everyone. thanks for waiting. welcome to the bookstore and thanks for coming tonight. we are pleased to have with us to present &-and-sign the buck doctors of the samurai a dream from east to west and back. also here tonight we will be having a conversation about the book. before we get started i just wanted to tell you a little bit about the two ladies. she graduated in the yale where for three weeks she worked as an editor for the english link which newspapers and became professional in japanese. after moving back to new york she earned a a masters degree master's degree in east asian studies at columbia with a focus on 19th century japanese history. she has worked as an editor writer and reviewer for the newspapers such as the los angeles times, "the chicago tribune" and newsday. the authors of the samurai is her first and has been described as beautifully written by the

"seattle times." she will be joining in the conversations is a graduate of columbia university with a degree in east asian languages and civilizations. her work often focuses on the intersection between spirituality and modernity and the manner in which the two richest countries have responded to materialism and success. she's currently working on her first memoir where the japanese say goodbye. we are excited to host this event and without further ado please join me in welcoming them. [applause] >> thank you for coming and for hosting. first i just want to make a small correction which is that this is an absolutely true story. it isn't fiction. everything i'm going to sleep tonight is researched truth although i hope you will find that it reads like a novel since

i'm sure most of you haven't had a chance to read it yet i just want to give a five-minute speed version of the story so that the conversation that we are going to have makes a little bit more sense. so with a name like mine in a case like mine by husband was born in japan and after we both graduated from college, he moved there and lived with his family for three years. when i came back i did my masters in history and fell into devastation with what is known as the period of japanese history. it's the period during which japan came to the realization that had fallen behind the rest of the world in its ability to defend its own after 250 years of not interacting in a world very much it was no longer sustainable to do that.

so in the space of a single lifetime, the lifetime of the other, japan eventually caught up speaking here as a divine symbol and then in the western-style military uniform as part of his mandate he sent ambassadors around the world to learn everything from agriculture to weapons technology to legal systems. and as he began to send these ambassadors out, one of them just as the largest embassy was about to leave, one of his advisers paid for 10% i noticed when i was in america that the american women are educated and they seem to support their man in a way that japanese women don't. perhaps that is part of american success, perhaps that intellectual support is important. maybe we should educate our

women. how about we send five little girls to america with a large embassy that's taking off and leave them there for ten years? like an educated independent come back and help solve the generation of enlightenment? the idea was they would help make japan rise. it was a very hard to sell and in sell and in the end only five families came forward with a daughter to this. the one just to the right of center was six when this picture was taken. they departed in the fall of 1871 with what is known as the mission of 100 statesmen and scholars and is a colorful afterthought really, five little girls. they landed in san francisco in 1872 card transcontinental railroad washington, d.c. where the two elder once quickly discovered they were not cut out

for the mission. they were homesick and ill and quickly sent back to tokyo leaving the three younger ones who were placed with three different families, one in georgetown in washington and the other two in new haven connecticut. at this point in the american education began in earnest but they always stuck together from this point. they became extremely important to each other almost a country of three because no one understood them as well as they understood each other. they were to everyone except each other. the youngest one grew up in washington for the graduated from high school was a pit of her foster parents from being the son delete command of the rising sun she dazzled at school and won the hearts of the social scene and forgot every word of the japanese as she grew. the middle one and the older one who were in new haven were also

battling american schoolgirls. individually both of them were in the group permission which to this point was only about a dozen-years-old. she was the middle of the three and came to study music. she did a three-year certificate indiana. and her slightly older friend who's hard to see that is in a circle, she the circle, she was the most dazzling one of the three for the for your baccalaureate to earn a college degree. they were delighted to join the shakespeare society and was a completely successful college american girl. and now the hard part starts to be get closer to this than to go back to japan.

the girls have grown up with this incredibly strong idea that their mission is to go back and change women's education. , so they go back. so they went to the naval academy at annapolis and when she gets back the immediately marry and settle down, she teaches music for which you don't have to be fluent or literate in japanese which she no longer is and she raises her seven children. her older friend has a hard time because she has just come from this dazzling career. she's not ready to be an anonymous english teacher. and as she waits patiently for the government to offer something to do, she gets a startling proposal of marriage from the minister of war one of the most powerful men of the

japanese cabinet 18 years older than she is what over with three children this is a woman who never intended to marry, she was good to be an educator but she realizes that she may be able to do more and change more as part of his circle so she makes a difficult decision to marry him. meanwhile, the young one has decided she's never going to marry anyone for any reason ever and part of that is because she no longer speaks japanese and the idea of marriage to a japanese man is difficult. she after a few years of teaching english starts to miss the idea that she didn't have a college education while she was in america and she returns to do a graduate study, then she comes back to japan again and stunned everyone by quitting her teaching jobs and founded a school. it's a small school devoted to teaching young women to pass the english certificate exam.

