we talk about in the bacardi genes of temperament for personality etc.. almost always these things are high order principles. they lie in intersections in the environment but do i feel that some of these qualities have some components duping of the answer is yes as detailed studies of. they brought us in different circumstances and share surprising kinds of behavior they share personalities you wouldn't imagine.

that means there must be things that predispose us to certain kinds of behaviors etc.. it's also interesting is if you look at the siblings that is falling dramatically. if you scatter them around, you lose that. it's a very artificial effect. so it's true there are elements in the genome in the personality it's unlikely that they will be able to manipulate those that are governing this. >> that's a great question.

>> it's done in a remarkably unapproachable way. [applause]

good afternoon and welcome to the 32nd annual printers row literary festival. before we get started in the program i would like to thank all of the sponsors. we are big on social media into the theme of the festival is what's your story, so we encourage everyone to share your stories this weekend on twitter commands to graham and face the using the hash tag 16. you can also download the app where you will find the premium content, discounted books for subscribers and the schedule. you will get a free book and $5 off the merchandise. today's program is being broadcast live on c-span2 book

tv. there will be a q-and-a session at the end of the presentations of anyonpresentationso anyone we line up with your microphone to the right so we can hear the questions. before we begin i ask that you silence your cell phones and turn off any camera flashes. with that i would like you to welcome the co-author of the revolution jeremy macarthur. [applause] very h >> hello, everybody. co-aut i see a couple copies of the audience that's encouraging as i stand up here. i am happy to be here because chicago is home since i've moved here with my family i had to go back to new york every time i want to do something about hamilton that's where the show

has been so i'm sort of the advanced guard here because i know in a couple months hamilton is coming here. [applause]help me get a to help dean get a sense of who you are i would love to know who has seen the youtube video from the 2009 when he was in theat white house and who has been either show? you should be careful. this is an envious looking crowd. who has heard the album more than once and who listens to it more than once a week or listens to it every day, who's listened to it once today? that's a lot of people.ded fun

what's your story sounded fun for about five seconds and thene when i started thinking about that, it's got to be unnerving because if you think about it it sounds like a big question about your life and then if you keep thinking what's more terrifying than that and what if you can get your whole story into half-an-hour what kind of life are you reading you should quit your therapist because then you are repeating yourself. what i hope liz taylor who's going to ask some questions phoned eyeing the meeting is taking the theme a little bit. i would like to talk about what is our story, which is less fraught for me and also feels more in keeping with the theme of the show that we are here tom talk about, which is hamilton. so what is the story, obviously the story that brings us together is hamilton and it's not just us today the show is

bringing together. it is in my experience the last few years the work that's bringing an extraordinary number and range of people together. that isn't always the case. there's plenty of work people at my hair in a kind of austere w way. people are giving hamilton hugs. i've walked off the stage doorte and plenty of ways. trust me from the sound of those shriek as that is loved. we even did a signing at thee th shop and that was an incredible afternoon. it was a three-hour procession

of young people, old people from every race, color, background, accent trying to put into words what this meant in their lives and some of them were really private anexcited and powerful l never again doubt that the stories can change the world. we should stipulate not everybody feels this way. there are people who for one principle or another hamilton is named for them and that's okay. it doesn't have to be universal to say there something going ono here. there's political parties and things like that.an quest club who was one of the executive producers said this embrace reminded him of thriller that's the most popular album ever made and he said he loved o that album and the kids that

have been calling him racial slurs on the playground for the album release asked him to teach them to do the moonwalk. the crazy thing is we are not just talking about a pop album that makes everyone but extras that errs on their coats but it's that it is a rigorous examination of the founding and the united states and about the country and i would say our country because i don't want to speak for you. they founded the governmentis unlike any that had ever existed that these were not perfect men or women. you don't need me to tell you about all of the racial and economic forces the last 240 years that have made plenty of people feel alienated from it.

