stand against white nationalism . >> i think there's people that wow, the president came out and said this stuff, i can do and that emboldened them and that's why they felt comfortable coming to charlottesville . if he can say comfortably, so can i. people use to wear hoods and a use to do this at night. they don't think they have to wear anymore and in charlottesville they came out, this was their big coming-out party and they got hurt badly in charlottesville . >> watch book tv every weekend on cspan2 . to>> back with peter canalis and were going to be talking about his story are americans falling out of love with their landmarks? good morning. >> guest: good morning >> host: tell me the story, why did you decide to write this article ? >> guest: i was shocked when i heard about the persistent drop since the late 80s at

some of our most iconic sites so you're looking atcolonial williamsburg, i traveled there as a child, you traveled there. a lot ofamericans got their first taste of american history there . this airship is about half what it was in the late 80s . you look at gettysburg, iconic sites, amazing site. america's greatest, high water mark of the confederacy, turning point of the civil war. it's down about a quarter of what it was in the 1970s. these are very surprising statistics and when a colleague brought them to our attention, we decided to do a photo essay to also kind of meditate on what it is that has decreased our interest in these historic sites. and what i came back with from talking to people and from looking at some of the numbers is that the sort of cold war era american story that tale of great events and visiting the scenes where the homes and the meeting places

of great figures in american history, people have lost interest in it. it's no longer relevant and credible to people in the same way. and in the 1980s, 1970s, people saw american freedom as being undersea or in the cold war. today ac many of the threats to the united states freedoms came from within. it's a different kind of story so these have suffered a lot in visitor ship. >> as a kid who grow up in the 1980s i remember smy parents in a station wagon taking me to these places around the south or where you would travel outside of the south so why are people not going tothese places? what's the reason behind this drop ? >> the reason behind the drop is they don't relate to the events that went on there anymore and it's a sad

tdevelopment but it's also an understandable development when you considersome of the changes in society. some of those stories did not take full account of some of the less flattering aspects of american history . we have a culture now that is more diverse culture, also a deeper understanding in the realm of history of some of these events and the story changed, the story having people so people have kind of lost interest. we fight these battles over statues of civil war generals and things like that and it serves to discourage people from relating to the core story of the civil war and the americas for freedom. >> you part of the problem being that a lot of the information we used the evil together only from history books and from these national sites is not available on the internet? >> guest: maybe. during the stirrings of the cold war when you and i were ingrowing up i think it was an emphasis on the heroic story of freedom. we were countering the soviet union. people felt that was an existential threat to the

united states so we our freedoms more seriously. i also think a lot of the more progressive trends in american history because of the soviet critique of american history.we had a thought to those ideals we were talking about, as well as civil-rights movement happened and you know, that was a triumphant story during that time. now the more cynical a and i do think that those who care about american history and american leaders need to think about ways to update that story and to make it relevant for younger people because it's a crucial part of our unity as americans see one i want to read from your article where this is almost to keep your point for me. today america finds itself in needof a national story that acknowledges the pain of the rt past . the struggle to overcome but also emphasizes the ways in which all americans pursue a common path to righteousness.

it should be a story that doesn't look away from suffering but doesn't demand victims and finger-pointing . tell me what you meant by that. >> guest: i think thewa narrative that drew a lot of people to gettysburg, to colonial williamsburg, to philadelphia's national historical park , to those kind of places was the revolution era story of americans fighting against tyranny and achieving freedom. today, we say we achieve freedom for some people, we can achieve freedom for all people. women 100+ years, african-americans 100+ years, immigrants, native americans. there are lots of people left out of that story and we need to take greater acknowledgment of that. and i certainly agree with that. it's consistent with an evolving understanding of what american history is. the problem is there was never a story, it was never incorporated into a new national mitt, into a new national story president obama came close to doing it

