>> host: kareem abdul-jabbar, "writings on the wall: searching fora new equality beyond black and white." it comes out august of 2016. you are watching booktv on c-span2. ♪

>> and now i'm booktv we want to introduce you to bill thomas was the editor-in-chief of the doubleday books. what kind of books is doubleday published country doubled it publishes the approximate 50 books a year, half our fiction and have our nonfiction. on the nonfiction side we publish a lot of history, narrative and fiction politics and science. >> host: how long has doubleday been a business? >> guest: 1897. >> host: founded by? >> guest: someone named mr. doubleday. >> host: okay. we are here to talk to you about previewing some of the books. who do you have coming in? >> guest: i think we are three books that are particular

interest here views. we are publishing jeffrey toobin spoke about patty hearst, her kidnapping, what she did while she was in the sla and are very dramatic. as people no jeffrey toobin is in your staff writer and chief legal correspondent and author of several best sellers, a nine, the oath and also the book on the o.j. simpson page which was recently made into a television series. what is so fantastic about this book from my perspective is everyone, we are living through this terrible time in early 1970s it felt like the contras had a nervous breakdown. was an average of 1500 terrorist bombings every year during this period. nixon was being impeached. that was political. it was economic malaise. in the midst of this was this sensational crime happening, patty hearst was kidnapped and too much later declared she was now to be known as -- enlisted

in the sudanese liberation army. the story has amazing twists and turns. the largest pleased she still in american history took place in los angeles several muslim where everyone except for patricia hearst and two comrades were killed in something that also happened for the first time on live national television because the minicam had just been invented. then we get to the trial. it is a symbolic story of a nation falling apart but also across political radicalism. he is a fabulous writer. then in september there's two bestsellers, the destiny of the public about the assassination of one of most gifted man ever elected to the presidency james a. garfield, and river of doubt about a theodore roosevelt went to discover a river in amazon and almost died. she's incredibly good at narratives about things individuals in periods in our life in the station showed a

story that i sort of had happened but didn't realize how dramatic it was which is winston churchill always believed he was destined to be prime minister and had a complete faith in his own greatness felt like you do something incredible to get public notice. he tried to put himself in danger in the army, in the sudan as a war correspondent. he went to south africa where the war had just erupted. a guerrilla war against the great british army. he was a correspondent but he volunteered to go in an armored train which is a stupid way the british were using reconnaissance. he was captured and put in a prison camp. because he was the son of the aristocracy they made propaganda. he escaped by himself and made his way across 300 miles of enemy territory with nothing but a chocolate bar and a couple of coins. makes his way to get to neutral territory, reenlist in the british army, comes back, fights increased the pressure of working and which had been held captive and it was on to glory.

and incredible toy by one of the most gifted historians writing today. the third book which is coming out in october is by h. w. brands, a two-time finalist for the pulitzer prize for his biography on franklin roosevelt and benjamin franklin, has written a book about the korean war to my face off between the unpopular president truman and the seemingly popular general douglas macarthur during the period when mccarthyism which is coming to the fore. the chinese had overrun korea and macarthur wanted to use nuclear weapons to stem the flow. truman disagreed and they had a titanic power struggle. this is one of those moments that is just as dangerous as the cuban missile crisis but not as well known. it cements the idea that civilians have control over the military. he took a principled stand and push back. there was a behind the scenes fight in congress which was republican dominated.

again at great narrative historian who does all of his research, surrounded in deep textual research and then brought to vivid life by tremendous record these are the three books we're most excited about this all. >> host: you will see all the authors are booktv this fall. bill thomas is the editor and publisher of doubleday. thank you. >> booktv records hundreds of other programs throughout the country all year long and has a book of some of the events we will be covering this week.

>> welcome to port huron i'm booktv. the city sits at the junction of the st. clair river on like iran and its blue water bridge serves as when the baby is crossing points between the u.s. and canada. with the help of a comcast partners, over the next "60 minutes" we will travel around the city of about 30,000 to talk with local authors about the history of the area including the role steamships played in the region during the 19th century spent testing but was constructed in new york new

niagara falls and the vessel ran between blackrock or buffalo and detroit for about three years before it was wrecked. that was the beginning of the steamboat age and people understood, they didn't travel very fast but they traveled reliably. >> later we will visit the thomas edison depot museum, about the importance of the railroads in the development of michigan's thumb region. >> when the railroads first came in to the county and into the thumb region as a whole, most of the life was centered upon the lake. so the interior itself, if there were arms or earlier settles, they were between spent the first, the editor of the porter on times over but the city's history, its challenges today and the state of the newspaper business.

