some deformity. >> host: i used the suffering post polio syndrome? >> guest: yes, yes i am. i am walking with a cane. for years i did not. last ten years it has come back to visit me. so far it is still here. people say why not get a knee replacement? nothing wrong with the knee joint. affects the ligaments and muscles. >> host: i use suffering mentally to date? >> guest: no. i don't think so. my wife and my friends -- >> host: when did you let it go? when did you get over the fact that you had polio? >> guest: i never did. i have never gotten over it. as i mentioned earlier once you have pull you always have polio.

>> host: what about the sorrow? >> guest: i have written 38 books and spent 16 years at the university and people remind me you have done some things. won all kinds of awards. done three, an hourlong documentaries for public television. i have done a few things which helped to get past the feeling of worthlessness but not really. not really. at 81 years old, where you doing television stuff? as you know it takes 20 or 30 hours to do an hourlong documentary. my smart answer is trying to figure out how to do it an edge the real answer there is this worthlessness, a compulsion to keep doing this. >> host: you talk about the tractor. are you able to drive today?

>> guest: i still run a farm. they're on my tractor. it has power steering. >> host: what is your role at the university of wisconsin? >> guest: professor of agricultural education. prior to that i was a county extension agent in brown county and moved to madison in 1962 to the publication editor, goes back to my newspaper work and all that stuff. and i had this double career where i have been a free-lance writing, freelance columns for four newspapers for ten years and still writing columns for newspapers. i am doing that again. >> host: how many polio survivors are there? >> guest: i have no idea. a lot of us. it is tricky because my doctor,

a young fellow out of med school, the other one died, what kind of research is going on, he was very honest, not very much. why is that? we are all going to be dead one of these days and we won't need it. >> host: is there polio in the world today? >> guest: yes, there's polio in the world today, in pakistan, afghanistan, some in nigeria, the gates foundation and one of the service clubs, provided millions of dollars, rotary international, for free vaccinations and unfortunately some of the folks see that as a cia problem. it is still there in the world,

that is another reason vaccination is important because we all travel around all the time these days. we don't have it here doesn't mean it won't come here, same with polio. >> host: as a kid getting a sugar cube. with a polio vaccine. our kids today getting vaccinated? one of the required normal -- >> guest: accept unfortunately there is a minority group but still a group of folks who refuse -- in my opinion it is a mistake. terrible mistake. >> host: the first few days of polio what was the pain like? >> guest: like one i never had before. went you feel like -- i don't know if we had aspirin or what was going on but was unbearable

pain. couldn't sleep or do anything. it was a throbbing pain plus headache and sore throat. it was awful. i wouldn't wish on anybody. >> host: when did you write "limping through life: a farm boy's polio memoir"? >> guest: two years ago. >> host: was that the first time people at the university learned? >> guest: that is true. >> host: were they surprised? >> guest: i don't know if they were surprised. they probably were because i tried to act like i was like everybody else on. i suspect -- my family was surprised. . i don't know what my army friends think about it. they probably think i pulled wool over their eyes. >> host: jerry apps, professor emeritus at the university of wisconsin. here's the picture of the book, "limping through life: a farm boy's polio memoir". this is booktv on c-span2.

>> is there a nonfiction author or book you would like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail, booktv@c-span.org, tweet us at booktv or post a comment on our wall, facebook.com/booktv. >> host: university of wisconsin professor jennifer rosenhagen, who was frederick nietzsche? >> nineteenth century german philosopher who wrote many many books. of philosophy in all forms, and all of them, some longer form critiques, all of them had something to do with the challenge of universal truth. he took as his enemies the notion of universal truth and pretty much all of his work had

something to do with his efforts to para it down, excavated, look at the history of that idea and to show that anything we take to be universal like god, cumin creation. they are not rooted in nature or necessity or mirrors of reality. >> host: he wrote god is dead. >> guest: he wrote god is dead. this makes its appearance in his day science and in indeed gay science -- and aphorisms called the madmen. the aphorisms is he is playing with this idea that a madman runs into the town square and says god is dead, we have killed him you and i. everybody says he is crazy, he is crazy and he realizes my time has not come yet. so there he is announcing what is going to be basically his