right at the beginning of his presidency on the night that he won the presidency when he said that only in this country can this kind of breakthrough have occurred and talk about the long fight to make a more perfect union it was sort of a triumphant moment that he was inviting all americans to share and because protecting the union has been a consistent theme for all of american history. i think during the obama presidency, that all unity was lost. although president obama's law fault, it may have been his critics fault, it may have been both but it didn't take hold in the way it might have taken hold and now we're in a much more divisive moment when we have the make america great again message with a lot of people reflexively tune out. they see it as something that is part of a very conservative range and you

know, we need a unifyingstory here in the united states . >> we want you to join this conversation, that means if you live in the eastern or central time zone we want you to call 202 748 8000. if you live in the mountain or pacific time zones, your phone line is 202 748-8000 one and if you've visited a historic site in the last year which we all should have, if you've lived in the historic site in the last year i want to see a special line for you and we want to hear about your experience and how it could improve. your phone line is 202748 8002. we are always ready on social media, on twitter and on facebook. and on c-span. you take on the and aga narrative and i wantto read a paragraph where you talk about this . older americans grew up on the american story and it's

magic now grieve for a loss of american exceptionalism. that yearning may drive them waand like-minded younger people to attend july 4 celebrations at the lincoln memorial. he andaga narrative is a replacement for the more gently drawn natural story of the cold war years . it reinforces the greatness of america not as an aspirational tail but as a kind of factual claim about the nation . a status was lost, stolen in fact by a politically correct crowd of disbelievers and it's this. superiority and the cold war message, the m aga story regards all the other countries as competitors to vanquish as if superiority lies in the conquest of others.. >> guest: i think older americans who grew up as we did during the cold war and learned our history from the

books that we were taught in public schools but also in visiting these sites and hearing this great story, they feel as though that story has been tarnished by critics, that people have come away at it, acted, tried undermining and that those people are and american. in point of fact, dissent and revisionism have been part of american history since the colonial days . i don't think that an president from as certainly attacked into that frustration. and there are people who want to see a heroic narrative of the united states again and they can pump is going to get them. >> let's talk iris was calling from leah michigan and iris visited a historical site iris, which site have you visited in the last year?

>> caller: is too many to name, we can get the children everything we can see but i really believe that people are living such, i don't know. perverted lives that we didn't know from as we were growing up andthey don't like the simplicity. it's to draft comments to playing. they'retoo busy . there always texting . and looking for. we used to go through life without finishing up. i never finished my living room but we got along great and everything was cool and we visited everythingthere was . nobody wants to connect with their roots anymore, i don't know what they're in such a hurry to get to but they don't want to seeplaying, drab, ordinary . it's just the way it is. a quick. >> guest: i think the caller

is on to something. she's talking about the extent to which social media has supplanted a kind of public convening of specific interests and you hear people talk about this kind of life quite a bit which is a related issue i think the people not visiting historical sites and certainly life has become more complicated and the internet has a ball organizing effect on society. when you go online, you look for like-minded people and you hear like-minded stories. you don't hear a national narrative, you hear the critiques of smaller groups hiand i think that discourages people from identifying with a strong national story. >> host: a couple are on our social media line who quagree with you. one person tweets, millennial's don't care much about history. here's another tweet that says intelligent people flock

to historical sites all over the world. lack of interest has to do with our failed education system and the need for technological entertainment because most people are taught to think for themselves so should our historical sites start doing more, going to where the people are , demanding people come to them? >> guest: i think they are. they're trying to incorporate a more collocated narrative and trying to add more interactive elements. just in the belief that accustomed to getting feedback online that they're going to want to have answers delivered to them very equickly when they visit these sites . i think there's alsosomething those commenters are on that contemplation , visiting a place, sort of envisioning something yourself and experiencing it may have been something that kids learned 40 years ago and now in this culture of more instant gratification, people are

processing information in a very different way. >> host: do you think the reinterpretation we were talking about earlier of american history, trying to make it more complex, trying to make it more inclusive. is that turning off people from coming to these sites and we were talking about the confederate statues where in some places there being contextualized but they're not being taken down. is that turning people away from coming to these sites? >> guest: i think a little bit. people who are the custodians of these sites, historians and politicians need to take account of the need for a sort of coherent national dostory beyond this. not something that's constantly being picked at and changed all around. the battle over some of those monuments makes a lot of sense when it's anhonorific . when you'renaming a highway for somebody .

