she's a member of the senate leadership team, thank you for joining us. >> guest: thanks so much. >> host: next on booktv, john larson puts it how industry put themselves to the detriment of the environment. david or without donald trump can win reelection in 2020. university of illinois of chicago history and latino studies professor and at history of deportation in america over the past 140 years. it all starts now on booktv. find more information about this and other author programs online, booktv.org. >> thank you for joining us. i'm the director of community partnerships for the massachusetts historical society. i would like to welcome anyone who might be joining us for the

first time. we are the oldest historical society in america dating back to 1791, independent nonprofit institution dedicating to publishing and sharing our nations history for the past 221 years, and amazing collection including papers of other us presidents. we are working on a covid-19 initiative to record the experience of a diverse group of people who live through these unusual times and make it available to future generations of researchers which we've taken hosting virtual programs, programs plan through the summer. next week we will be hosting a talk on the allocation on

19th-century -- you can find more information on this program and our other programs, consider joining us. we are looking at a new book, "laid waste!" which examines the mobilizing process in america and europe that puts together science and technology, political democracy and competitive capitalism and produced unimaginable wealth to material comfort to some but also brought the environment to a tipping point. a timely publication and discussion will be led by the author of the book, professor john larson. john larson is professor at purdue university, before coming to purdue he served as director of research at pioneer settlement, his earlier books include john larry forbes and

western development, internal improvement and the promise of popular government in the early united states. market revolution in america. before we begin our presentation i will run through a couple slides, how we use zoom, so if you comment or concern or complement feel free to reach out to me or the program coordinator, programs@masshis.org or you can support the massachusetts historical society, this is an image of our covid-19 website if you're interested in joining

that conversation. we use two functions for people to participate in the program on zoom. the first is in the q and a function at the bottom of the screen and as the program wraps up i will read the questions typed into q and a 2 hour speaker and try to answer as many as we can. you can also raise your hand which allows you to raise your hand. once you do that, we will try to call on a couple people who raise their hand but you should remember you have to unmute yourself. without further a do, we can have john larson join us. welcome to the mass historical society. >> thank you very much.

all these openings here. thank you, gavin kleespies. are we ready to go forward? >> guest: yes. >> host: okay. >> guest: let me get the program up here. share screen. and there. how does that look to you? >> host: looks great. >> guest: okay. off we go. thank you for setting this up and to all my other friends at mass historical. my hope was to do this in person. that is the next best thing in

the strange days of social distancing and quarantine and all the rest. i'm delighted to be here and have this opportunity to share some thoughts about this book that came out last november and got swallowed up by covid-19 like everything else going on these days. let me start, it is no longer news that we have degraded our environment in the name of progress. we are not alone. the western world has done a good job with this. the size of an exhausted earth and resulting social and cultural destruction are all around us. for some people this has come as a surprise. and unexpected disappointment at the end of a terrific run of

progress that goes up 250 years or so yet hidden in the familiar tale of how this land was conquered and transformed by our ancestors lies another narrative. a closer study reveals how ideas, perceptions and choices are made by generations past contributed to what i call a culture of exploitation that shaped and guided modernization in the new world. this alternative narrative leads relentlessly to the present environmental crisis. it is not a surprise but the logical outcome of this narrative but also it is possible the same new history can suggest ways to approach the critical century ahead. rather than a doom and gloom book i'm trying to reframe the past that might give us insight

into a way forward. "laid waste!: the culture of exploitation in early america" talks about the culture of exploitation reaching back to early modern england and the book exposes the dark side of discovery and development by settlers in the new world. celebrating freeman from limits and constraints left behind in england, settlers in north america, teams in their language and lay the foundations for american power. all the while european americans crafted a triumphal narrative in which they play the leading role promoting individual liberty, enterprise and industry, technology, innovation and capitals development, and individual freedom and limitless progress became so embedded in our stories that we see them as