today it's one of the most prestigious colleges it has 4,000 undergraduate and she's right for one of the heroes of the women's education in japan and she got here supported by her two friends who became her patrons. here they are with one of the foster sisters who came to help them so this is a story of extraordinary faith of three little girls chosen essentially by chance that had the grit and intellect and charm to be successful both when they were transplanted here and when they were translated back. that's the story in a nutshell. >> i went to columbia university and it made her he asian languages and i remember reading the story about these girls probably in a history class

someplace. i am half japanese and i've written two books and i was so excited when i learnt your book was coming out and that someone had taken the time to trace the history of these girls and find out what had happened because i always had it in the back of my mind but i didn't know what exactly their faith was and i saw that it was a period of incredible change in japan and i was wondering if you would be willing to read this passage on page 12 out loud for us and we can talk about it. >> this is about discovering the story. i recognized then and i knew what it felt like to arrive with little or no language to want desperately to fit into the japanese home and at the same time to chase against the japanese attitude towards women. i had a husband who didn't see the world through the japanese lens of his parents never meant to raise an american child. 100 years before globalization

and multiculturalism became the gold, three japanese girls span of the globe and became fluent in two worlds at once other than to each other. their story would let me go. >> i remember going to japan at four and five and a sort of sitting in but not. >> to show you a visual the chassis of me telling the story. i have no idea that larger story

was that i but i knew that this woman in 1988 had the same experience that i had because she was a large white american woman and there was no disguising that and she was setting up a household that her voice had a sense of humor but an open mind. she was frustrated sometimes an astonishing overjoyed sometimes about what she was discovering. and i thought at first i should write a book about her because i thought she was me. so the feeling of both wanting to be part of the frustration of never been quite able to be part of entirely but also this great affection for the culture that you are coming to know was very familiar. >> the cultural roots are so different from the left that you can go to the modern city and

still feel that you are literally in a foreign country. let's talk about what these girls came from. there's a little bit talks about what it could have been and we will see if we can imagine what it would have looked like. >> they grew up in a world that was as it had been for 250 years. while they learn the passages from the eighth to make ancientcode of some but some of us would include the 18th century treatise of the greater learning for women which placed confucian obligations in the context of a woman's life. the only quality that befits a woman are gentle obedience, chastity, mercy and quietness it

instructed placing obedience to parents were subsequently husband and in-laws above all. obedience didn't necessarily entail meekness. a girl of fiscal two received a dagger as part and her mother made sure she knew how to use it but only in self-defense but to take her own life should her honor be strained. this is a castle that they grew up in the shadow of. it's been restored in northern japan not far from -- >> do they go to the united states to be no? >> that's a good question. [laughter] but in the space of a year to the oldest went from here devastated in the final battle of the civil war that changed the political landscape just before she left to new haven connecticut. i don't know how many of you have spent time there but she lived in the white house and

went to worship at her foster father at the center church and then the spam that she encompassed is literally mind-boggling. >> can you talk about with the education would have been? than the education emphasizes something completely different. >> i think that it's on the individual to express your individual intellect. i chuckled at the most when i studied with she had studied in new haven connecticut. one of the entrance questions on the exam was to categorize the nations of the world in terms of whether they were civilized.

you can imagine how she would fill that irony just waiting on her shoulders. it's hard. >> there's so many wonderful characters in your book. i love your description of what he had to say about this and you alluded to it in your introduction. can you read that passage about with this perspective was? , what his perspective was. >> it isn't just a man of the man of business that have been observed in america. throughout the trip he had been astonished. at home, females of his rank stayed out of sight. they were strictly off limits to. they served and managed the household for their husbands who spent their leisure hours in the

quarters enjoying the attention of a different sort of woman trained in music, dance, sparkling conversation rather. when men were obedient or entertaining. beyond that, they were unimportant. but they had opinions they didn't hesitate to offer. they joined their husbands in official ceremonies and they presided at the table. they gave up their seats and made wave for them. the answer was education. >> i love the view of what was going on at the united states at that point and it does add another layer of texture to the story because it's not just what happened when they went to japan. there is the view of what he thought of what's going on in america but they're they are

