself and what motivates you to get into writing and i fought as a writer of two memoirs how am i going to do that? how am i going to talk about myself? i will do the best i can. i was in the lobby of brice before coming here wonderful hotel and was chatting with one of the authors, what you going to talk about? i'm not sure. i will just go up there and be spontaneous. i will try to do that too. i don't know exactly where this is going to go but hopefully it

will be enlightening. me start by telling you about myself. i was born in india. our family was pretty itinerant when i was growing up. my father was a plant geneticist so we found ourselves moving around quite a bit because he ended up going to places that focused on crop science. we spent some time in wales and then we moved back to india in 2007 and i spent a year there and for those of you who know a little bit about modern indian history, it was 1976 the year of the emergency rule a tough time for academics and there were a lot of restrictions on

free speech. my father decided we have to get out of here so we ended up emigrating to the united states in 1977 and eventually ended up settling in setting california and that is where i grew up. like i said my father was a plant geneticist. my mother was of biochemist who worked part time but mostly was of homemaker and she spent time raising s and they wanted me to become a doctor. in that generation especially among immigrant indians there was nothing more noble and better that you could do. sort of coloring their vision was the fact that they had come with no money, financial insecurity and they thought this

will -- going into medicine will confer stability on our children and allow them to do good for the world's. i didn't buy into that when i was growing up. i have a lot of other interests besides science. i remember when i was growing up in india i would spend time with my grandfather a family practitioner in new delhi and i would watch him work and what he did was find. it was reasonably interesting but it didn't appeal to me deeply. might 10-year-old minds thought this is kind of cook book and i don't want to pursue medicine and i didn't see how medicine was going to allow me to develop my creative impulse and i was

wrong about that actually but at the time -- so i was interested in a lot of different things so my mother would sort of pushed me to become a doctor. one reason she would say, the, doctors of people will stand when you walk into the room. it didn't work out that way. in the end i ended up going to berkeley. i was very interested in the mysteries of the universe so i decided to become of physicists. in immigrant indian culture, rebellion is saying no to a career in medicine and going into physics. i was really the rebel.

so i went to berkeley and studied physics and graduated from undergrad and decided i was going to continue with physics. i wasn't sure what i wanted to do, but to go to graduate school and studied a very esoteric object called a quantum dots and i can talk to you about it afterwards. of very interesting entities that is sort of like an artificial adam. i became a writer. studying quantum dots, this was so far removed from what i am doing today, what ended up happening, there was a confluence of things. any of you who have done research especially graduate level research know that it is very slow and i found myself

struggling with the equipment, broken vacuum pumps. so the progress was incremental at best and right around that time someone who was very dear to made developed a severe case of lucas and in an effort to help her eyes ended up going to support group meetings and talking to doctors and gradually got more interested in medicine as a way to help her but also was fascinating to me how much was uncharted. how little was known about lupus or chronic disease in general and being a physicist, i had this idea that if i dug deeply enough i could figure things

out for her and it became very clear is that medicine really is a science of incredible uncertainty and is largely uncharted and that was appealing to the scientist in meade but the biggest appeal, i started to see medicine as away to help people. sounds naive, but it was -- the biggest motivating factor for me was at the time when i was sort of toward the end graduate school i desperately wanted out of the ivory tower. i wanted to be with people. i wanted to interact with my fellow human beings and i remember my brother, who is a

doctor he is a cardiologist, in a residency at the time, he visited me once and sort of walked around my lab. i showed him the laser and all the cool stuff i was doing and he looked at me and said this is such an ivory tower and i remember thinking, you know, it was -- the worst thing you could say to me at that moment because it really stimulated me to make a big change. i ended up finishing my ph.d. and applied to medical school. i firmly believe in serendipity. i have always been interested in writing, but had no opportunities to write and other than scientific writing. so after i applied to medical