when it is a statue that commemorates a battle where somebody perhaps died, it's a very different thing. your learning history and your experiencing story and the two messages have somehow gotten confused a little bit in people's mind. you can go to gettysburgand be on by what happened there and be odd by the courage of the confederates who ran up the hill in pickett's charge to their death . you can also be inspired by half mile awaywhere lincoln delivered the gettysburg address . it's a little bit more complicated kind of message but it does not require either an allegiance to the confederacy or a hatred of the confederacy and some constant shunning kind of way. it requires an understanding of what came out of the civil war, the new birth of freedom lincolnproclaimed right there at gettysburg . that's what inspires people and that's what we need to focus on class let's talk to

a color from far rockaway new york, goodmorning . >> caller: i agree that it is education. we are not teaching the children atschool history , but the problem really is false history. the narrative that was fun from the beginning is false. and now that we're older now and we're seeing that history is being more inclusive, how can we not think about the direction of this country? it wasn't true and if not inclusive and that's all i have to say. >> i think that's true. i think people feel in light of current understanding and a more inclusive society that the message was delivered in the cold war , that tale of heroism was too simplistic. it wasn't fully through. what we need to do though is fine a version of it that

looks at what we share in common and what has been successful as much as what has not been successful and that honors the process of trying to perfect that unit and improve that story. that's what president obama was onto his time and i just, it never quite too cold. he never emphasized enough but the people who see it as a simple tale of heroism should take note of all the many, many injustices in american history but people see only injustices after look at all the successes and the ways in which american experience has improved for people . >> host: let's talk to david from new york, good morning area in which historical sites you visited in the last year? >> i visited the hamilton grave on july 4. we all bicycled up to the

hamilton range and other sites in the area. my question is what i was goingto say , i can't visit a lot of historical sites lebecause i don't drive but the public transportation system is portable in this country and they don't buckle the side so if i was to take a train or i wouldn't even be allowed to ride my bicycle to the actual historical site. let's say mount vernon or its gettysburg or even madison's estate. at the big issue. >> i think i wondered, i don't have any clear information on this a lot of r 'people were introduced to the sites on school trips. our school not taking as many tricks? maybe you need to respond to a more public narrative as the storage schools from going places but that solves the transportation problem, that the caller was referring to. >> we still are a very culture and you're not living , we're lucky we live here in

washington so we can get to all of the national cemeteries, the capital, the supreme court but if you're not in a city or living nearby, you pretty much have to take a car or a bus to these places. >> guest: perhaps that's something the national parks service can take into consideration, they've been putting money into new museums that have reinterpreted some of their core sites . they also because they were all part of men national arts that had aboom at the same time some of the historical sites have suffered a little bit , but the question of access is a very important one and having some of reliable inexpensive transportation would certainly help. >> let's talk to chris who lives in south bill arizona, chris is visited a historical site,where do you go ? >> caller: i took my son to

picasso beach on the way to tucson. i think it's a historical site. they had a civil war reenactment and it was beautiful but i don't know, maybe it was accurate, maybe it wasn't but it was sterilized in the sense there was an african-american woman there but there were no african americans in this reenactment. i don't know if that's accurate or not but i think part of the problem is a lot of it has been sterilized. having an upbringing that goes along with the african-american experience , that honors that suffering and if we did that, that would pull more people in. nowadays, people realize this maybe isn't accurate. this is, there was a lot of stuff about the african experience and the suffering they endured.