hamilton is making people feel for the first time they have a stake in the origin of the country and the story of america could be the story, too. that's the story we try to tell in the buck and i will try to talk about today but we have to ask what is the story with me and my co-author and friend so let me take a minute with that. i was a critic for the new york magazine and i went to a place on the west side of manhattan to see the musical by people i never heard of that i didn't expect to be very good. i've been writing a noxious we weed. i have seen people try to use

hip-hop but not in the way that it has potential telling anything about a kind of writing shakespeare did until about 200 years ago. what i saw instead is ho was hod the record industry was which is true. after waiting for somebody to, act on this imagine my surprise and my delight and relief that within five minutes of the start i found here's someone that gets it they tell a story about upper manhattan but also they have an incredible facility for those that love the craft of broadway as well as piggy smalls. a few weeks later i was happy to find that the experience i had

is how he felt when he read the review and here's someone else to get this. they fixed us up because they thought we would hit it off andi in the summer of 2008 we met up for drinks. "people" magazine one of the sexiest men alive and you can't help something was coming. the fact is for me to reconstruct it and i realized later on the opening night i found an e-mail for the strengths and it made clear in the summer of 2008 today mixed

tape through hip-hop. that's a crazy idea objectively this was a few days before when he took the biography with him he started to read the book in the night we had. fast forward three years part of my job is to bring in artists and develop projects. he's my friend and a promising talent and he told me this great idea that he had. he years when he is that guy and he one.

i convinced him to take the meeting and they told him how thrilled he was to get to meet him and they hit it off quickly and completely and for life. during one of those meetings he handed me a cd, kids ask your parents. [laughter] it's a plastic disc that in the old days we both have music on. on the cpu or the demos of the first eight or ten songs he'd written for hamilton. i which i wish i could remember when we met for drinks i remember vividly and precisely what happened. i was sitting at my apartment i brooklyn and the third or fourth song on the album was hopeless which if you've heard enough of

this song that they saying in acts number one. the version you heard is the one i heard that back then i got him singing it himself which i treasure for different reasons. i knew at the end of that song if anyone could do that that was as catchy and potent as crazy iy love which structurally it is and still have the precise telling storytelling power to listen ton it again if they will put it on stage instead of making it a record that will be the best of our generation. i can tell that. that isn't to say that i expected all of this to happen around the show from his direct

or didn't expect it's because again it's insane. no one can even dream you land and all of the viewers want toee meet you and the show you've made is the best piece of art i've seen in my life. it's important for other reasons in the contact us after he was handed to me i brought my wife to opening night and she turned to me and said this is why you've been talking about the show all these years. the party that night is when they proposed the idea that the right to vote and after everything i've said you probably think my reaction is this a media and exuberant yes. it was closer to a close one thing for me to see how this incredible show was developing

but writing the book together was something different and what it forced me to do is ask the question again what's our story meaning what is our angles of the show exists but how do you get this down on the page? its funny now they say things like it's a backstage look atnd the show and a companion to thes show and absolutely true up to i point but those are also explicitly almost verbatim the things we knew. those are the places we were starving and we had to get past. people say that it's for people who love hamilton. we intended it for people who have curiosity in hip-hop and things like that it's just at te the moment it's essentially the same subset as the people that

love hamilton. i went off and did some thinking as i usually do in those momen moments. it's no exaggeration to say that the influence is on every page of the book certainly is an o influence as he is an improvingl on all working properly today and an influence on me because of how brilliant the chances he takes. as i was thinking about how to do this if thinking in particular but is crucial for all storytellers. the content dictates the form and you figure out the story you want to tell so it occurred to me we can't just tell the story how the show got made. we want to talk about what the story is doing and what it is affecting in the world.