>> we are in port huron, michigan to this is the mouth of the river, a small river that comes into the st. clair river. st. clair river is a straight that connects the two. this is as far as we cover water in port huron, water identifies this community. water is a significant issue. i'm kind of a nomadic the journalist. you move from paper to paper. as i said i'm a native of west virginia but we lived in florida, georgia. i worked for a while in kentucky. and now in michigan we moved around a lot for many years. one of the things i've learned to do was kind of a ticket into local history and try to understand our community just so how do you know where you're going. how do you know where you are over your going if you don't know where you've been. i voiced an interest in local history. frankly, i was surprised by how

rich the history is in this immunity, this part of michigan maybe i shouldn't have been. kind of the midpoint of the great lakes. it's this great shipping industry. for 20 years after the civil war we were the second leading point of entry for immigration after new york city. you would think that there why would immigrants, hundreds of thousands of americans can trace the roots two people came across the border there. why? because they could get cheap fare to canada and take the railroad and come across the river into port huron and go west. so port huron was kind of a crossroads through the 19th and early 20th centuries. that history assassin be. i think probably the most important story of this generation is port huron, has been what's happened to the economy and the state of michigan. if you go back to 1990s this

was a very prosperous town. 1990s were just a really thriving economy. not just statewide but also locally. we've done really pretty well. things collapsed about the year 2000. in 2000, if you go by household income, michigan is one of the 15 wealthiest states. by 2008, eight years later, we want a 15 force state. a profound change. why that should be is a question for the economist and the scholars to sort out and politicians to short out. the effect it has had on the community, to the people has been devastating in 2008, the poverty rate was 25%. the unemployment rate, it was in the '30s and it was really probably higher than that. it was just a devastating, we've seen population loss. things are beginning to turn

around i think. we are beginning to bounce back. it's a resilient tenured and resilient state but it's been ba really difficult period of time for the state of michigan. pick up our little paper and there will be five pages of legal notices of nothing but foreclosures. it didn't go on for a week or month, it went on for month after month after month for four or five years. opry values just plummeted. if you house and it was worth 200,000, you are lucky if it is worth 125,000 now. and without property taxes pummeled. to provide services they had to cut the workforce. every aspect of life has been affected by what happened to the economy when the manufacturing base just literally disappeared in the matter of a few years. it didn't disappear but it was greatly diminished. one of those interesting things i think about this community is

our town is about 170,000 people. i think the 12 largest town in michigan. a sitting president has never set foot in this county. there have been presidents who came in like harry truman came lear on his honeymoon. we've had several presidents, president taft was a chief justice after his presidency but no sitting president has ever come to this town and even if it landed the air force base whenever come to detroit. marine one will lend which is a five minute drive from the county line but for whatever reason they always go towards detroit or some other direction. they never come to st. clair county. we are out in the mainstream. we are not considered important, poor enough to either party you want a presidential candidate, the president to come here and campaign. why should that be that way? used to joke that st. clair

county and a presidential election could be counted on to go for the democrats in any year that ended in 6-4. they would for mcclellan and then it went for lyndon johnson over barry goldwater in 1964 otherwise there is a republican or at times a third party candidate has one year. but that change with bill clinton. bill clinton care discount a barack obama carried it on his first go. george bush barely beat al gore. it was within just, 50/50 basically. the county itself, i don't know that we become more democratic but we were more willing to consider democrats. it's still a very republican area. that's true with michigan in general. michigan is a democratic state, blue state in the presidential politics. i think hillary clinton can fully expect to win michigan the president obama won it twice.

if you get outside, cities are so heavily democratic appointed out to the countryside it tends to get, suburban areas tend to get a lot more public and the that's why -- and redistricting, you know, they control the governor's office, both houses of legislature, have a super majority in the senate. the democrats cannot block them on anything. the supreme court is nonpartisan but in effect it's a republican state supreme court. they control all the levers of power in michigan and that's because when you get outside detroit and flint, it becomes more public and. that geographical areas, republicans have managed to make stronger districts. they history begins here if you will and i say that because this is where flint and detroit draw their water from lake baran.