>> guest: that's an excellent point. i think also goes to the back a lot of historical sites are in private hands. we think in terms of the national parks service site but even some of the most important and biggest ones are actually privately controlled and while the national parks service has made an effort to have a much more inclusive presentation, not every site and that may be discouraging some people. in the case of civil war reenactors, these tend to be private groups that study the al battles and try to reenact the battles and that's an excellent point . there were many african-american soldiers on the union side and if the battle is reenacted and there are african-americans, it's not an accurate portrayal. >> let's talk to scott was calling from huntersville connecticut . did i pronounce that correctly? >> caller: you did and pobunches was a section of the mohicans so i'm close to historical sites associated with the mohicans i agree

with your guest that the 1960s in particular held up a mirror to the united states not only because of the cold war but i believe the cause of full rock music. that's why we had a convergence of the civil rights movement , women's movements, environmental movement, animal-rights movement, go on and on and i think there's a disconnect from nature in general in this country that's gotten worse. i would say that if you look at the statistics of people that are visiting our national parks, i don't know if the attendance has gone up or down but i would say that most of the visitors are probably foreign visitors as opposed to us citizens, at least from my experience that seems to be but if you go to places like antietam, you go right the burnside bridge because used to read about it with bruce cavins civil war

history or when i went to san antonio for the first time. even when my train came in in the middle of the night around midnight i went right to the alamo, took a photograph of it with the full moon in the background because i grew up idolizing dede crockett. and i think there's a disconnect in american now. >> i agree that some of the mystique is gone from those nights. people who grew up with dede crockett and the alamo, it's a powerful experience. i think if you don't have that story and you don't have an understanding of what happened, the alamo is kind of this little theme in the middle of antonio, having been there. there's an interesting question there also about history and nature and whether they are related at all. i think they are. your appreciation of the natural world is also your appreciation of things that came before and are also part of the culture. may not be tangibly there.

i think that an appreciation of the two you go hand-in-hand and you know, as i said, statistics show that attendance at national parks is a but it also is true that there's a tremendous increase in foreign tourism maybe that accounts or more of it. >> i want to touch on something you said. there are a lot of people who learnthe story of the alamo from the tv show daily crockett . so how much does their payment have to do with our interpretation of what american history is. where a lot of people learn about civil war from gone with the wind. that's when they discovered it. but all of those are entertainment doesn't exactly tell the historical story maybe they make people want to goback and learn the real story . how does entertainment have to do with our interpretation of history and our desire to go cds rhetorical sites -mark

. >> that's cute and argue historical movies these days, lincoln was the master later hit of historical movies rnwhich marvel comics has taken that on, that role right now. if somebody read gone with the wind or saw gone with the wind earlier on were going to have an attachment to the civil war area is certainly a one-sided attachment to the civil war from gone with the wind although it wasmuch that i admire in that novel . i think that it is just as you said an inducement to learn more and to understand the sort of dramatic reality of the past area i think what kids sometimes struggle within learning history is it seemedlike a whole pile of facts . and yet, an entertainment presentation, that makes it real. you see real people interacting area i tend to give the kids of my friends

johnny tremaine which i love country, that is something that inspires people to become interested in the american revolution and is not the whole story but it's something that gets people in the time and thinking about it. the one beside about lynn was calling from atlantic beach florida, is also, has been to historical sites, where you go after mark. >> to the massachusetts for the first time with my 10-year-old grandchild . the ultimate field trip. we started in on board and talk about the beginning of the revolution . and then we talked about the d literary life of the 1800s. we went to walden pond. one of the greatest visits was to go to quincy and stand on the sidewalk and look through the neighborhood in which john adams birthplace is now situated. and imagine that abigail stood there and looked out at the seat of boston while her husband was at the

continental congress, that was amazing. then we went to plymouth and stood there and thought about our four ancestors who came over on the mayflower so my 10-year-old grandchild is very steep now in american history .. >> .. r >> washington five every morning at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span .org. we now take you to the arab center for a discussion on iran. the growing tensions between the u.s. and iran. live coverage on c-span2. >> today we