natural and essential to our freedom and progress. this is simply not true. modernization generated american wealth and power but at a price paid by environmental ecosystems by the rest of the global population. populations in north america and abundant resources, found hundreds of thousands of africans in slavery not just to satisfy basic needs but to magnify their desires. exploitation through wind powered sailing ships, state sponsored progress, and a tragically new form of racial slave labor set the stage for industrialization. powered by the use of fossil fuels to drive big machines industrialization transformed material life in european and western societies resulting in

the modern capitalist world order. the story told by the victors naturalize these patterns of exploitation and established what economists call free market forces as if they were laws of nature can to gravity or thermodynamics. the process of modernization has brought the global environment to a tipping point beyond which life as we know it may not be sustainable. our children and grandchildren have learned as much from the story of the lorax by dr. seuss, many intelligent adults refuse to reflect historically on the ideas and practices that made us rich and powerful. in truth the, quote, natural forces driving modernization rely on axioms every bit as arbitrary as the bases of decimal arithmetic or the euclidean geometry.

history abounds with examples of axiomatic assumptions we managed to abandon in pursuit of more satisfying ways to understand the world. early generations of smart people believed political legitimacy depended on divine right monitoring. if you do not have a monarch appointed by god you could not have a stable state. we have learned to believe otherwise. in the 1500s eastern european people discovered their wealth and power could be magnified by enslaving african laborers. for 300 years this conviction reigns supreme and within 50 years it fell from favor in

much of europe and america. to accommodate the realities of climate change in the global crisis in the 21st century, we must imagine a paradigm shift of similar magnitude. we must notice there is a paradigm, modernization is not nature itself but is a story we tell about how nature works. we must find its roots in history and challenge his truth claims, learn to celebrate intelligent resource management and planetwide sense, sustainability and optimization must replace individual profit is the measure of economic value. a holistic concern for human populations in their neighborhood ecosystems, something that was once common among primitive cultures must supersede narrow claims about

private rights and gains as if it outweighs the common good of the planet. long ago terms like liberty, equality, ambition, even natural law seemed dangerous and disruptive until in the eighteenth century they found their way to common discourse, hopes, printss and philosophers who denounced free-market is dangerous antisocial until they were redefined in the nineteenth century as ideal and incorruptible. my goal in this book is to show another paradigm shift is achievable and survivable. let me offer a quick tour of the argument and it will be a

very quick synopsis. almost 300 pages if you want to read the whole thing. i start with a chapter called stability. our colonial forefathers came from a culture the cherished stability. inequality defined the social and economic system but it was inequality tempered by reciprocal obligations. the wealth and power of a few obligated them to guarantee subsistence for the many who served and obeyed them. the appearance of scarcity justified these any qualities. individual agency in the world of stability was restricted to a tiny class of inmates and even among those, ambition was stifled and suppressed by social and religious expectations. they treat that as a starting point before the world changed.

it is called abundance, the world of stability, encountered in unexpected world of boundless resources. this launched the colonial project that became european settlements in the new world and the introduction of an imagined abundance profoundly upset the framework of stability, men of reckless ambition found reward and few restraints and institutions designed to impose inequality and force reciprocity, individuals flourished, individualism flourished in the prospect of improving one's station in life replaced the objective of simply staying safe in place. the colonies became a new arena for unbridled self-love, a link which they used a great deal in the seventeenth century. chapter 3 turns to the matter

of achievement. colonization proved difficult and dangerous. anyone who has been through junior high knows about starving times but through the application of labor and exploitation of atlantic markets american settlers found themselves safe, secure and increasingly wealthy and then surveyed their own achievement and took credit for it is ignoring the windfall represented by the environment itself and the contributions of cosmopolitan britain in maintaining profitable markets. chapter 4 takes up the issue of liberation. after 1765 our colonial ancestors staged a rebellion against another country recasting their pride in the achievement of the -- recasting their pride in this achievement