in 2009 which was going back seven years ago i was writing columns about it. what happened, detroit in the '60s when detroit is a thriving city and just growing by leaps and bounds, they were expecting to get vast metropolitan area and they need a dependable source of water. that was the type of the cold war and also feared, they were getting their water from lake st. clair which is sal and there was a fear, seems funny now, but it wasn't at all and using in the '60s, that the soviet union would drop an atomic bomb on lake st. clair, vaporized that late in detroit would be left without water. detroit digs a seven-mile tunnel, 200, i forget exactly how deep but more than 200 feet deep through hard rock to this water intake. it was in the same explosion and killed 20 miners.

the worst an actual accident in the lower michigan. but detroit and builds a water line to a 10-foot water main. you can think of a basketball rim that is that hi. that's the pot the water goes in. it goes due west out of lake huron torchlight. in the next county next of your it is flint and part of the pipe there's a pumping station a part of the water isn't self into detroit's suburbs and the others went on to flip. flint decides to build its own water line and it's exactly six miles north of this water line. it is a duplicating waterline. i thought it was crazy and i wrote in 2009 as a columnist i said this is insane, people. we are going to spend a billion dollars to build, to duplicate something that already exists. why are we doing it was the

reason we are doing it is, that detroit waterline, detroit didn't go the way they thought it would. it treated water. the water is treated up on the lakeshore a is treated water was going to detroit. plain, good water right out of the lake. the french call it the sweetwater see. it's good water. their duplicating it and the reason is that detroit is gouging the on the prospect you would think it would be an adult in the room, like some governor or, water is not regulated by the public service commission to we regulate electricity, gas. but we don't regulate water in the state. so detroit, detroit probably was gouging plan. somebody should've said stop it, but it didn't. they said we are tired, we will build, spent hundreds of millions of dollars to duplicate an existing waterline so that we

don't have to be held hostage by you any longer. that's the original sender if that doesn't happen, not for the rest of this happens. flint people are not drinking water out of the flint river. the governor of michigan is a major look like, going down in history as a buffoon actually is what looks like he's going to go. all that happens because of this decision. there was nobody in a position of power in michigan, no adult in the room who could stop it, so hey, it's crazy. we have so may things we can we do it in the state, why would we spend a billion dollars to duplicate what exists? i've never heard a good answer for that. they will tell you things, table take the rest of sessions but the fact of the matter is it's a perfectly good waterline and it could be serving flint for another 50 years if they just maintain it. everybody knows newspapers in

trouble. i would say the old expression what goes around comes around is at work here. if you go back to the 19th century in this county, and most of america, every little newspaper, publishers, handcrank printing press on the wagon, go settle in a little town, start a newspaper. if they were making some money, he would stay put the if they weren't making money they would move on. a lot of the smaller towns have a republican paper in the democratic paper. there were lots and lots of kenya the papers. we are talking about up until after, well after the civil war. in port huron we had to germany, there was a large german population. we had two german language newspapers in this town and a dozen newspapers at one time. what happens is the steam power press comes in and as it gets bigger and bigger, the average

guy can't afford to be in the news business anymore. it becomes these big corporate, to get to buy newspaper he got to be a multimillionaire. you running off thousands of copies. the little guy is no longer, can no longer start a newspaper and ahave any chance at success can any reasonable chance for success. in a way we have made a full circle back with the internet. there's a lot of disadvantages. it's not necessarily told a good thing. we were speaking earlier of the in depth reporting and one of the things you do sacrifice these if you have a smaller people with only three or four reporters, you can't do much in depth reporting. you can spare the time to go out and dig deep into the topic and give the community a full, here's what everybody said, i'm going to go out and talk to 25 people and here's what's happening, is what the public record say that going to take a week or two and present it to you in a complete package and

you can make up your own mind. but you will at least, you will know what's going on. you can't do that when you are just struggling to put out a paper everyday with a skeleton staff like they have no. got a ways, so we got to figure out a business model. if we lose that, if our society loses that, community papers back and in depth reporting, we have lost something important. i don't care if you're a republican, a democrat, a liberal, a conservative, we have lost something vitally important if we have lost that. >> c-span is visiting the city of port huron. we meet up with other jolts don't have to talk to the role steamships played in the 19th century. spent at the turn of the last century the river behind as she was one of the busiest waterways in the world. at st. clair river and the detroit river in 1970 constitute