also going through the significant transition. >> there are no more instances but when they are really into something gets to the western statesmen is hard to overemphasize how extraordinarily this was on the part of japan's leaders. now this was the moment when the college was founded exclusively

and explicitly as an institution of higher education for women. so he was onto something. it wasn't necessarily as stark as he made it seem but again it was his project and he was trying to do a bit of a sales job. >> this passage i just think it's so charming can you shared with us ask the committee embassy gets to san francisco and the press covers every step they take. every day there's a headline ended in eight different than eight different headings of what they did today and one of the things they did is get settled. so in every situation however

ever seen, they proved themselves to be good sports. for dessert at one official luncheon. they sat down in front of the leader of the mission. baffled he turned to the host that advised him to distribute to pieces. inspired, he cut off the figure and presented them to easier by explaining as he did so that likewise japan extends a hand of friendship. >> i read that and i thought that is so classy and quick. >> we haven't talked about this but i was thinking about letters that i found that my mother wrote to my grandfather talking my grandfather talking about how quickly my mother learned to make pie crust or learn to sew an apron in apron and i thought it's that same quality.

>> around him are the senior states and several of whom became major household names. this is taken in san francisco in the mission just landed and as you can see he still has the robes on but they've all put on their western suits and they all have shiny silk toppers. he's holding his because he hasn't yet cut off but you can see underneath he already has his leather shoes. those are san francisco shoes. so they were walking the walk walk on an expedition that had been claimed that they were learning what it meant to be western, to harness those ideas to make japan strong enough to resist the west and they were going to do it to the hills as you see. >> the other thing i think is the have the transition sort of from the samurai then to the version of western japanese man.

then you come back to the united states and have to adapt which means you probably went through to. you have a wonderful description kind of what happens at the girls and i think that's one of the mothers is concerned about and given a picture of what was happening so they are now settled down at the age of seven. the orientation of the world is shifting. to her own mother, she wrote in english of a dream she had. the dream that i went home to

get my older sister to come with me to america. my other went with me we were shown to a house and a sister were so glad to see me so this is a little gross dream of going home but she finds finds at the house that the house that looks very much but her georgetown house. this is roundabout when she would have been writing this note. you see how she was a solid debate for -- assimilating and she really embraced everything the family was giving her. by the second summer of her arrival she was requesting that she be baptized and raised christian. >> she has an interesting fate i had heard interesting to know what her story is.

>> you are talking about what was barbarism and what wasn't and there are some funny lines gathered by the stranger i think it is on page 127. dispatch he writes most of us in japan are radicals. in the century of science and the civilizations we don't like to live the life of the middle ages. we like changes and modern

improvements. >> we don't be leaving children's independence. they are taught to obey their orders and the way of the appearance appearance is always better and wiser than their own. they had a different have different path because when they arrived in new haven at the age of 12 she was already more fully formed into six or 7-year-old could be. she came from the castle and the word was that her brother was the first japanese undergraduate at yale.

>> it didn't fade behind her. >> i'm going to skip ahead a little bit to page 139 so that we are kind of past education. and if you could read this little section and tell us about the author of the letter. >> as i mentioned, going home at that point was more difficult if you can imagine. she's writing home to one of the foster mother's she's writing in english pouring her heart out. i cannot and must not and will not go back to those days in reality where he's given me the extent to teach others where you and others have shown me. i am a child to learn no longer. i'm a teacher.

everyone comes to me to know what to do and i enrolled in their eyes am old in their eyes if i cannot feel within myself. so she is coming back into settling into her music school teaching and a lot of people -- this is a print. in some ways she's quite lucky because her music skills didn't require her to be able to read and write in japanese. and they needed her at this moment because entertaining western notables required western-style state dinners balls and dancing. in this print is a western-style guesthouse had that had been built for the entertainment of foreign visitors and they needed to learn how to ballroom dance and wear western clothing. so in this print many people believed that the woman on the right she is playing the piano for a class of peers in the

elite of tokyo and the woman at the other piano is looking to her for guidance. she became a real mother figure to her students and to the other two members of the trio of travelers. she became their grandmother in a way. she became an emotional support for them as you can hear in this letter she had a warm soul. i couldn't help but think when i was reading this book i couldn't help but think about louisa may alcott, the different characters than the girls that were bound together it almost had that feel to it. then she goes back to japan and does so well in the united states and you have this section i think on page 166 which could have come straight out of writing about wanting to be free. it's a very universal feeling that she describes for us.

