this is the skiff where you read intelligence product. >> book of the wants to know what your reading. send us your summer reading list via twitter, or instagram, or post it to our facebook page, facebook.com/booktv. book tv on c-span2, television for serious readers. >> the books "under the bridge" series has been going on for several years now. we have been parfaits -- participating in it brings together various brooklyn booksellers and they're allowed to program a monday in july and august, and is a said we're very lucky to always get to do it. and do it -- be the first one in the series. so, i'd like to thank clay and devon, who currently run the ram mere and remind you that -- run the program here and remind you there are several mow in july

and august, the next is pay pourhouse arena --" power house arena." a little bit about this book and erica wagner. as you can tell just from the backdrop here, this is a great topic for this setting in brooklyn bridge park. not -- most great monuments don't -- don't inspire great rating but this is a good exception to that. from hard crane to many otherpots and writers and notably to the nonfiction writer, david mccullough, there have been really inspired writing on this subject, and erica wagner is right up there with all of those other writers. what she has done here with this biography of washington roebling is remind everyone although he what's son of a designer he was

the person long with his wife who got it through, those dozen or so you'res to the end and it was -- so years to the end and 15 years ago his father died, just up here in the heights behind you, and the young 32-year-old took over and brilliantly brought it to life. a little bit about erica. she has written on many different topics. we were just talking about her notable book, aerial's gift, about ted hughes and sylvia platt. she has had a career over the last three decades in the uk, even though she is a new yorker by birth. and has been a critic and a literaried for, currently literary editor at harper's bazaar in the uk and literaried for for a long time the "london times" and a contributing writer

at "the new statesman." we're very pleased she has come over from england to speak to us today and i hope you'll give a nice round of place to eric would wagner. [applause] >> i'm a little small so i might -- is that okay? can you hear me? very good. i'm going to put this down. well, thank you so much, peter, and i am really thrilled to be here. it's really hard to imagine a better backdrop for my talk this evening. i am never not moved when i look at this view, which perhaps you won't be surprised to hear, coming from me, but i'll explain

to you a little bit why that is. i'm going to tell you how i became involved in washington's story, and i'm going to tell you a little bit about the building of the bridge and then i'll keep an eye on the time and then i might read to you a little bit from the book itself. i carry a picture of washington roebling in my wallet. the man who built the brooklyn bridge, as it says on the cover of my book, but not just any picture. the one i've kept with me since i was 19 years old, in case you're wondering, i'm 49 now. it's a photograph taken in 1861, when washington, at the age of 24, had just joined in the union army. so when i was still a teenager i photocopied it from a book in the new york public library

issue covered it with a sticky tape to protect and it made a little envelope to keep it even safer. i wrote: war on that little envelope. washington's initials. his middle name was augustus, and my full name is erica augusta wagner so make what you will of that. a strange story perhaps so i will elaborate somewhat. i grew up across the river on the upper wi side. have to admit i never set foot on the brooklyn bridge until i was a teenager. i got myself a boyfriend, young english civil engineer. he came to visit me in new york one winter, but in truth, i think it wasn't really me he wanted to visit. it was the brooklyn bridge. and so we walked on the promenade together, and like so

many before and so many since, i was struck with wonder by the bridge, and it was no bad thing that i had someone with me who could explain to me how it really worked. the boyfriend did what boyfriends do, he disappeared. but there you good. however, my fascination with the bridge remained. how did it get there? who made it? i began to read all i could about it, and that is how i met washington. i read hamilton skylar's early biography of the roeblings, david mccullough's the great bridge, read letters, technical reports, newspaper articles and then the gripping and shocking biography washington wrote of his father. heard washington's voice as clear as a bell inside my head, erasing the near century that separated us.