how is it changing the lives of the people that are coming to see it and add some plaintiff clicked. hamilton doesn't just dramatize the revolution, it is a revolution and it changes whol gets to tell the story of the founding and it's changing the lives of the people making it. then it can't have the same structure as all the other books about the broadway shows because they are trying to do something else. you can't have the sidebars or talk at the back of the book because those are different pieces in different stories and the creation of the show is in the end result. in this case we had to come up with a new structure to tell a new kind of story. we had to tell two stories in tandem. there is the show chasing the incredible life and then there's

the book following the same telling how the show got made and how to do that. here i turned to someone it's a combination of chapters in which he talks about his life and songs in which he explains the chapter that preceded it. we could begin in 2009. we could end with opening night on broadway six years later when i could already tell at this point they would have finisheded so the last numbers on the show soo that such wreck then held the show got me and the impact it's having while hamilton and the other characters are going through their adventures.

the final influences there federalist papers. they give us the ideas and show you how you can keep driving the point home. they were making the argument and i wanted to make the argument is not exactly on behalf of the show because the show didn't need me to argue on its behalf if there is a show that hasn't needed someone to throw adjectives at this point it's hamilton but i wanted to make an argument about stories and how they can change the world and of the thing that gave me permission to do that is a quote i found when i was doing some research. they edited the first collectioe of papers and made the point the dominant purpose wasn't creating the national bank of the

revolutionary war.ion it wasn't, it was creating the sentiment getting the newto americans in any way to think about the country an country any and country in any way you think of themselves as a union and keep drivingng that point home.s that's the wheelhouse. that's our specialty.. that's why we are in business. i saw what was happening in the enthusiasm and the way people are reacting so strongly to it. they had two aspects of the same revolution. they put it next to the legacy of the founding father and you can make lots of arguments on behalf of this moment are that

moment and here's one for me. buster rhymes loved us so much when he went on stage the next night for a concert of his own costum he wanted to have a concert ofed his own. then you have stretched the limits of the impossible.th two aspects of the one is the story we were going to tell. so how did we do it? no one is that fast but we had to work as fast as the people they collaborated with to make the show. now you might get to spend time with them. the music director at the choreographer if you are seeing them into going to talk to them,

caffeinated heavily because the people who made the show is light speed. having been around a lot i wasn't there as a writer. they couldn't have had longer than the annotations in this book. he was doing this while we were performing and unbeknownst everybody was writing for the new star wars. i would write pdf files. there was a variation on

something. he surprised me again and again showing me things that were more autobiographical than i ever expected. i he was my first reader and i was his. that's how it have to be to tell one story which was the goal. even towards the end of the process we had to step up the pace even more. if you loo look through the book there are some of my favorite things you can see the pages where the dust is coming off and he's trying to get it down on the page. there was a big stack of notebooks which is an unvarnished look into his brain and i had to get him to say

things where i was working on my pages and writing the chapters which i don't want my editors see that stuff but if we were not on the same wavelength we never could have finished it. we didn't want help from other writers. content dictates form. there's people from different backgrounds coming together. the different episodes and things like that fit into the smallest number of pieces. a couple earaches in the show and historical documents.

it is also something that we took from the spirit of the show itself. the director realized early on. it's to apologize for the fact that he's broken the convention and made the actors who were playing these primarily actors of color and what he says is either the audience is going to come up to you or they are not. it's going to be immediate and unfiltered. the book like the show is something we wante we've wanteda millimeter away from the actiont in the perspective pompey was brilliant at fine-tuning the show allowed them to thriv thrid that is a delicate thing to dobo talking about the psychology of 40 or 50 people to give them

what they need to do their best. they made them think the stakes are low to take chances and i would believe this for as long as i stayed and then they would walk outside and a total pandemonium because as the show got closer to the opening night on broadway tommy had created an eye. the audience reaction on broadway some more not sure they were going to get through. afterwards they rallied together and some of them would cry. this is going to sound a little exploitative but if you want to know why it is important to tell the story the way we told it it was as important as it happened on a certain date and it was received in a certain way.