in new revolutionary clothing as if their good fortune was but a prelude to the great work of preserving liberty as they said from old world corruption. this reshaping required fancy rhetorical exercises by our revolutionary leaders but they managed to recruit enough support among the people by promising liberty, equality and self-government. to all who would help them win. with independence firmly in hand, liberated americans turned to assess their own future. coastal settlements showed serious wear and tear by the end of the eighteenth century giving rise to some calls for agricultural reform, resource husbandry and economic restraint but if one listed

one's gaze to the west unimaginable abundance stretched quite literally across the continent. such bounty free for the taking, why would a free people impose limits and restraints on themselves, seemed to make no sense. real progress lay in front of them in the form of better exploitation of land, labor and resources. the key to this next chapter, improvement, the application of industry and ingenuity to a resource base to magnify its productivity so inventory showed them the boundless resource base and improvement will give them the key to taking advantage of it. technology took a leading role in the nineteenth century story, giving ambitious entrepreneurs new tools and techniques to develop their

wilderness, they participate in economic free for all and that is the stage for an dust realization and agrarian conquests of american material. chapter 7 takes up the question of destiny which every high school textbook has a chapter on manifest destiny. the astonishing progress of material success in antebellum america seemed to be proof enough that the united states was blessed with a world historical mission driven not by greed or gain but by destiny, americans marched across civilization across god's forgotten wasteland. after an embarrassing pause that we call the civil war, to

purge the shame of slavery and establish an unchallenged system of free labor and free enterprise posted for americans returned to the business of mastering their systems as they had launched them before the war. as the encountered frustrations in the form of eric lester lands, timberland, extravagant spaces to be covered or urban industrial pollution as we get into the end of the nineteenth century, there ingenuity and technological prowess seems capable of solving all these problems. .. objecting to the juggernaut of industrial progress. indeed there were. chapter 9 reviews some of them, starting with pharrell and

emerson and ending with a look at teddy roosevelt.the birth of the 20th century saw the rise of our first through conservation movement and primarily preserving natural wonders like the national park system and perpetuating natural resource base for modernization into the future. because the existing literature on environmental history so richly chronicles the 20th century story i chose to stop at this point, roughly 1900 or 1910 or so and turned to an epilogue designed to sum up the point and return to the central message of the book. the central message lies in the problem of the common good thus

we returned to modernization in the common good. it's my belief that self-centered self-righteous, self-created, self governed, self obsessed individuals simply did not foster community. an actual desert of atomistic individualism is a hobbesian dystopia marked by suspicion. the utopian side of the american experience originally contained the commonwealth ideal and support for terms like sufficient, adequate, satisfactory. to this day, for states still call themselves commonwealth, including massachusetts, even if honored in the breach restrictions on the sin of everest were commonplace in the cultures of our ancestors. they survive and ethical creeds from secular humanism to baha'i committed jesus sermon on the mount. in the culture of exploitation

backed up by classical economic claims about the virtue of greed as the one true human motivation these words are dismissed as childish sentiments without a place in the real world. we can embrace that commonwealth tradition while standing inside our history and our heritage, the central claim i want to make toward the end here. we don't have to be different. we don't have to leave the american experiment in order to do differently in the 21st century. the far left provocation to launch the world's first new self-created nation. i think we have an even better impulse to want to do so again. sorry, too many. there we go. the works of dr. seuss in that

story the greedy one slur cut down the trouble with trees to knit needs of things so useless and attractive the market grew exponentially. speaking for the trees and the living things that love them, the were asked begged him to stop, only when the last tree was filled the factory shut down leaving a barren landscape with bad air foul water and no living things. in sorrow and discuss the lorax of ascended into heaven "hoisted himself without a trace. this is clearly a redemption story. the point at which our children recognize without effort so that the high priest of orthodox economic liberalism. one such spokesman for liberalism put together a recent attack on a website

called ãbexplaining exactly what dr. seuss got wrong. in that argument he says, no capitalist would exhaust his raw materials simply put. counterintuitive. of course, can imagine that this could ever possibly happen, even though it happened almost endlessly throughout 300 years. the second argument he made come up private ownership would've prevented the exfoliation of the forest, according to dk williams, the only reason the ãbwas because it wasn't private property he had owned before as he would've taken better care to husband. williams also argues that fleets could not be useless by definition because people bought them. the definition of a useful product is if people buy it. one wonders what he would make