can you describe that? >> i had this when i first moved to japan. for the first time in her life she felt awkward. she had always been the awkward one, going up the tree to reach her bedroom in georgetown. but in japan i feel so big she wrote. uncomfortably told for japan. what a land of little people it is anyway. [laughter] i want to jump around and rush about and yet not have a thought about strange. every time time a gift to japan and they think i'm an honest. and i do too much of this. i am a size three and i fielded their, so i knew what she was feeling. i think it also speaks to the power of culture that it's not just about what you eat. it's how you feel physically anyplace and she captured that so beautifully.

she changes so much it's not surprising i guess. she really in some ways it is astonishing to read her letters because what happened to her is she has developed the mind of a young american missionary in the body of a japanese girl who feels honored to the japanese government to go back and do her best in the service of her country but she thinks like an american whose duty it is to bring enlightenment. this causes great stress in her mind. she looks around at the men who drink on sunday. she thinks how can i live among these people when she comes from it protestant family this is just unacceptable. >> added to this is the fact that they go back to japan and it's not necessarily a japan that excited to have western ideas brought into the country. so for all these years they've been going to school and burning

the western way but what happens? >> right. >> there's sort of a pendulum swing. during the 1870s as an couple ones towards western ideas that launches these girls to america but while they are spending their tenures, that enthusiasm starts to fade and by the time they come back there is a reaction setting and against studying english and throwing out japanese traditions in favor of western ones. so she gets back and says a few years ago, everything foreign was like and it was progress. now they are being put ahead and everything for him isn't approved up simply because it is foreign. i have to show the slide because it is so hysterical. [laughter] this is an example of the passion with which they embraced the 1870s.

this isn't imaginary. this is documentary footage. this is what happened when president grant visited in 1879 and the group danced for him with the american flag. that is grant and his wife in the corners. it was done with a straight face and with a great joy and an busy in busy as him. you see how far thing is went into than how they begin to step back. >> it's heartbreaking for anyone that's a historian because you know what's going to happen. it's a great period of openness and then it won't be long before japan closes off and we know that a terrible period of history is just around the corner. you do have another visitor to japan however another female visitors of its not just the american japanese girls that go back. so, allison aitken who grows up as the sister for ten years she remains single and becomes an educator in the u.s. and then

they did a couple of different trips over to aid in the project of english education in japan. it became a part of the book that i found. one of her conditions for coming over to teach is that she can bring her border collie. then there was was bruce, the beloved border collie and much to the chagrin she considered him a part of the family. there was no teaching them manners of anything let alone japanese manners. the dog is an attendant that i would willingly dispose of she continued them up i can't help that. and i keep them out of our sight is not just possible. when i was a child, people have dogs, pets, but they were kept outside her feet were wiped very carefully. >> you really didn't have any

animals come inside the house. so what's happened in japan now? >> that is a louis vuitton shoulder. [laughter] i think there are now more pets in japan then there are babies. >> it's become a tech culture. >> another period of great openness. >> maybe we can leave within observation on page 224 that she wrote which i love? i love that this was spoken so beautifully. >> this is at the end of her year in 1880. she comes back and writes the word civilization is difficult to define and understand but i do not know what it means now as well as i did when i left home. >> there are so many things in order, right clicks it's between the world and what is the

civilization and what does one want to borrow and what does one learn to a >> and even though even delete the content of writing the biography of alice she is an important part of the story but only part of it. i returned to her in the end because she embodied this ability to keep her mind open. she taught in retrospect the best way to be when you move into the culture which is to try as because you can and switch classes and reflect a little bit. ..