the reason why it feels so immediate as if it is happening to people that we know this because when they talked about the story, the story of the show they never just went on the timeline. the man they wanted to invoke the emotional reality of the men and women that lived in the 1770s, 80s and 90s.trailedded it's not up for dinner that he traded at the national bank. it's a song about how he feels about the fact that he's excluded from that. when they dramatize the pressure of needing to put the nation on the seat he doesn't write aboutd politics at all. it's not just in the book. we wanted to show how it felt.he

there are personal achievements. a lot of pain happened in a couple days that we were trying to re- tile in the course of the book. we want people who loved the show to have a betterg understanding and there will also be people look back on th this. we want them to know how it felt and what it costs. looking back from somewhere in the future it's important to understand that this moment. there's a couple of moments i was privileged to watch the show have been when i had a feeling i can only liken to vertigo.

when we learned of president obama was going to come to the show we were supposed to be done writing it and we had an epilogue to see him walk on the stage he was about 6 feet and had just a somber farewell address to book back to the own administration. when i was very lucky to go to the company to the white house and to see them perform for president and mrs. obama.

i would have sounded rocky mountain on that one. i tried to write about it in an essay but if you want to understand what's special about this show i think it's in here. this is the song in which they sing the words of farewelll add. address. president obama is african-american and his wife and behind him is the portrait of george washington. the first president the character he is playing and all of a sudden i thought it was. condensed.

i didn't even have to turn my head to see it. what is most exciting to me about this show is knowing the people who are behind president obama when this performance was happening there were 100 students from the local schools. we talk about some of the reactions of what they were feeling and in the earlier performances when they had come but it shows they start running together and those kids sitting there are both valid and it meant something and it means something now in 2016. when i spoke to the actors, there were those like leslie junior and who plays jefferson and they were very candid with

me about how their lives might be different if and when theyhe were at the age or if they had the opportunity to step into the shoes of these men who have felt like they were living the story they had nothing to do with. they want to at least have the chance to have that experience because of the show. imagine the past and the dramag we know that in 20 years this will be different than it is today. we know that the makeup of the country is changing and the expectations of what it means to be an american are going to change and when i think about how this is a chapter hamilton, like the obama presidency are both a prefix region of what is to come. in the two months sinc since the best reactions i've gotten have been along the lines of i had no

idea that it was that hard. people didn't know quite howto much effort went into makingng this thing pretty effortless. it seemed though it was natural and bound to be what it was of course that's not true. and once you step back a little and look at it you realize there's a lesson here.in think of how many things have to happen just at the right time to meet her become friends let alone live together. think of the show. it seems inevitable but not any more than the book was. they told me before opening night it's a great insight into the process and i wish i had been able to use it in the book that you have the benefit todayv he was looking back over this whole process.e what would have happened? its flawless and it could have gone sideways and it didn't.

the amount of things that have to conspire to make it a more miracles than anything else of the booifthe book wasn't inevitd the show wasn't inevitable what does that imply about those things which is the american revolution it seems like that wasn't the inevitable either. the americans had to win the war. they have to find a government that had no precedent. no one had done that either. and somehow to make the mistake knowing that they would take thk show's success for granted madea me want to stop taking the experiment for granted, too. it could have failed at any moment and it still might. we need to look around and see how lucky we are to be alive right now. if as it is helping us succeed we are all part of the american story we have a role to play making sure it continues.

one of the last things we added to this book was my favorite's e page if the dedication page. among other things it is the most perfect collaboration in the book and i had the first line which is why don't we dedicate this to our childrenil and the second line was who will come of age in the next nation. that's lying on the one hand is to father is expressing their hopes and also expressing the same kind of hope for the country. .. we start taking questions is read a chapter of the book. this is one that touches on some of these things. it is chapter 14, for those who have -- i don't think anyone should read along. that would be creepy. if you insist, keep me honest if i drop a wore -- please don't do that. this is chapter 14.