more tonnage than the port of new york and the port of london put together. this waterway was moving ships at an incredible pace. some of them were a huge freight carriers, the baltic areas we've got and some of them were the passenger ship carriers that were here. everyone of them with you going from back in the digital or clinton or buffalo, you passed but by this point. is justine put on the great lakes started almost 100 years ago. in 1817, two steamboats were launched. that kind of got the process of rolling back the following year a steamboat was constructed at black rock new york over near niagara falls and the apostle ran between black rock or possible under in buffalo for about three years before it was right. it was the beginning of the steamboat age. people understood, they didn't travel very fast but they

traveled reliably. if you're on a sailboat you had to wait for the wind. if you on a sailboat working against a dru truck like the one behind us was almost impossible unless the wind was behind you. with the steamboat you would get on and the but would reliably travel at six or eight or 10 knots toward where you're going and you get there at eight regular schedule. people could finally relied on skid for travel. with the opening of the eerie canal in 1825, there was an influx, a great influx of immigrants coming in. soon after that within five for eight years the was a railroad running right next to the erie canal. you have two very reliable forms of transportation coming in. for chile the railroad stop at buffalo. once you got that far you had to find another way to get to detroit to catch the next train. trains ran across the bottom of michigan to chicago, the first

train reached there in 1852 and then from there you could get to the westward countries where all of the wonderful farmland was. before the american civil war if you wanted to get to the second train you have to get on a ship. the entrepreneurs who were running the vessels partnered with the railroad companies, and the ship became basically an extension of the railroad. and, frankly, and much more beautiful extension of the railroad. if you were on a train, they were not as ornate as we think of trains no. they were not very comfortable. if you want to get up and walk around you walked up and down the aisle. were asked if he got on a steamer, one of these beautiful powder wheel steamers, you are not only in beautiful ornate salons, you could walk around the deck, lots to do. the view up and down the rivers is gorgeous. it was a much nicer more comfortable way to travel. assumed they were not in a storm or the boat didn't catch fire.

while tourism has been an effective business in the great lakes basin since right after the war of 1812, tourism really picked up in the 1880s, 1890s. industries that establish themselves, people have the resources to take a sunday off and go for a short cruise. or actually take a vacation. that didn't start until the 1880s, 1890s and then the business shifted from just moving people around to taking them to destinations. taking them to mackinac, taking them to see chicago to see the great exposition in 1893. all of the sudden the tourism business became an important part of this entity much like the cruise ship industry is today. ships were designed for these groups of people that would come on and want to travel.

that started the second palestinian. while the first palace era had taken place in the 1840s and 1850s, the second palace era started about 1880 and went up through about 1910. the second palace era was even grander than the first. boats were bigger, more elegant. some of the interiors of the salons, you thought you were walking into a versailles palace. they were spectacular. everything in itself to a very elegant lifestyle. even middle-class people who traveled brought the best close. they went there to be seen and to see all the gorgeous people that were wandering these boats and enjoy being out on the water. this was before air-conditioning to on a good hot summer day, the best way to go off with a get on a boat. sometimes you travel on a fairly long explosion, a couple of days but especially in the detroit

area we had i been parks that you would travel to. you would get on a small steamer, travel for a couple of hours from detroit up to port huron. while you're doing that the boat is down at 50 miles an hour. you have a beautiful cool breeze coming over. the men were probably more comfortable than the latest. the layers and layers and layers of petticoats but it was much better than hanging out in the hot pot city. steamboats became an affordable way to really relax and enjoy the day. today we still have passenger boats that come, mostly from the ocean and spent a little time here in the summer. there are also passenger fares. you can't get to mackinac without getting on a fair. if go to beaver island in lake michigan you get a four hour ride on a boat. also is across take michigan the badger which is the last coal-fired passenger steamboat in the united states.