of mood rings and pet rocks. personal liberty is essential purpose of life, according to this economic dogma. so that the concerns of the war ask simply contradictory to the point of life which is individual freedom. reciting this catechism will not alter the judgment of the scientists, the reckoning is here. business as usual, it's not an option, or at least not a viable option. simple denial seems comforting and remains popular. especially if we watch only monthly or quarterly earnings reports. one of the greatest problems with the culture of exploitation is its tendency to look at the various short-term

and not the long-term. the problem is, denial guarantees ultimate tragedy of the commons in a state of denial we must grab the last tree before those who have cheated, those we have cheated, cheat us back. what's required? i'm arguing in this book. it is a new mental framework without which our efforts were not coherent. we need a new metrics that capture the commons, not just the tragedy of the commons. we need new models, personal and national interest. we need to cover the more utopian side that founded the country. with luck, cooperation and real ingenuity we can address the climate and environmental crisis of the coming century. we can reimagine the gift of liberty and the meaning of american freedom.

i believe we can try once more in the words of tom payne to make the world a new. go and read again. the lorax of dr. seuss. thank you >> thank you john. it's a very thought-provoking presentation and i think certainly very timely considering the condition of the world we are in today. i wanted to let the audience know that they have two ways they can ask questions they can type it into the q&a function or they can raise their hand. as you go to the top of the screen you'll be able to view the screen share. there it is.

okay. if people like to raise their hand they can. we have one name margaret who raised her hand and we are going to allow her to talk. margaret, if you want to unmute yourself. margaret, do you have a question? >> yes. i would like doctor larson to talk about the concept of growth, which seems to be the fundamental premise of the economic system today and seems conceptually to be unsustainable in the long term. >> this is something that economists are increasingly raising questions about themselves. the capitalist system drives on growth. that's been the source of what we consider progress, the generation of wealth and all that. growth does not always have to be quantitative enlargement. growth can also be be the

result of efficiencies. the results of more intelligent behavior. the results of better more equitable distributions. there is nothing in the world that says economic activity must pile up wealth in the hands of a few at the expense of many. an encouraging number of modern economists are beginning to question as thomas dickey just came up with another thousand page book called capital ideology in which he makes a very compelling argument for the idea that inequality is the primary purpose our assumptions about economy. in that they are not essential to either growth or prosperity but they are essential to maintaining the freedom of exploitation in the hands of the people who own most of the property. whether you like that line of

argument, any kind of sustainability involves growth for the sake of distribution, growth for the sake of catching up. growth for the sake of justice and something more like a reasonable standard of living. and then a great deal of what we call growth can and i think must be redirected toward the kinds of officious millions and economies that will stop the destruction of the planet and very possibly either stop or if we are lucky, reduce the trajectories of global warming and collapse that we are facing. it doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize that about a fourth to a third of the world's people consume the vast majority of the world's resources and if we were to

share a similar lifestyle with the other two thirds of the world's people, we would need two, possibly three more planets of raw material in order to do this. we don't have two or three more planets and i'm not sure we can squeeze quite that much gain out of just a little efficiency and a transistor or ãbwhat i call softer landing. >> barbara has typed and committed you notice any regional differences about community use of resources and thoughts about wealth while researching the bit? especially the 17th century between massachusetts and

northern colonies in virginia and the southern colonies. ? >> certainly. in fact, the first chapter the second chapter on abundance it works its way through virginia, massachusetts, and then down into the caribbean for a couple examples of sugar islands. in each case there was a good deal of difference about the details, the general trajectory in massachusetts for example there was a much stronger effort on the part of the establishment to reimpose that culture of stability. the sense of restraint and community and yet they found themselves almost incapable of doing so because at the same time, they were utterly excited about the prospect of taking indian land and making themselves rich. it's pretty hard to come in