this is about the american experiment and when it really began. this is the chapter that sets up the songs that are the final battles of the revolutionary war, guns and ships, history has its eyes on youy york town. >> >> and sometimes offeredpa space.ame fo they came for what he called the first time of the first act for the second act back to back to say you are there first audience in the history of the world. day. this show's title was producerfirst that day. he dropped the title a few months earlier commack

hamilton sounds like of blockbuster. he won the audience that they had to wait until they before. bid he could not help his self. then he treated data workshop and then i stop doing the homework on the bus. [laughter] the company spent five weeks experimented with furniture around the stage five weeks was unusually long but not nearly long enough to figure out how to stage the show he is dealing stress how to speed the process it reminded him nobody was forcing him to do anything tommy realized he was right but the real revelation was

looking back nobody thought sleeve not even the man who made them to design costumes for shows like the color purple and when he heard he knew they would combine both sensibilities how? the challenger was figuring out what percentage is a popular percentage is 18th-century and studied the work of the fashion icons0 -- 1t everybody is a risk some time or another switch that formidable pile of research with the intersection between past and present luckily they hadad

collaborated on fiveng a mutualr productions to remained untroubled they were not sure what to do. the only way to figure this out is to try it. they knew what the cast would look like pews though workshop to experimenttime. period from the neck down in modern from the neck up i didn't want to be in a a powdered wig i wanted to see him for who he was.. he started to put black gm latino from more than half a century ago to campaign theck contemporary black men but still in made the show seemed double and triple audacious.action one whe

and the actors come on stage a unmistakably the uniforms of washington that day for the first time 150 audience members had the experience to watch black and latinono actors who have seen their freedom in french for hundreds of years.people went at people wept at intermission and scream that the finale you been here a potent clatter of the motions desperation from those who wanted to invest in the show. there were fourbe presentations between thursday and saturday that 600 people told the friend said they had seen by monday hamilton was the most talked-about not quite show of new york. that experiment to putpu actors and period costumes

one choice seemed like a concession to put all of the actors only add colors and they distinguish themselves as characters kerry always to broadway he had received five tony award nominations for his career that peace is so humbling i really didn't want to mess it up there are certain places that resonates but i remember i am a part of this i know what i bring to this production by being an american force is being an afterthought when the sequence and it ended that day singing a song from a costume selected by the african american designer to

celebrate having done thepossib. impossible spending the next 16 months how to capture and it took him before a week of the opening on broadway before he succeeded. [applause]nderful. >> that was wonderful. i' i'll ask few questions and then you will get at the microphone and think of your is an import this is important cultural moment to revolutionize theater which is extraordinarily beautiful of the revolutionized bookmaking.

how did that revolutionized you? >> good question. that is a good question. like i said it makes me think with more concern and a loyalty with the united states of america. a chapter i initially wanted to read was one that makes the point you to look at theed h founders in high you need them in exactly the right position at the right time that is exactly the same way as those who made the show were in the right place at the right time.ntingent plus cat house contingentese tha these are it makes you

treasure what you got so that has been on my mind and the one experienced going through all of this insanityd ve and all these guys who hadee very different lives and very different careers when you get that famous it changes your life to see the big spotlight the win the book came that adoration in the spotlight is on the books that i realized that actually had no idea what that felt like i can never feel that love for intensity i just can't understand and tell that chases down 46 st.

>> i have a question text did to me a few minutes agoo by a seventh grader. she writes, could your word be as eloquently put about eliot -- politics to day or another time in history that made the book so beautiful? >> the stakes were higher than is the question of. life-and-death if they could make it last the stakes are still high today so it could be trickier to find that subject but the fundamentals of this story telling of how rigorous they got all the of

collaborators just does of person who writes putting projects together let the idea of how that works in pract, practice if you get that right and you can find subjects anywhere stomachs of was talking earlier to a third grade teacher who said there is some explicit lyrics but she thinks about how to bring that into her classroom. >> this will teach whole generation of kids how to th swear. [laughter] they're already moments where my wife and tirelessly with their daughter in resale law of all law at