school and had gotten in i was walking in the physics department one day and i saw a poster for a science journalism fellowship and sort of 5 when i was in high school, i like to writing and i should do something and i sort of had the summer off before i was going to go to medical school so i applied on a lark to the science fellowships and to my utter amazement ended up getting it and i went to time magazine for the summer before i went to medical school and time was an amazing experience for me because i have always been interested in politics and it was just -- it was -- it seemed so glamorous. i went there and first week i was there they sent me to the u.s. capitol to get up quote

from bob dole about the working poor. i had never interviewed anyone and i was a physicist. what did i know about it? so i applied my physics acumen, how am i going to -- all these reporters in the new york times, cnn they are trying to -- he was majority leader at the time, trying to get to him so how am i going to work my way in? i figured you know what? i will hang out by the bathroom because i knew he had a prostate condition and he was going to end up in the bathroom at some point. so the land the holds i was just hanging out by myself and he walked in. and i was so nervous i looked at him tall man and i said a bunch of gibberish i am sure it was gibberish and he sort of looked

at me and kept walking, completely ignored me so after he came out, done with his speeches and so on, i was talking to his press secretary and trying to get him to get me five minutes to get my quote so people at time magazine don't think i am a total loser and so the press secretary was in the process of blowing me off and bob dole walks up and i will never forget this. he said this is sandeep jauhar. he is an intern at time magazine and he wants to quote from the about america's working for. setup the five minute phone conversation. this is what he gleaned from what i was sure was a bunch of nervous gibberish because -- so really admire the man. and i end up speaking to him the next day and got my quote and so

i got bitten by the writing bug that day that week. so when i finished at that time magazine, it was the end of the summer and i was supposed to go to st. louis, to start medical school so i went and talked to the bureau chief of time magazine, a guy named dan goodgame. i really like writing and maybe i should become a writer, work at time and he is like go to medical school. you don't want to end up and being stained wretch like me. give me some names of people i can call in the future if i want to try to write about missing? he said sure. gave me the name of someone,

half a trillion, miami herald, but what about the new york times? all right, sure. gave me the name of one of the top editors so i went to st. louis. the first few weeks were tough going from time magazine to the anatomy lab and memorizing muscles and nerves. one day i decided to call up this guy at time magazine and i really believe that -- such an important role for serendipity in our lives. i ended up calling this fellow gerald a bullet, and he has since passed on, but he was the national political editor at the time and i didn't know it but he was -- i believe he was the panelist who asked michael dukakis what he would do if his wife were raped and murdered?

so he had tremendous influence on the 1988 political presidential election. i didn't notice this at the time. i called him up and was in the process of speaking to someone and suddenly he gets on the phone and i said -- look -- gerald boyd -- what do you want? i was sort of telling him i was a medical student and then it turned out he was from st. louis. not just that he was from st. louis but he actually had lived on the same streets i was currently living on, kings highway. so he started asking me where do you live? you are in medical school and at the end of the conversation he said next time you are in new york give me a call and we will have coffee. i said that is wonderful so i did what any aspiring writer would do up the phone, called

american airlines and book the flight to new york. is then i called his assistant and i said i am coming to new york and mr. boyd wants to meet with me. and who are you? so anyway i went to new york, they showed me into his office and i am looking around and there are pictures of him with george bush and the premier of china. at that point i was thinking all right, maybe you don't really know what you are doing. so he walks in and his tone had totally changed from the conversation lisa i have two minutes what do you want? so i started telling him that i wasn't in medical school but really wanted to be a writer and could i write for the new york times? and he said show me your stuff.