if you want to experience a steamboat you can still do it today. people forget how important the great lakes was to developing the middle of america. the heartland of america. prior to the 1880s or 1890s when railroads finally reached in, prior to the 19th when automobiles could finally get people into all the small towns, if you wanted to travel and travel comfortably, the best way to go with on a steamship. because of that, the businessman who ran those firms innovative in order to draw people to they innovated in the luxury that within their votes. they innovated in making comfort something that people could buy and understand. they innovated their engines. they innovated the advertising. there were many things tied up in the steamboat business that was important to the development of america as a whole. i think we forget that.

the steamboat industry has been kind of lost to history. if we think about steamboats, very often americans think of the beautiful steamboat on the mississippi river which were essentially waning by the american civil war. they think of the steamboats written about in musicals but they don't tend to think about that beautiful coastal steamer speed on the east coast or the west coast, but most particularly on the great lakes. it's here on the great lakes were much innovation happen. the largest paddle wheelers in the world were built on the great lakes. some of the most delicate vessels in the world were built on the great lakes. in fact, several of our vessels ended up, vessels designed by people on the great lakes into the porch on the east coast or it was an important part of the development of steamships, particularly the passenger vessels. i think of something that's kind of been lost i do hope my book will bring that back to people.

>> we are steps away from the thomas edison depot museum. one of the many places he's been will be visiting in port huron to learn more about the literary scene inside we will speak with local author and historian tj gaffney to learn about the role railroads played with this book "rails around the thumb." >> [background sounds] >> the real impetus for writing the book came out of my interest in the radio history of the region. up to that point there had beent been a great show that a been written on it, especially comes to the different railroads and their growth within the different commuters in our region. the thumb region, if you look on a map, basically comprises five counties in the state.

there is a little debate about that but for the most part people believe it. when the railroads first came into the county and into the thumb region as a whole, most of the life was centered upon the lake. so the interior itself, if there were farms or early settlers there, they were few and far between. the first railroads coming into the region, particularly the one that we are at now, the grand trunk, when he came up from detroit and made its connection here, economically it was still very tied to british interests, even with a not too distantly fought war of 1812 an hour breaking away. i was actually british business interests that finance that railroad. right to the point with a deep

those that survived including the one behind me were built to a british design. you can go to places in ontario and other areas in canada with this basic design is also used. the impact of the railroads on the region was an extremely important one. the community, particularly with its connection of the grand trunk railway and then the later construction of the st. clair river tunnel in the 1890s not only continued our immigration point but it meant that we one of the very first stops when someone came to visit the united states or came through as one of the last stops. several people decided to make our area in some part because of that. it also fed many of the industries along the line that

would not have come you otherwise. you have places that still exist, mueller brass, port huron engine and pressure, several industries tied to the auto industry later on, auto light, although is basically came to this region because of the connection with the ray road. but also the connection with the water. that double, with somewhat unique for us. the fact you could pick one or two different things really is a huge thing even to this day. because for large industries you still need a redbook presents. for all of them to move their freight in an expedited manner. they were several industries in the region that worked with the railroad, and also that the ray road employed, we have a very

large facility. i mentioned the original shops were located to the north of us. after the birth in 1913 they were relocated into what we know as port huron township now, and were completely reconstructed and rebuild basically because of world war i. and continue to be used right up and through the early 1990s. we are a very large employer in the community. at one point in time close to 3000 people worked there. several other entities within the railroad, the ray road car carriers which operated back and forth over different points of time for heavy employers. and one point in time, had probably a good third of the community that could have tied their employment and there will

being, if you will, to implement with the ray road. the location where currently shooting in is, it's actually a historic railcar, was built we believe sometime prior to the 1880s for the grand trunk railway. it was restored at the car shop which was just to the north of us, to the north of the bridges. and that car shop burned in 1913 so there are very few surviving examples that were built there. it's primarily built of wood, and it is of the type that would've been around at the time that thomas edison as a young boy. he spent much of his formative years here and the depot just to the west of us here was the actual depot at edison worked out of as a boy. he spent the ages of roughly seven to just shy of 16 year.

so his early years were primarily spent year. addison's basic job description as news much, whose walk around with a basket and hit everything from fruit to small sandwiches and later on obviously his paper that he would sell. he would get on your at the depot, a separate tied to the military installation and he would then go ride the train down to detroit. ..