i am and always have been a writer. have never been an engineer. washington spoke to me as one writer to another. it seemed to me that he wanted me to speak for him. on the cover of chief engineer, there is a different photograph of washington. one taken in 1864, not long before the left the army after four years hard fighting in the american civil war. one of the most dreadful conflicts the world has ever seen. but that war was only one of the many challenges this extraordinary man would face, a man who was born in 1867, on -- in 1837, on the frontier, and who died in 1926, in the jazz age. his life was a life that spanned an american century. he was a man who made an

american icon, a bridge that has not only security new new york's compute commuters and tourists and lovers for a sister half natch but has inspired photographers to artists. who was this man? why do i care about him so much? i want to show you. i want you to care, too. so i need you to know what an unprecedented feat of engineering the brooklyn bridge was, the first suspension bridge with cables made of steel, a bridge with a span that would not be significantly surpassed for 50 years, until the build offering the george washington bridge and a bridge build using a dangerous new technology, one that washington pioneered at great cost to himself.

he had taken over the project after the death of his father, john roebling, famous engineer who had bridged niagra falls and the ohio river in cincinnati. at that time many people thought that to bridge the east river was impossible. but if anyone should be the man to accomplish the feat, well, john roebling was that man. and then one day, in the summer of 1869, before any real work had been started, before very many plans had been made, john roebling had what seemed to be a minor accident just over there, down by the river. before two weeks had passed, he was dead. a horrible death from tetanus, and it was left to his son to take over the work. washington had built bridges for the army during the war. he had then supervised the work

on his father's ohio bridge. yet for all of his expertise, he had been his father's lieutenant, but now john roebling was no more. the bridge's great power, their gothic silhouette, recognizable all over the world, are set on foundations deep beneath the east river. those foundations were sunk using kasons, air chambers on the river's bed. inside the chambers hundreds of men doubt sand and stone while blocks of granite and limestone built the great tower above. a casso noh is launched from a ship to a dock are it's towed to its correct position in the river and then sunk to settle on the mud beneath the surface of the water.

there were shafts to set in men and bring waste material up as the men head down to bedrock for belong. the cason is made of wood. its roof layer upon layer of dense pitch pine. there are shifts, too, to pump come pressed air into the champion -- compressed air into the chamber. the compressed air keeps the river out. what is it like to work in compressed air? it's like deep sea diving. come up too fast from the dense atmosphere, and you get very sick indeed. and in the 21st century, this is called decompression sickness but in the 19th century, when thanks to projects such as the build offering the brooklyn bridge, its symptoms ban to appear, it was cass cason disease. getting the bend some people said. nitrogen bubbles in the blood causing a nicing pain, paralysis, and sometimes death.

but that was only one of the dangers faced in this great work. the roof of this cason was made of wood, and one day, in 1870, deep underwater, the wooden roof of the kason caught fire. in the roebling archives at at that washington's alma mater is a remarkable document, note written first in pencil, then crossed out and rewritten in average in hand that is still almost completely legible, despite the passage of time, despite the haste in it was composed, accidents was the heading and begins with one word, fire. throughout his police officer, washington roebling would write on any available scrap of paper, on the back of old stationery,

on old bills and random slips. here is one, evidence both of attention and exhaustion, the need to keep every detail in his mind. it read nows almost like a kind of urgent poetry. several small fires, leaks in seams, a caulking of oak catches easily, some easily put out. had to flood cason, danger of doing it. increased caution. water pipes, hose, steam hose from outside, fire on night of december 1st. candles pointing with cement. bad place would not be seen. burnt appearance. living coals. no smoke. risks. ultimate decision. one million 350,000 gallons of water, fire not out until roof reached. on the timber roof of the cason, the car would rest.