fact, john winthrop got himself tied in knots over it. it's very hard to celebrate the prospect and we can all become rich and at the same time justify why i should be richer than you. and you should surrender that opportunity if it's not in my interest. in virginia of course it was bare naked almost from the beginning. although john smith to his credit wrote eloquently about how he wished it worked. he wrote vicious critiques of the kind of people that surrounded him in virginia, the problem of course is the kind of people who surrounded him in virginia were people like himself and the conditions in virginia simply rewarded whatever ambitions they had. it's very interesting when he moved to the sugar islands, the one that i looked at was providence island which is puritans again but they made almost no effort to prevent the kind of rise of commercial

society and instead went straight to a slave dominated sugar culture. and then of course barbados which came the poster child for sugar and slaves and for that model of exploitation. the key to that kind of an approach was simply that englishmen had no intention of staying there. he founded a horrible place to live but as long as they could import enough africans to do the work and could commandeer enough white servants to keep the africans in line, the money poured in. so there's a variety of stories you could probably pick up six or eight more colonial stories, especially in the 17th century. different variations in each case. what nets them altogether is the fact that almost nothing from the old english culture of

stability was able to survive in the face of the incredible opportunities that new world put abundance presented. what they did not have come in england what they had taken advantage of was the ancient assumption that the few would own the resources and the many would shut up and do what they were told. when they got to america the resources were by definition not owned by anyone. they made it very difficult to impose the idea that they belong to the crown where they belong to the leaders are they belong to one group over another. and what people discovered there were ways to get their hands on property, it was very difficult to stop them. >> megan has her hand up. we can allow her to talk. you have a question? >> thank you. hi john, it's megan black.

i really appreciated your presentation, i appreciate your book. in the way that is able to bring very multifaceted culture of exploitation into one frame. i love how you try to help us think through a pathway moving forward that draws on the insights about how this model of growth and abundance was predicated on the structures of ãbthat justify it inquisitive behavior across different expanding frontiers. in thinking about, what are some practical steps we might think through about the problem of the inequitable distribution. if we listen to the environmental justice movement today. is there any ideas that have cropped up or maybe referring back to history, are there paths not taken that allow us to think through things? sometimes reparations for slavery and colonialism come up as being vital to the climate change discussion.

do you have any thoughts about those kinds of mechanisms? based on your research? >> i have all kinds of thoughts. they are not necessarily based on my research. i very carefully point out that the central claim i'm trying to make is not that i know what to do next but that i recognize that there is a paradigm that we need to uncouple. i'm banking heavily on the idea that one to make that first step, then and admit for example that classical economics does not subscribe the same kind of phenomenon that the law of gravity does. as soon as we accept the possibility that a distributive system which is not inherently individualistic or inherently

competitive does not produce the end of the world, it does not produce a soviet style stagnation, carl pallone who was ãbeloquently about the fact that economics did not used to be this embedded in this way until the 19th century and that's exactly the same thing that thomas pickett he is arguing now that it is a way of organizing economic activity but is not the way or the only way and in some ways it's not the best way. one of the essential things i'm trying to attack in this book is the claim that we hear over and over again on the question of climate change and fossil fuels and all that, the idea that we just can't afford to change. we can't afford almost anything. we are the richest most incredibly productive most exploitative people the planet has ever seen. we can afford whatever we set

our minds to. we choose not to. one of the reasons i put the book together this way is to say we can choose to change that assumption. we can choose to say we can afford this and in a recent op-ed piece i have not yet placed anywhere, i make the point that in the face of the coronavirus all the sudden republicans and democrats in congress can pass trillions of dollars of fiat money in order to prop up a system that we consider to be essential and natural. and yet the very same people have argued for years and years that we cannot give money away to poor people, to hungry people, to unemployed. we cannot afford to write any of the injustices of the past because it would simply destroy the economy. $3 trillion in order to keep

the stock market afloat does not destroy the economy. why would $3 trillion to feed people be so much worse? it makes no sense to me. >> i think it's a very good point and i think it's interesting to think about the money spent following 9/11 and the military response. compared to what's being proposed in terms of public health. if you look at the death tolls, 3009 11, 100,000 right now. >> it's a little shocking really. okay maura said, is there a decade of the period you would identify as a turning point in the move away from the common good? >> i will give you three. they run together.