he definitely likes his routine, i think that started even in his youth, that downtime was something that he cherished. he mentions it several times in the fact he was always kind of keeping an eye and ear out for what was going on around really helped him move ahead. a route known as the poly and was a nickname used for the pontiac oxford in port austin. it was a very north-south that they their brain from pontiac to case though, michigan. and was somewhat bucolic i guess you could say.

it went through very small communities. but that was also what made it in during. a lot of the crews that work the train were known by the station agents or the local individuals. it took quite a while to get from pontiac to case though and what would now probably take you less than three and a half to four hours to drive would take almost 16 back then. they serve every little industry and very little grain elevator in what you can think of your it was an important lot at one point in time and really pierce the interior of the region. but the railroad in everyday life, you know, people just grew to understand that it was going to be there in everyday things have been on the train. not too long after the tunnel was dead, a woman is coming

across from my blue chicago. she had been pregnant and basically began to give birth and the train was going through the tunnel. so life was conceived somewhere under the river. there were stories about the passengers all bring in a collection together in the mother and child to the next location. there were several stories related to those types of things. the reactor in the museum, you can't get away from two very large steel and concrete structures. one in 1938. those are the bluewater bridges. their impact if you will is

pretty important, but their connection with the railroad asserted the next extension if you will of the role the railroad initially played. when the grand railroad to the tunnel and between, traffic increased greatly and those natural traffic flow line that were created by the rebbe wrote were eventually followed by the interstate and the need to =tranfour things easily, quickly and economically, with the construction of the two bridges. the general public when they look at the roads today,, i often see them in the negative. you things thought came across another busy way to their schedule and what have you. the reality is the railroad

plays just as an important role today, particularly in freight as they did 100 years ago. lurch commodities are still shipped most easily by rail. there's been a lot of discussion recently about the impact of coal index declined here recently and its connection to the railroad. obviously it's had a great effect. the container movement, particularly with the connection of shipping containers from places like china and indonesia and elsewhere. railroads are very much a part of that. so when it goes to long beach, california renters urge shipping facilities, the railroads are right alongside can enter ships and make it to the next round and then turn the semi-tribe to

then move it to shorter distances. they are still at very, very important vital part of our transportation. both year and throughout the country. there were several things when i was writing this book that came to light that made things interesting. i mention the connection with the titanic, but i would say just the overall personal connection between a lot of these smaller communities and the role the railroad played in their life was the same that events the thing that even several years after i would say that impact it's going 50 or 60 in some cases. they feel about the individuals in those communities for those who worked for the railroad and in their community is still buried deep.

part of the reason part of the pictures i have came to light was because they saved those and i am forever grateful and i felt it was part of my duty to make sure it does survive as long as they could. it really helped in making the boat a much larger and more hope only interesting, very -- they like we're filming on the fourth floor of the office center of city hall and misread on the st. clair river. probably the most interim point at michigan. the city of port huron, population is around 30,000 people, which is a decrease. at one time many years ago, probably in the 50s and 60s it would have been closer in the 40s. as economic changes in industry changes, that type of thing, it hasn't decreased over the years.

demographically we probably have been certain of all different types of people, but i would call it a little bit on the distress i. because we have this county seat, we also have the rentals of the social services and things like that. so we don't have maybe the most stable population. it kind of comes and it goes. that kind of thing. so it's kind of a prospect of lower to upper income. it's a very nice place to raise your family and we have a whole lot of different things going on. the unemployment rate in michigan is higher in the country and higher in this area. it has gone down. we are always a little bit higher in the rest of the

county, but the rest of the day and the country. but it has. we have had a lot of the krugman over the last couple of years. everybody suffered in 2008 mini economy tanked and we are all calling out of that. it took a little bit longer. i'm very proud of that. the mullahs are not doing well. they have a lot of new restaurant and cleaned stores with no big department stores but the other thing that is interesting as we are getting loft apartments. it would go but it's not -- it's

been a surge of both. there's actually two separate contractors right now downtown. that is good because it is mostly the younger professionals and others which you are obviously looking or coming to get the younger people back here and the jobs to come back here that we been working on. it wonderful piece of property to house the ymca and it was sold to the city and it was made development ready. go get high rise their. they are still in the stages of working on the site plan that they should be started by the first with four to five stories

high. so bring a lot of people in town, to. kind of redeveloping ourselves are reinventing ourselves with the plays if you're younger for retirement and getting people to live in the downtown area has been very much a part of that. i think one of the key parts of our history as we are celebrating. we have celebrated in 2007 i sesquicentennial. at about this anymore particular story, but am very proud of the fact that people can walk up to the top of it and certainly it was back in the day you had shipping around this area, logging and things like that. obviously not today, but it's a strong part of our heritage.