intellectual project for the rest of his writing life before he goes insane and that is the notion that god is dead. what troubled nietzsche was over the course of the nineteenth century in particular germans became more modern and more secular than they continued to go to church and pray to god that they did really believe in any more. he thought that modern thought, modern science, the forces of modernity were undermining the basis of religion but yet he said people still held onto it, they still held onto it because they were too terrified to live without it and this sounds really despicable, this is what he tried to work out in his philosophy. >> host: where does he teach? how did he come about? was well-known in this time? >> host: we have to separate the myth from the reality which is

nietzsche did have moments of modest fame. his first book, the birth of tragedy, had a pretty big reception but then he did fade into obscurity, he was a philology professor, prof. of language, history of language, the genealogy of language but the academic life wasn't for him. he suffered from a lot of physical ailments, historians and philosophers debate why did he have such a tough time in the academy. some of us wonder but nietzsche talk for ten years in basel with some success but for reasons we can only imperfectly suss out whether it was held for what he said that he needed to break free, nietzsche breaks free, lives on a pension the rest of

his life and gets to inhabit the image of the freethinker that he so exalts and warships in his own philosophy. but nietzsche didn't have a huge readership for most of his productive life. in 1889 he has a nervous collapse and spent the last 11 years of his life in a very declining state. the totally vegetative state. and dies in 1900. he is discovered, how does need to become the jet? he is discovered precisely in those months when his health is declining, shortly before his mental collapse of one of the terrible ironies of his life and the posthumous wife of his ideas is in the moments when hidden tote -- intellectually and mentally there is the closing of accounts for him, that is the

moment the floodgates open and he becomes the superstar that he is today. >> host: who discovered him? >> guest: he was discovered -- this is a little tricky because there's always a quest for priority, people were reading nietzsche but were those people being read? is fair to say the danish critic who himself had big audience in the late nineteenth century is credited with discovering the jet and that is a fair assessment, he brings the most -- i have a brief correspondence in that last year as magnus is closing in and nietzsche thing somebody recognizes my genius and low is the hold he has a mental collapse and that is the end of his productive life. so he is credited largely with getting the word out in northern european circles that nietzsche

is one to watch and that is when nietzsche's reputation really takes off. >> host: who followed him? who liked his work? what kind of people? >> guest: everybody. atheists, religious, the left, the right, women, men, black, white, old people, young people, that is not immediate because he needs to be translated. he is not translated in earnest until 1896-897 is the first round of translation. there's another major effort of translation in the dirksen senate office building 0th century. of course in the late nineteenth century and dirksen senate office building 0th century lot of educated americans could read german so people were reading him in the original but it did require the translation for him to take off. why am i calling him henry?

h.l. mencken has a lot to do with each's superstar adam. not to say there were not other folks reading and popularizing him in the united states but h.l. mencken is the one who writes the first full-length monograph on nietzsche in 1908. that is where we get a kind of synopsis about the jack's wife, his travails, struggles with christianity, struggles with health, we get a little bit about nietzsche and sexuality. would not be h.l. mencken if there wasn't something racy thrown in and then we get nietzsche's ideas and this book sold widely and sold well and it held to do two things. it helped establish nietzsche's reputation in america but it did something else, it helped h. l. mencken. >> host: if someone says i love frederick need joy, i agree with him what are , i agree with him what are, i agree with

him what are they saying to you? not much. chest thumping atheists and bible thumping christians could make that claim about nietzsche and that is startling about his reception, he doesn't track right or left. he doesn't track religious or secular. he tracks all over our intellectual spectrum. just the statement i loved nietzsche doesn't tell me much of anything of it and that is an utterly conventional experience to find nietzsche so powerful. in fact what is so interesting is how many people over the course of the least -- 1920th century felt that he was