i would say basically the first three decades of the 19th century is when i think we truly lost our way and this is another point where people don't necessarily like my argument but i'm making kind of the pogo argument to say we lost our way, the american people embraced individualism that kind of unrestrained competitive behavior and is a piece of liberty as a piece of freedom. given that they had grown up in a world of martinsville is him and inequality and what seem to be arbitrary props to the wealth and power of the few one could certainly understand why this seemed very exciting. but if you look at the period of 1800 early 1830s or so, there's this wild embrace of markets as an alternative to the corrupt manipulation of ãb

corrupt governments, kings, queens, elites of one form or another. this seemed to be the magic cure. markets will distribute successfully what corrupt administrators will not distribute successfully. up until the middle 30s they appeared to be doing so. this is part of the reason i think we embraced it so successfully. then you start to get the panics. 1819 was certainly a wake-up call but it was the first massive kind of breakdown of the market system and people had reason to believe it was an anomaly. 1837 and then 39 got to appear more like it was gonna be systemic. 57, 73, 81, again, 93, and on

and on we go. eventually you have the recognition among the classical economists that there is this thing called the business cycle and you just have to live with it. in the in a sentence it selects an infection. it's something that gets loose once in a while and you have to live through it. that's part of the naturalizing of been talking about. it is essential to a free market economy but hardly anybody in the world actually has a free market economy. the british and the americans come this close as anyone ever has yet we have more social welfare for corporations and industries far more than we have for people or services or anything like that. as gavin was suggesting, if you look at our expenses in war,

the possible exception of this second world war most of what we spend on war is on behalf of the culture of exploitation. megan black, who was just on a minute ago, has written a fabulous book about how something as benign as the interior department has been an agent of extraordinary exploitation around the world in the guise of simply developing natural resources. which is to say using them for the advantage of americans over people who aren't using them. >> nina has raised her hand. we will let her ask a question. >> hi, how are you. i really appreciate that you started the book with a period of time, which i'm assuming is 1617 century ideas around that sort of reciprocal idea that those with power and wealth have found some responsibility to those with less.

i see that a lot in the histories of new england in particular in the ãbi'm wondering how come i struggle with reconciling the idea with the actions of great britain in the 16th century exploitation of ireland and scotland and the united states the exploitation of native americans and then africans. i don't know if you can answer that but is there a way to reconcile the ideas of reciprocity and responsibility with the actual actions of people? >> certainly you are absolutely right and honored in the breach was probably the quickest and easiest way to get around it. first of all, the culture of stability to some extent is a prop against which to part the first of a series of claims that will then march to the

rest of the book and in various places even in that chapter i point out that this was a very fragile idea suffering all kinds of difficulties in the 16th and 17th century. and was literally toppling as the new world came online. it's not as stark a contrast it becomes it's a useful sort of arguing tool but the fact of the matter is, if you go back to the agrarian crisis in the 16th century and the crisis of aristocracy, from all the literature from the 60s and 70s in england you see that's all falling apart in england. of course, what's knocking it down is the same thing. it's the access to markets and the possibility for profits by people who were in theory not supposed to have access to

those things. i think one of the things and make more of than most people who have written about this is the idea that we move toward a modern free economic system you admit more and more people to agency. when five percent of the population are the only ones allowed to make decisions that cost people their living, that cost people their survival, it's not that hard to keep that five percent in line. when you give 80% of the people free reign to do whatever they want with whatever resources they have, it becomes undoubtable. thankfully adam smith promised us the competitive marketplace would take care of that. unfortunately the competitive market and smith himself actually understood this quite well, he assumed the competitive marketplace would take care of that in a culture of christian gentlemen.