the bridge of course cap went -- that was built in 1838. that's a cumbersome way to travel back in worth. the amount of commerce to get from canada. a lot of it goes through. a lot of people come from canada and a big part of the success of the essays and of course in 19 -- 1997 you can still -- both sides go back or it is still very much doing and in the

future that port hayride is only going to get better. there's a lot of interest from investors on the other side the doubletree and restaurant are combined that. thousand duster from the website of the state. so with the hotel going down. we are getting more notice from other places. a lot of times people didn't know, that they thought it was a small little town by the bridge. get a better reputation worth coming here. our parks and beaches in history we have and the people are friendly and with that nice places to go. i think we'll have a resurgence even more than we have now a bar

downtown and other businesses coming in an investment in the communities. i'm looking forward to good things happening. >> welcome to the city of porto at michigan. but to be a citizen in the city to learn a little bit more about its nonfiction literary culture. cap will visit st. clair county library where we will hear from direct or allison arnold about how the public library system works in michigan. >> we are currently standing in the main floor of the main branch of the library system. the main branch of the library system is located in port huron, which is then st. clair county. we have a nice group of libraries that are countywide. we have 11 branches and this branch in particular, the main branch functions as the

community hub and the support service for the other branches in the county. we are located just a hop, skip and jump from the st. clair river and lake huron in the blue water bridge is. we have a wonderful opportunity by being in our downtown area and in the county government campus and we see quite a few patrons who come to the library. and this branch receive 800 people a day. actually could see behind me, on a regular basis. this building was dealt in the early 1960s after the library system verse with the port huron public library. we took on the function of public library surveys for the county as well as for the city of port huron. we've moved from the original carnegie building and this

building was a little bit larger. we are public library, so we tried to meet as many entries as we can. understandably can't meet everyone's interest. one of the nice things about the public library system is that we share resources with their branches. we also share resources across the state. there's an item that a patron is looking for and our library doesn't hold it. we can request data from a public library in the state if they can also request that from the library outside of bars aid. what we hold here in this library is general interest topics. entertainment, reading, magazine. we also have all kinds of genres. nonfiction on many, many fund topics. we also have historical collections in their michigan room where we have a lot of folks come in and do their genealogical research.

the material is very common to interesting and one of the things that we are working on doing right now is taking that material and digitizing the good that we can make it available to a broader audience. our library system offers easily over 2000 programs a year. we have everything from book clubs which are pretty traditional to clubs that learn how to play other games. we have teams that come in and learn how to do it. those are kind of nontraditional programs. but we do offer also this computer classes for patrons. we are the only community center right now that offers free basic computer classes. we been doing this forever 18 years and without the work

ourselves out of a job. the boy to come in the really loves there can peter classes. we offer programs on literacy, with literacy. all of our programs have an element of lettersa. it's a children's program doing games that reinforce things that kids are learning in school for things that the kids need to learn in order to be ready for schools. in our adult programs, we offer an opportunity to discuss topics of imports, whether that his book topics, whether that community event topics for situations that are happening, those can get together. that is kind of what i really see this library becoming as more of an opportunity to create and contributcontribut e to community.

we are no longer looking at ourselves as a warehouse for both and hope that people, and want to continue to read print materials. we do honor that tradition and we do collect print materials, but we also want people to cs at a place that we can come enjoy spending time with one another, meeting new people, having someone to share an idea with. kind of like our third place in our community, where you have your home, you have your work and where do you go for your entertainment and learn something new to add to your font of knowledge. you come to the library. the library system does play a role in the library world of the state of michigan. we have 11 branches that are across our county. we are the only county department that has the ability to reach the vast majority of

our investment in that way. what we have are not individual autonomous branches. we have the administration of library system, but we do have wonderful teams of staff at each branch who know their communities. they know the reading and entertainment value -- not values, but likes and dislikes in their community. we administer the basic business of doing library service from the main library. we are all born 18. we come together one year to have a big staff event where we do training and learning and just being together to talk. what that means for the community is that there is consistent library service across the county.