>> i was fresh from my triumphant college career. i wasn't just somebody's wife, but unless i wore my resumé on my shirt -- which my husband suggested once or twice -- it was hard for anyone to see me as anything other than a wife. that was very, very hard. it taught me a lot about the power, however, of being underestimated. and that's something i've carried forward and continue to treasure much more than the trumpeting my achievements. being underestimated is one of the most powerful weapon you can wield -- weapons you can wield. >> you are not to be

underestimated. this is a wonderful book. it's a marvelous book. i loved it so much. >> thank you. >> so many layers engaging characters, wonderful writing. i think we have time for some questions. maybe if we could get the microphone, and there's a question up here in the front. >> thank you. if the, if these five young women had stayed in japan would they have received the same level of education? >> no. >> there was not that opportunity? >> no, there really budget. i mean by the time they were of age, there was maybe one place that women, in tokyo where it would be possible to continue an education, but that's one place. and given certainly, where at least where one was coming from in the north she probably wouldn't have had access to it. she certainly wouldn't have been taught in her local context the courses that she was exposed to. she wouldn't have been learning

astronomy and german and, you know natural history. >> and it was because they went to the states that we have -- >> right. >> yeah. >> i probably don't need this. [laughter] what was the impetus for the parents to let these three girls go? were they offered anything special? >> no, it's a good question. these were -- there were originally five families. all five of these families had been on the losing side of the recent civil war. they had backed the show guns who -- shoguns who had been toppled instead of the emperor. they had all lost a significant amount of prestige, and they all, for different reasons, had a rather advanced sense that western ideas were the future for japan. and so -- and they also all had other children, so is one was expendable. so they were all willing to take this risk and send one girl off, making a gamble that when she returned, if she returned she might bring back with her some of the prestige that they had

lost. >> in addition to that, what about the one -- i forgot which name, but that was, went back as a convert, as -- to convert the japanese? what -- was her family buddhist or -- >> interestingly she had the most progressively westernizing father of all of them. he had converted to christianity while she was in washington. and so when she came back, he had already, you know, had a local church. he was a true eccentric because the men of the former samurai class in japan, you know, the men of elite class for them converting to christianity was just not done. it was very day class say -- declass say. so the fact that he had set him apart. in fact, paradoxically, it made um or e less willing to be proud of him because he had proved himself such an oddball in the

context of japanese society. >> i think there was a question back here. yes. >> my question is for -- is this on? >> it's for the cameras. >> oh. it's for janice. you said in the time span that the girls returned, the ten years, i'm just wondering what was going on in japan politically to have that sort of fade from american, that sort of, you know love of america? >> right. >> so that's one question. i'll let you answer it, and i have another. >> okay. you know, i think it was sort of a natural swing. it was a correction. the fervor with which japan embraced western ideas in the late 1860s and through most of the 1870s had to do with catching up. we need to prove to the western world that we can play on an equal level. and in order to do that, we have to show them that we can dress like them, we can talk like them, we can make constitutions

and laws and schools like them. okay. and then once that started to be more of a reality then there was sort of a queasy feeling of what have we discarded, you know? what have we let go of, what have we betrayed of our national identity? and sort of a return to, okay, instead of samuel smiles and benjamin franklin, we should really be paying more attention to confucius because that's our history, right? so a swing back to that. >> thank you. my next question is being at vassar, you said it had only existed for ten years and also since you're such a phenomenal researcher, i was wondering if you could tell us what the curriculum was for the women -- whether right. >> what was part of the things that they studied back then. >> right. vassar was very progressive. you're giving me a perfect segway to a slide that i had to skip that i kind of like. this is mariah mitchell who was vas or's first teacher --

vassar's first teacher of astronomy. it was very much part of the curriculum, but so was history classics, modern languages, english literature, math. it was a very rigorous curriculum. >> so it wasn't just home ec or anything. >> oh, not at all. interestingly, the the curriculum was -- they prided themselves on having the curriculum be something that was on a par of what a boy would be studying at yale. but the girls who were studying were studying not to be spacemen. they were studying to be better wives and mothers. >> i see. >> sometimes teachers, but mostly they were heading for marriage. and better, to be better happy mates for their men. >> i see. >> so there's a funny imbalance there. yes, the curriculum was quite male, but the goal for these women wasn't necessarily to be on a par with their brothers. >> coretta wasn't totally wrong

in his assessment. >> no, he wasn't. especially at the moment when he was visit because this is when these schools were being founded. >> yeah. any other questions? >> i was listening to the story of these women the first thing i thought was what a trauma it must have been for these girls to be suddenly removed from their families and placed in this completely foreign, alien culture and probably like the 6-year-old not really cognitively understanding what was happening. do you have any sense of what it was like for them when they returned to japan how they were received by their families? you know, what was that like? >> yeah. >> because we know about modern day returnees -- >> it's not easy. my husband was briefly one and i know exactly how not easy it is. we do know because happy/sad reason. since they didn't speak good japanese when they came back all of their struggle and all of