if the towers were to fail, everything could have been lost thanks to a moment's carelessness. washington carefully considered what had caused the blaze. the immediate cause of the fire must be oing to a candle held in the right hand of the man who had his coat or dinner a candle box which was nailed up over the door close to the roof, he surmised. he could only reach the box by stepping up on a frame brace when he would hold a candle with his right hand and reach into the box with his left. he must have held the candle there at least a minute, washington wrote. the man, the brooklyn eagle reported, was called mcdonald. once he had seen the whole burn through the wood, he filled it with placer to conceal -- blaster to conceal his blunder help soon disappeared the paper wrote and has not been seen since. but in the oxygen-rich

atmosphere of the cason, the wood behind the patch job kept burning. living coals as washington described them. buckets of water, carbon dioxide from fire extinguishers had no effect. a desperate happeneds to to be tried. nothing but to flood the kason from above but such a plan what more than just risky. if the air should all be out before the water had reached the roof, the result would be a sudden drop of the kason and the destruction of all support by the weigh of 28,000 tons, besides running the risk of causing the cason to leak so badly as to render reinflation impossible. washington had never been a man to stay at his desk. the chief engineer was 33 years old now. he was down at the work site, down in the cason, as much or

more as anyone who worked for him. now the hard work and more crucially the weight of responsibility began to take its toll on washington. ... feeling in the small of his back and lower limbs which precedes paralysis. fire boats were called. 1,350,000 gallons of water were

poured down, and the caisson remained flooded for two and a half days. it settled by only 2 inches. when the water was eventually pumped out, the damage had to be painstakingly repaired. 11 courses of timber had been damaged and more pine was forced into the breeches and irons drafts were bolted to the chamber's roof. after those seven hours down in the caisson, washington had to be taken home an and rubbed forn hour on his spine with salt and whiskey. he tried to rest at any moment expected to hear the doorbell ring with the message the caisson was burning yet. he recovered to write his notes whether it was the salt and whiskey that did the trick or simply being away from the caisson, we don't know. we don't know if his wife, emily, tended to him or how much

he would have seen of his 3-year-old son. what we can know is nothing stopped him from his task. every day brought new challenges and new uncertainties. washington roebling might call all of this simply doing his job. but considering the strength of mind and feeling acquired to do that job is what draws us back to the room in a house in brooklyn heights, a room scented with smoke and whiskey to find washington back at his desk. there was still no end of solutions to be found. construction took 14 years. during those years, washington's health continued to worsen. the manner in which emily roebling came to his illness is an astonishing story in itself.

when the bridge opened in may of 1883, there was a celebration such as the cities of new york and brooklyn had never seen and perhaps have never seen from that day to this but this remarkable story is only part of washington roebling's remarkable life. to trace the life i spent hours in the archives of rutgers university and through the college notes believe me you can be glad you didn't go to rbi in the 1850s. i read his love letters and his beloved old dog duty sunday. i traveled to the town of saxon buried in western pennsylvania where washington gridlock and which remains astonishingly pretty much as it was when john roebling bolted in the 1830s. i walked across the ohio river

and on the battlefield at gettysburg. i went to the cold springs cemetery where washington and emily are buried. on her gravestone he had three words inscribed. gifted, noble, true. it has been a wonderful journey. i have built my own bridge i hope from the past to the present day. washington has been my companion for three decades because i am inspired by his tenacity, by the strength of his spirit. if a problem was put in front of him he wouldn't rest until it was solved. his life in many ways is a privileged one but it's also one marked by brutality and discarded by the war of more than one kind. nevertheless, he persisted always. when i felt so discouraged, he's

given me courage. when i want to give up, he helps me to go on. i know that nothing can be done perfectly at the first trial, he once wrote. i also know that each day rings little logos of experience, which with honest intentions would lead to perfection after a while. so, that is just a little bit about how this remarkable structure came to be built all those years ago that has endured with some but not much alteration from that to this. i thought i could read a little bit from the book as i mentioned in my talk. emily roebling, washington's wife, was a truly remarkable woman. when he became very ill in the

1870s, the episode i'd read was the beginning of his sickness. he got much sicker than that in 1873 in 1875, he thought he would die. he remained in control of the bridge, but emily was his extraordinary and ellison's coming to the bridge sites to consult with the other engineers talking to the trustees and doing all the kind of complicated politics of washington actually really didn't like anyway and probably wouldn't be very good at and was an astonishing woman in her own right. he met her during the civil war which is also a fascinating period in washington's life so i thought i would tell you a little bit about their meeting.