if you are interested in a book from our downriver area and that branch doesn't have that book, we can get that book for you very quickly another thing that does as we are able to have consistent policy and consistent procedure see her excellent customer service that she received in one branch, you will see mirrored in another branch. one of the most surprising things that i find about the public library is that it is vibrant. there are people here they use the library and enjoy the library and are excited about what we do in the community. on a personal note in this town. i went to school here. i went away to college, but i brought my family back at one of

the things i thought was so important for us to give back to my community and doing so is the director of the st. clair of library system is a joy. it's a pleasure to be here and to work with these wonderful people, mykonos connections, building those relationships with other community agencies. working together to break down some of those carriers to people is a huge joy for me. it's one of the things that the library system is doing as we are looking at how library services delivered to our community today. and one of library users will want and need in our future as well as healthy to educate those

folks who maybe don't have access to all of the benefit that others do. but we still do honor the traditions of library service of yesterday. so while we are continuing to build and you are print collections, our audio book collections, we are also embracing e-books, magazine and we also have streaming media. so we are introducing these sinks to the community and making them available for a resident at hoping that we continue to stay relevant for those folks. >> booktv insisting the city of port huron. next we speak with other tv gassy who says there's both 1880s to 1960.

>> we are currently standing in front of the last known survivor structure of military installation that was originally did in the 18 court's for the war of 1812. at that time canada next art is actually part of the enemy with british control and the structure was built in 1829 along with several other structures of similar design to replace the original.cab is style building. prior to the communications in today's e-mail and the internet, the postcard was one of the quickest ways with symptoms of information back and forth. the idea there was to keep things in a tight concise

format, a greeting to let people know that you provide data location and also and remember in a worry wort. the name of my book is port huron postcards 1980-1960. i wrote it as kind of a continuation of a project my father had wanted to do. my dad collected postcard of saint clare county and this region for about 40 years and fortunately he passed away before he was able to get the project finished. i guess you could say i hope to finish it or them. i chose 18 edt 1960s because the timeframe of biggest are the largest occupation really fit within that timeframe. it was a period of largest growth and from a photography

give, and it is fairly well documented. it time. in our area you want to address known photographers is a gentleman at the name of lewis p. show. he worked in a very small window of time prior to 1912 and roughly from night to know five to about that. come a brilliant seven arete year. it is known that he took close to 18,000 in that period, which you understand what that. that's pretty astounding. the postcards remarked in a variety of forms, very often for talk of hers themselves would have videos. you have a studio and once the marines city to the south here and you can purchase postcards from head. he also had several locations within hotels, train stations,

there is a key cost to any pick up souvenirs. it is very similar to that back in the poster area. because of their clarity of them because the forethought that he took two people to one nurse to hand the timeframe he was then, several of those images were ahead of their time in terms of how he took been in many instances are the only known images of the subject matters i can think of several critically images of. in one instance there's a great extruder known as the site for us. it only was above water for about three weeks.

it had been construct it to the st. clair river here. he took advantage of it and there's only a believe one other note image because that same roughly a month later. this types of things really stand out. the historical connection with several local businesses as well were important. one of the more important aspects with the development and change in transportation over time. you can actually see that through some of the images that i chose. the shift per instance that most of us don't even recognize, which would be the trolley which was once a very vital connection in our area is highlighted there. it was a short period of time and to place mostly within this era.

so you do see several images related to streetcars within the middle of a generic town or out in the hinterland if you will. when they look at some of the images, one of the things that really stands out is how people spend their leisure time. not unlike today, you will see people doing a lot of outdoor activities. you will see several images at people canoeing. icicles were very popular at this point in time. one of the most important aspects of the images used the ms book is documenting how the area has changed. the hearing has gone through several changes since that era, even since the end they wish to be not long ago at night xd.

the image is soft and deep it buildings, parts of the city that are no longer there. also sort of a time and a place that is very indicative of when the photo was taken versus now. it is thought that i've had several people who have purchased the boat, effective leg to take the book and find out what the photo was taken to see how that was changed. this types of boats very often so much as driven by the image that gets lost or isn't as emphasized as much. ..