speaking to them personally. one of the things i argue in the book is that knee jet becomes a superstar public philosopher by way of private longings and privateers. you have a disturbing look on your face? >> host: who wouldn't write that? >> guest: plenty of people don't like him. there were things not to like. he didn't say nice things about democracy. he didn't say nice things about women. he didn't say nice things about equality. these are things that matter to you, you will take issue with him. let me give you a concrete example of what is to like and not to like and i will take one of the more spectacular

examples, the leopold and loeb trial of 1924. leopold and loeb are two university of chicago students who think they are the new dimension that nietzsche had in mind and wanted to prove it to themselves, the superman, it gets translated as this superman. the superman in superman comic who we think of as americana has its roots in nietzsche, the two boys to come up with superman where readers of nietzsche and there are many cases like that. the fact the we have the word b uber it comes by way of ubermensch. we are talking about an example of two views that say they have the right knee jet and that is leopold and loeb, they think

they are the superman he had in mind and so they kill, kidnap and kill a 14-year-old boy, bobby franks on the south side of chicago, they get caught. it turns out they were not as b uber as they fought. clarence darrow become their defense lawyer and he is also a reader of nietzsche's but he is not a murderer. he is quite sure that is not what nietzsche had in mind. the interesting thing about the whole leopold and loeb trial, trying to save these boys, these young men from being killed themselves is how it darrow had to -- the reason they did this is a need jet is toxic and dangerous thinker and they misunderstood him and yet need jet is an important thing for we need in modern life that need to handle them with care.

something like that you see those negotiations where he is both public enemy number 1 as we see with the murder but we also see with the clarence darrow thing that nietzsche is a thinker we americans need in order to embrace modern life. >> host: political movements that have coopted nietzsche? >> guest: so many. i think the one that the whole 20th centuries a story of -- the one that surprises my readers the most or when i get letters from readers were coming to contact with readers and is the hidden nietzsche origins of black power.

new in was a reader of nietzsche. ian nietzsche he discovered a lot of things in nietzsche but what he understood from nietzsche, he needed nietzsche to tell him the things your culture tell you are true and are universal is in fact made up. it is a product of history, product of chance, somewhat arbitrary but not true. don't take the voice of a racist culture as the voice of your own inner conscience and this is what nietzsche did for african-americans, to help them here, not having to trade to the white man's guide or make themselves prostrate to a religion that made them supplicants and they should not take this morality that tries to keep from down as something

universal and timeless. intellectually cutting his teeth on nietzsche as they come together and formulating of black power. the reason i saw eye is high don't know any philosopher in history. but nietzsche was. the more interesting story here because all the ways in which nietzsche that reputation is just so terribly damaged but quickly if i'm a world war i, nietzsche when world war i breaks down and it is so shocking to american observers it starts to come out, nietzsche nietzsche nietzsche, rivers of

german ministers preaching nietzsche from their pulpits, it wasn't hard to listen and hear traces of nietzsche philosophy behind the blood and iron imperialism of world war i, so nietzsche is yoked to world war i and those who want to save his reputation and say this wasn't what he intended, this was the misuse of nietzsche had a hard time afterwards and of leopold and loeb did not do much for his reputation and with the rise of hitler, not mussolini initially who was a reader of nietzsche, half the rise of hitler in particular wwas the more terrif

development. it was not hard to find nietzsche traces behind nazi philosophy and mussolini fascism. low and behold nietzsche again is seen as the author and visionary of what would become world war ii. nietzsche wrote of things that were not so hard to make him implicated, he wrote of the rise of the blond beasts which people took to be his celebration of the aryan race. his sister was the pro nazi and in her closing years she welcomed hitler to the nietzsche archives. there is the linkage to hitler and some unfortunate pictures of hitler and elisabeth forster nietzsche, the american imagination nietzsche gets linked to world war ii and the