i said i don't really have any stuff. i tried to explain how at time magazine you don't get stuff. you just get quotes. he looked at me like i was totally crazy but he did do an amazing thing for me. he called in elizabeth rosenthal. she is a doctor and some of you must have read her pay until it hurts series for which i hope she gets the pulitzer but she came in and she said -- she went to harvard medical school. she was working as a journalist full time but doing a little medicine on the side. she said this isn't how you do things. go back to medical school and see if you can write for the local paper tried to get a

portfolio and then send me your stuff. i went back and ended up going to the st. louis post-dispatch and i met a fellow there a very good guy an editor named john curley who had grown up in manhattan and he had taken a liking to me and admired my gumption in coming and asking for an internship and in the end offered me an internship and then faced with this decision, how to i do an internship at the st. louis post-dispatch while i am in medical school? i called my brother and said i have an opportunity, i kind of want to do it but they are going to keep track. i can't be away from medical school for large amounts of time and he said you know what? there are many hours in the day. remembered that and i thought i am going to go with this. i went to the st. louis post-dispatch and they started

giving me stories. i would drive out there after morning classes, skip the afternoon and read the transcription and show up at 1:00, my editor there would say you know what? we want you to write -- there are a lot of people getting stung by wasps. we want you to write a piece about people getting stung by wasps and you have until 5:00. it would just be like okay, and it was trial by fire and i did a few featured pieces as well, one on diabetes and i did a profile of a surgeon and i would send my stuff to the new york times to libya and she would read it and sometimes she would respond and sometimes she wouldn't and i had a little portfolio and the next step in serendipity was when i

finished mid school i ended up getting an internship in new york and at new york hospital so i called libby and the science section of the new york times had a new editor. a woman named cornelius been. when new people come in they want to mix things up and bring in their own people. so i was one of her people. she took a liking to me and i pitched an article about a leprosy hospital in carville, louisiana. she said sure. we will send a photographer down. go down and do the story so i went to cargill and stayed two or three days and wrote this piece and it came out about three days after i started my

internship and two days before i met my wife, sonya. it was an eventful week. and corey dean would say why don't you write about your internship? i said okay. it turned out to be a great indication, because in an internship everything is new. as you go on in medicine you get jaded. you see things and you start questioning but when you are and in turn everything is new is rubles a year end up with i don't give a hoot what i write. i am going to write about what i see and the things that interest me and the things i am going to question. i remember one of my early pieces as an intern, there was a

fellow in hospital and who was having difficulty swallowing and when he would swallow food would go into his lungs. everyone was getting ready to put in the feeding tube into his stomach. the thing was he kept saying i don't want the feeding tube but no one was listening to him. i was on the team and whenever i would bring it up people would say what i you saying? what is the alternative? the alternative to me was listen to what he is saying, let him eat edit he dies of desperation pneumonia, that is the way he wants to live. but because it was such an egregiously crazy choice, who wants to die, people declared without capacity. you can't make your decision. they are getting ready to put in

the feeding tube. it was so bothersome to meet at i remember one morning i went to his room and i said they are going to go for your feeding tube today and he said i don't want it. i said you know what? and i went to the refrigerator and brought out some thin liquids. i said here. drink this. he hadn't drunk anything in over a week, maybe two, and so he drank it and maybe he coughed a little bit, he drank it and i said -- i documented his charge, did my own swallowing study and he can swallow. he doesn't need to a feeding tube. i called the surgeon and just called it off. those are the things you need to

experience when you are naive because now today, honestly if i were walking through the ward and i saw a guy like that who couldn't swallow and was getting ready to get a feeding tube i would probably just let him get it because i wouldn't be invested. when you are an interim you are investing your patients in a way that you aren't, you don't know them as well as you move on. and that is unfortunate but it is the reality. those are the things i started to write about, things that interested me. things that seemed ethically or dubious and so by the time i was done with my residency i had 15 or 20 pieces in the new york times. by then believe it or not i had a book agent who said you should write a book. i said oh sure. i just wanted to have an agent.

i thought was cool to have an agent. at the end of my residency i said look why don't we just take my pieces and staple them together and call it a book? we pitched that idea which didn't go over very well. the editor, of my publisher said we don't really like your idea but we have an idea. why don't you write about your residency, a memoir of development, novel of education? that is what i ended up doing and got turned into my first book which is called in turn. end there are a lot of pieces i