their emotional turmoil was channeled into the letters they wrote back to their american friends and family in english. ume started writing to her american foster mother on the train west to get on the boat to go back to japan and she didn't stop until her foster mother died in her mid 90s. so we know a lot. the letter that i read about the anguish that she felt at realizing that she now was the teacher and that people were looking to her to teach them about western ways and that she couldn't be a little girl anymore. ume saying writing with anguish, i wish i could speak my native language. another girl writing about how she wished -- she wrote sometimes to her vazzer classmates, how she wished for when she used to wear her hair down her back in a braid and she could run around and sit under a tree. and as the wife of one of the highest ranking statesmen, eventually he was promoted and

promoted again until they were prince and princess, running around in a plaid dress and sitting under a tree were not options anymore. [laughter] there's a great point januaries a to that because her mind and her body were both free in america in a way that they weren't when she returned to japan. and despite that she made significant change. so -- >> i've got the mic. janice, it's so nice to hear the story and to know. you're such a good writer, and you have so much passion for your research, and i'm going to switch a little bit and ask you a question about where you found these letters and the process of finding things and discovery. can you talk about that a little bit? yes, definitely. there were many times where i felt like i was being controlled from beyond the grave i had so much good luck. it exists as a shrine so it it preserves every scrap of paper regarding her, so that was an important place. vassar also has significant holdings of their letters.

rutgers is an interesting source of things because rutgers had a relationship with japanese students from the very beginning of japanese students leaving japan. yale, there was a senate amount because new haven had played an important part in the story, and the family papers of alice bacon's family were at yale. and then i also got to meet some of the descendants. i got to meet one girl's great granddaughter, and i core responded with another's great granddaughter and met the great grandson of one of ume's brothers. she didn't have any children. same thing for one of alice's brothers. she was also childless. it was a journey for me as well you know? a journey for them, but also a journey for me. and it was an extraordinary lesson in always saying yes. when someone would write and say, hey, you know, i know this person, she said she knew something -- yes, i would love to meet them. [laughter] and a lot of doors opened. it was very exciting. >> how long did the book take

you? >> i first came in contact with story probably ten years ago but it was only about five years ago that i finally started working on it with determination. so about five years to write it. >> [inaudible] >> it's for them. [laughter] >> any translation version not only japanese, but into chinese or french or english? >> not yet yet but my fingers are crossed. >> we're hopeful. it's a good story. >> one more? >> yeah. naomi. >> hi. you mentioned the college but did you also have to do other research in japan and also deal with the japanese language? >> right. i mean my japanese is -- i call it aunt japanese it's sufficient for hanging out with

my husband's aunts. but through them and through my in-laws, i was blessed with many research and translation helpers. so they became great source ises of support -- sources of support when there was a source that couldn't be had any other way yeah. >> cool. anybody else? anything else? i just want to thank marie so much, and i hope that you'll look for her book, "the where the dead pause and the japanese say good-bye," which was published in january. it's an extraordinary journey in its own right. in fact, i think journey is a subtitle in your book as well. >> yes, it is. >> in the present in japan, and it is the best kind of armchair travel so -- >> thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you all. >> all right, thank you. [applause] >> i just want to say thank you to everyone who came today. thank you to janice and marie. we can go ahead and get your books signed.

if you want to start a line over here on the table downstairs the books are available for purchase. please purchase them before you get them signed that's my spiel. one more round of applause for janice and marie. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> booktv is on facebook. like us to get publishing news, scheduling updates behind-the-scenes pictures and videos, author information and to talk directly with authors during our live programs. facebook.com/booktv. >> booktv recently visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what they're reading this summer. >> first "deadweight," eric

larson. i've read all of his works. this is a great book, sort of almost a minute-by-minute description of what happened to the lucetania. and it's very dramatic and it goes back and forth between, you know what's happening in europe and what's happening in washington with president wilson and what's happening to the passengers on the ship. their stories. it's really a great read, well, well written and i think really brings that piece of history in 1915 back to life. really and really makes it very human. it's not cold history. these are real human beings we can relate to who often lost their lives sadly, on the lucetania. great story. the illustrious dead is all about how typhus actually really was responsible for destroying napoleon's army in the invasion of russia. a lot of people thought it was the cold or it was the