entire nazi ideology. here we have the germans who didn't just want ubermensch but uber race. we know the language, the subhuman people throughout germany during world war ii, nietzsche was implicated in all of this. >> host: what is his reputation today? who is the anti nietzsche philosopher? is there such a thing? >> guest: there are plenty. it is interesting. sure. george santa ana is not a thing to we talk about much today though we should because he was a towering intellectual, towering philosopher, poet and novelist in the early 20th century. he thought nietzsche was

everything that was wrong with what he called the german mind, the hyper trophy self, the hyper aggrandized self, he thought the german mind or the german temperament, he traces this through hegel land nietzsche the great examplar, an intellectual, remind -- couldn't deal with limits. he referred to nietzsche as amateurish and adolescents. he is pretty dismissive of nietzsche. that is an example of a thinker who was a robust thinker and careful thinker. there are plenty of others. an example is allan bloom. the reception of his book the closing of the american mind, blockbuster book, alan bloom

says what is wrong with higher education teacher is killing the soles of their children, they're getting all this pluralism, multiculturalism but what they are not getting is great ideas, they are not getting the challenges of those great ideas. higher education is impoverished -- impoverishing the souls of our children. and nietzsche is right there all along. he talks about the nietzsche of american intellectual life. according to bloom, he thinks so much of what is wrong in late 20th century intellectual life is intellectuals are reading nietzsche, kind of like what george santayana they're tired of someone else's power, tired of authority, so he says the counterculture of the 1960s is a

nurse on anti authoritarian is in and he says it is one thing to have these protests in the street and another to bring them into the academy and make such a ruckus. he is very critical of the uses of nietzsche. i hit the pause button here. if you read how everyone is talking about allan bloom's book and they are talking because it was not major major major blockbuster, people picked up on it, blaine nietzsche, our american intellectual life, you would think allan bloom had a problem with nietzsche. he didn't. he thought nietzsche was a genius. he loved nietzsche. he wrote beautifully about nietzsche. he wrote longingly about nietzsche. the thought nietzsche was a genius and his problem was he thought he was in a culture of intellectual pygmies who could not appreciate the genius of

nietzsche. what he is doing in the closing of the american mind which is an interesting move, he is not blaming nietzsche for the impoverishment of american intellectual life, the anti authoritarian isn't he finds despicable, he is blaming what he says his readers who are not up to the task of truly understanding this great genius. not someone who is critical of nietzsche per se although he has a reputation for having and all the failures of late 20th century intellectual life on nietzsche, what he is trying to do is keep his own private nietzsche, nietzsche in his own image against what he sees as the slavish inadequate impoverished american intellectual life but just can't handle these powerful ideas. >> host: you have written a

biography of nietzsche. i you a fan? >> i would say that -- people call it a biography but it is actually a biography of his ideas as they come to life in america. one of the things i say in the book is this is not a book about nietzsche. some readers have been disappointed. he crops up quite a bit. but the book is not about nietzsche. i am an american historian. my interest is the history of american thought and culture over 19th and 20th century. you can't when you get to the late nineteenth century, through the 20th century you can't talk about american intellectual life without talking about nietzsche and his influence. just a little modest correction here. is not about nietzsche. it is about us.

so every reading of nietzsche. i am not listening whether h.l. mencken or clarence darrow or walter kaufman who becomes so important to redeem nietzsche after world war ii review in newton or allan bloom are getting it right or wrong. that is not the interesting thing for a historian to ask. what i am trying to do is listen in to what they have to say about nietzsche, see what that tells us about american intellectual life in that particular moment. e-book is actually not about nietzsche. it is about us, our intellectual life and it is about our coming to our own ideas about truth, democracy, christianity, god, by way of nietzsche. i am dodging the question. >> host: has he in your view been a positive influence in american political and cultural life? >> guest: i have never been asked that question.

he is a necessary influence because i think he is right. there is a lot of bunk in what he says, a lot of grandstanding and machine is no but you clear that way and the ideas i think are ideas we have to come to terms with which is to repeat what i said earlier the notion that so much of what we take to be universally true. ..