they met not long after the battle of gettysburg anbattle ot was in july 1863. in late november and early december 1863 in orange county virginia, general meade made an attempt to strike at the confederate army but the fortifications prepared at the little valley proved a match for the union army as washington himself along with genita generl warning, we called up to the works found them high and strong built the year before no of salt could have succeeded. 10,000 would have been slaughtered. it was lost a day before when the works were unoccupied and we could have walked in but waited for nothing. despite the mud and the

slaughter, diversion was to be found. february 2, 1864, washington roebling found himself invited to a ball. you know the third quarter had a ball into the second was determined to put it back in the shade and high yearly he wrote to his sister elvira, his closest confidant in such matters. the evening was as far as washington was concerned, a spectacular success. our supper cost $1,500 was furnished by parties in washington. the most prominent ladies were present, daughter of the vice president, kate chase, the striking politically powerful daughter of lincoln's treasury secretary is perhaps interesting to think about powerful government doctors right now, i'm just dropping dead in their.

the daughters of the senator from new hampshire but these women were not the reason for the letter to his sister. last but not least was emily warren, sister of the general who came from west point to attend the ball. it was the first time i ever saw her and i am of the opinion that she has captured your brother at last. it was an attack in force that came without any warning or previous realization on such immigrants taking place, and it was therefore all the more successful and gives me the greatest pleasure to say that i have succumbed. but they said to each other that night, the way they dance, what she was wearing, the gleam of the candlelight of the buttons of his officers to to tunic but

this is true and clear. he wasn't ready for the news to get out. don't go like a great big goose and show this letter to everyone, he admonished his younger sister. you are my favorite sister, just as if she is the general's favorite sister and therefore can't appreciate my feelings. i appreciate your feelings and reading this letter and a weight your answer. he added a postscript just the kind of detail a young man notes about his beloved. she gets a sore throat once in a while and is additionally charming therefore. he signed himself off as ever, your affectionate brother, wash. thank you very much. [applause] i think we are going to take some questions about what we are going to do is ask people to

come up to the microphone. >> so you have to be quite brave to come up to the microphone. any questions? >> be brave. i told you everything you want to know? i must be wonderful. what year was it completed? 1883, 743 years ago. >> [inaudible] >> that's right. that was pretty spectacular. the gentle man up there. can you come down?

>> i was touched by a passage at the end of his life where there was a fear. did you come across the original documentation for that story? >> the gentle man said he was very moved. he writes at the end of washington roebling's life and died at 89-years-old and in one of his last letters wrote that it moved him very much and they wanted to know if i sold the original documentation for this. yes, i did. the really remarkable thing about writing this book was having the privilege to be not only that, but all of the documentation about his long

life is one of the great pleasures feeling you were holding the pieces of paper that were subjects held. it's interesting to think generations from now when we are old and everything is on e-mail, because nobody writes letters anymore, it'll be a very different thing. and you come across -- i will take the liberty of adding, there are extraordinary unexpected things when you are doing this research. so, when i was at rpi, the letters thatheletter is that yog was in new jersey but when i was at rpi where washington went to college, there are records of some land that washington's father bought in the late 1850s and 1860s.