certain points blah, blah, blah we will get there.t know ew [laughter] i don't know exactly what level of eloquence is right producer ages but the producer has made anma admirable commitment that they can see it that funding came from the rockefeller foundation to make sure 20,000 high-school students per year come to see the show there probably wouldn't have otherwise to me, put a revolution on the cover of the book if anyone is skeptical, i would have been

that is the last line of defense to know the experience they are having. the world will be adiffer different place as a consequence of having seen the show. >> diamine huge hamilton fish and so good things are coming from this direction book y but is it is the right people at the right place at the right time to imagine george washington was not in his place? what is also amazing liz's diverse cast every day on the news we still hear about the problems in the 21st century so do you think of hamilton could have been just as successful on

broadway became now 15 years ago with the cast now? >> i don't know. is the great question and no one to is that too quickly 10 years ago was 2006 those are great songs to channel all the power about really great pop music and they think that will probably working anytime is that any of their time? i don't know. is chief reach down how much she loved that. >> or how much barack obama was a president or the facthe is no coincidence with the obama administration but in

terms of how it intersects with the news there was one as it is close together coming back into rehearsal before they reopened on broadway that night before was the shooting it in charleston when they killed the churchipers at the church it was in the room the next day he was very difficult for him to stand there to sing this new song count washington's hopes for a country which everyone would be safe and we should be this sanctuary that we have.riting pla fantoni keeps writing the play is that there is no underground in louisianaca

there is only under water then hurricane katrina happened his answer is if you write about politics lower government or society in a disciplined way, you are much likelier to intersect with the news he didn't pull punches. >> what are you doing for the tonys? and crossing at the party. [laughter] lb watching the screen and crossing my fingers drinking champagne. >> [applause] >> gavials?

>> do have many historians to quibble with your take of a ehrenburg or any of the others?reat vil >> he thinks more kindly of her than anybody i am aware of. those said inspired him to write the show but when first said when he was first asked to help as a consultant he didn't say he wanted them to like it but taken seriously. that means if you are a then yol historian challenge it is that's alrnt is weak orr diffng there are historians who wished they had writtenlt things differently but to me

the fact that there is a genuine historic gold dialogue happening a broadway musical is with the most science fiction things. >> that does transcend timed when you are watching orre listening. >> what made hamilton said t jay popular musical even though it shares many of the ret same? >> another great question. fish shows they are the co-author with a couple of the same actors so whatappened? happened? one thing for sure is theyhe had won under their belts aty ce that point too deep in what

each of them could do in this is my theory that neither of them and fault was as crucial as i do but another thing that happened on is that he appeared in a production in is doing the lyrics on stage with the spanish language translations for the revival on broadway so it is unjust studying these things are talking about it but to do something with them.e proto h he is the hip-hop figurelisten o because if you listen to theha density of his lyrics they would kill to write a song from chrysanthemum tea such

a wonderful playful clever string so it is partly that i thening onstage offstage but lightning strikeshing lininp sometimes everything is lining up exactly right. >> abkhazia comment and a question i am old enough to remember when here opened i think these are my people that this will be so important to them because it is their show but my question is how much time did you spend with the show itself literally in the

theater? >> some of the episodes in the book are written from my direct observation like the call back when everybody in the room was freaking had how great she was i saw that and watched it happen. i can't remember what i wrote but other then script meetings and design meetingsdifh chapter 16 how difficult that was because it was sodn't h complicated are stirring to watch them deal with the fact they didn't have enough time to do with they wanted to do once they space wouldto write the book and start showing up as much as i could because i knew it in aight moment something important might happen and want tos

preserve so when with unheard for the first timeme in a broadway theater is very profane reaction if i had known in 2011 now would be writing a book i would do that instead of picking that up on the fly simic thanks for your talking and your book it is incredible music alive love hamilton with a strong female characters are you considering any future products with a strong characters are not only the wives of of