he decided as well as being an engineer he was going to be a farmer. but the soldiers had bought the land at a very cheap rate, a special deal if you were in the army you could find land for not much money at all. the catch was if you want to sell this land to anybody else, the president of the united states had to sign the deed. he wrote some land man i'm looking through this file which is going to be pretty boring and i'm not interested in this period anyway. there is the bold signature of abraham lincoln. that's the kind of moments that you have in the archive and it's extraordinary to think that when he signed this for 150 acres, the civil war have bee had beenn

for four or five months. he was still having to do all this paperwork. someone was putting a stack on his desk and he still had assigned them off so that is why it's amazing working in the archive. long answer to your question i hope you don't mind. this lady right here. >> did emily have any formal training as an engineer or did she just learn on-the-job? >> he was incapacitated. his site was badly affected and also he couldn't stand to be around anybody at all except for her so she took all of his dictations, given that everything but haven't had to be communicated by writing you couldn't call anybody on the phone and explained what needed to be done. so, everything was done by

letters to the trustees, to the assistant engineers, and you could tell if you know his writing well as i do that is his writing and voice. it is ask late 1875 as i recall it's no longer his handwriting. the commanding officer unusually believe she should be educated. so he paid for her to go to school and go to a really good school. she had no formal training for what her husband was doing.

>> is there any documentation? >> she was a forceful and remarkable woman. and there is a plaque of her on the bridge. this young man up there. >> what was the year that he died, he died in 86. he was 89 and then the woman all the way over here. >> i was just wondering if you could talk about the conditions of building the bridge and what it was like to be in the proce process. >> the question is what were the conditions like for the workers who were building the brooklyn bridge.

not very good is the brief answer to that question. in the 19th century, health and safety wasn't a big pain at all. it is worth sayin stating that e conditions on the brooklyn bridge were better than any other equivalent structure. washington was aware. it wasn't just him but the men were getting fixed as well. and he hired a doctor, a man called andrew smith to try to look after the men who were starting to suffer from caisson disease. andrew smith did not figure out what was causing this mysterious illness, but he did try to attest to the men. part of the problem was you couldn't keep hold of the men. they came to work and then they wanted to rush off home.

it was a very casual labor force. there were other kinds of accidents as well accidents with stalin and then the men who made the cables they tended to be shipped so they were accustomed to working higher up. in the 19th century on any worksite, the safety and security of the men working was never a top priority. so it was pretty awful. anybody else? is a gentleman right in the frontier. excellent. front here. excellent. now it isn't on. [laughter] >> the development of brooklyn and the political unification of the cities because like i understand it increased the population a lot but i'm wondering if that helped

catalyze. >> the question is how much did the completion of the bridge leads to the unification of new york and brooklyn and the growth as a city because a lot of it was farmland. i can speak to some of that a little bit. but yes absolutely is the answer before the bridge was built you have to go across by very. at times estimated that 70 million were made every year and a cut in fron they couldn'te river was icy. there were accidents. so the brooklyn bridge was the beginning of the linking of manhattan and brooklyn and it led to the further growth of

brooklyn, and i believe that it was 1898 to brooklyn became part of greater new york so it is absolutely true that the brooklyn bridge played a crucial role in that process. anyone else? when was the first car on the bridge? >> the bridge had to be adjusted for cars. it's had quite a few adjustments over the years. the main one was in late 1940s, early 1950s done by an engineer called steinman who strengthened, if you look at photographs of the bridge for that time, there is a very beautiful photograph of the brooklyn bridge, the whole span of the bridge taken in 1925 by a man called irving underhill.

he got a hold of it and he's written on the back in big print keep this for my album in his very neat handwriting but if you look at that photograph, you will see that the work around the roadway looks a little more delicate. also it was strengthened. it's still as you know you can't drive a truck over the brooklyn bridge comes with still has a ways limit. of course when it opened there were trains that went across it that were not a part of the network of transportation but almost like a cable car that went back and forth and they

stopped running in the 50s and there's actually a remarkable film if you go on to the library of congress website and look at the edison brooklyn bridge, you will see a little minute long movie taken in 1898 so that is one of the earliest movies ever taken in the front of the tree going from brooklyn to new york it is really amazing. you can't put a little movie and a book but i couldn't get back in. there were all kinds of adjustments. it had a big half a million dollar facelift. i think new york from the people i talked to ken see a little bit better looking after its infrastructure. that goes to show how bad a lot of it is all over the country that we have quite a lot of

famous infrastructure. people know that you have to look after the brooklyn bridge. but it withstood those changes into part of the reason is because when it was designed, it was designed to be much stronger than it needed to be at the time so the cables were designed to be six times as strong as they needed to be and that is part of the reason that it's been able to have this extraordinary long life. anybody else? >> why did he make the cable six times stronger than it needed to be? that is a good question. suspension bridge building was still in its infancy.

the thing about bridges in the 19th century is they fell down. and lots of people thought that it was not possible to build this bridge. plenty of people believe such a thing could not be done. it would have to be too big or too heavy and nothing could possibly hold this up. i believe that it was partly to convince people to say it's really not going to fall down. this is how strong the cables are. if you look in the contemporary newspapers of the time we have a gentleman here this evening by presenting the book who used to say it was a great supporter of the bridge from its earliest days so you can see in articles that were presented how it was shown to be safe.

>> what did he do between 83 and 26? >> of course i'm not quite going to say because you have to read the book that i will tell you a little. it's a good question because he never build another bridge. his health was very badly affected. it's hard to know how much of what afflicted him was physical and how much was psychological. i think you have to be careful of the retrospective diagnosis. he had a very brutal upbringing and suffered a pretty badly during the american civil war. so, he did not build another bridge. he was very involved in the family firm. the roebling family made their

fortune and why your rope. the lie here that supports the brooklyn bridge, although in fact the main cables are not made from roebling wire but john roebling patented the wire rope in america. it looks like growth is made of wire and of course it enabled off just suspension to be built at elevators, tables, telegraphs, airplanes, automobiles, it was a hugely important product for the growth of the united states and the world at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th. washington was very involved in the company. he also was a passionate neurologismineralcollector.

after he died it was willed to the smithsonian where it is the foundation of the remarkable collection. but when he was 84, in 1921, he was always involved in the family firm that he didn't take a salary. he advised his brothers and kept an eye on what was going on. despite complaining all his life, he outlived one younger brother, then another younger brother, two of his nephews and at the age of 84 he took over the presidency of the company and ran it for four years to the office every single day and he's modernized the company in the years before his death, so he kept busy. sorry, we will come right back to you.

>> how did they manage through the depression? >> there's not a roebling company now. how they managed through the depression it did affect them but it was the family firms that got swallowed up by the huge conglomerates so they held out for much longer than they often do and if you ever find yourself near trenton new jersey i urge you to visit the museum and it's a different site of the mail and it's really lovely and it's a beautiful sight.

whilwhile shenzhen lost, just st by his father and he wrote about that. >> he was traumatized by his father. when he was an older man in his 50s and then in his 70s, washington sat down to write a biography of his father. it should be said that washington really admired his father and believe his father was a great man. he was a great man. he was one of those giants of the century that had written things other people didn't have. he had extraordinary energy and drive and inventiveness. he built a whole industry from nothing and washington admired this tremendously which is why

he sat down to write a biography of his father but the extraordinary thing that the manuscript vanished for a long time. he couldn't help writing about himself. and indeed the civil war but when he writes about himself and his childhood but he also can't help writing about is his father's shocking brutality. it's really frightening. now of course it is one man's account, it is washington's account but what i felt reading it is i thought of washington roebling in his 50s at the age of 70 he broke it and by this point, he was an extremely

wealthy and successful man, the first citizen of trenton. enormously well respected. these terrible memories came up so you never know what goes on. but in his heart and soul come of this stuff was right there for him that it's moving to read because it is not just this sh show. he wants to assist in this account of his father's important life. [applause]

we want to say thank you to everyone for coming out. i want to stress as great a historian and biographer, you are a wonderful writer and what you are missing by not reading the book is quite a bit. if you would like a copy of the book we have copies for sale here and don't forget, next monday there will be another event. thank you. [applause] >> booktv visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what they are reading this summer. >> one that was a wonderful book called last fall the rise and fall of prohit