the theory of moral sentiments is the predecessor to the wealth of nations and without his assumption about the kinds of cultural and moral sentiments that made england civilized he would have placed i think nowhere near so much faith in the idea of the marketplace and if you read wealth of nations carefully there's all kinds of places he admits he thinks capitalists are probably cheats and liars. that there is certainly a proclivity among people to cheat their neighbors. he sort of hoping into the wind he is hoping that everyone will be at least well enough armed with information and capital that they can keep each other in check. the two things he utterly failed to comprehend and joseph stiglitz writes about this in several different places is the

inequality of information, access to information, and the inequality of access to capital. adam smith like to talk about the local miller and if he decides to raise the price of bread too high, even if he gets away with it in ãbpeople don't come down on him, someone else will open a bakery and start selling bread cheaper. that's fine. when pills perry builds a million-dollar milling operation in minneapolis and start selling wonder bread around the continental united states, who's going to jump in? and check that kind of market power. the whole centerpiece of al chandler's theater about managerial capitalism is at a certain level economists of scale reward high capital, very expensive, and frankly, quite sluggish organizations which

will then dig in and protect themselves, which is exactly what adam smith said capitalists would do if you let them get together over cocktails and didn't send somebody in to listen to what they were saying. andrew wrote the question how is your ãbfor example, i'm thinking alfred w crosby ecological imperialism, and the result of climate crisis. imprinting european agriculture and commissary, ã >> i relied the past in many different ways on crosby's work and particularly the ecological imperialism the whole idea of europe exporting it and

basically his ecosystem. with it. it's agricultural plants and animals, its understanding of resources and what they are good for and all that sort of thing. i think my argument and his arguments intersect i think fairly compatibly. my focus i think crosby is looking more at the larger unanticipated consequences. remember, there's a wonderful piece in there about i think one of the azores were somebody let's routes loose 50 years later there was nothing left green on the aisle because rabbits just do what rabbits do. one of the beauties of environmental history is that it's full of these kinds of

forces that are not under anyone's control. unfortunately, that fact often opens the door then to people saying, we can't do anything about it. climate changes can happen from climate change is always happening. the climates always get hot to get cold, things change. that's the way it goes. some people are arguing it will be great because will be able to play golf yellow around minnesota. not to worry. that's all true and the other truth is climate change won't destroy the planet climate change will destroy the habitat that human beings required for the planet. climate change didn't destroy the planet, it destroyed the dinosaurs. and we don't have any now. and we too can be dinosaurs but the planet will be around. as will other planets.

environmental history in some ways the environment is to use a musical metaphor, the continual, it's the double base doing long-haul notes back and forth behind all this. riddell did the same thing wonderfully in the opening of the mediterranean we talked about those long slow forces that peasants and shepherds and people like that understood to be the forces of history and in 1500 pages later you get to the court of philip the second were people make decisions in a matter of an afternoon. those different time frames are absolutely essential. my goal was to try to get to focus on lands on the kind of decision-making people actually

do and therefore expose those moments, i think that was megan asking but the moments in which people had a choice they chose left and not right they chose right and not left. they are not big choices. it's not like there's a moment in which we said, to hell with it let's go here. it is the accumulation of hundreds and hundreds of what seemed to be in oculus choices. until he finally turned around and realize these lock themselves together in a system. industrialization is a perfect example i'm not one of the innovations that produced big machine industrialization wasn't immediately recognized as a world changing affair. each one was a solution to a very simple problem. if you've ever done hand spinning and you know we all use textiles to death. if you ever did hand spinning he realized that for 100 years the idea you could somehow ramp

up a spinning wheel so you could make 16 threads instead of one was enormously attractive. making one thread was very slow and you could spend all day long and not have enough to make a stocking. all of a sudden somebody comes up with a simple solution it's called us spinning jenny and you can make 16 at 832 and pretty soon it 64 then it's 15,000 spindles running with the waterpower behind it. no one saw that coming quite that way. they invented a steam engine to pump water out of the coal mine because coal was absolutely essential for the midlands in england in order to make more iron and steel but because the timber cut all the trees down. the truck dealers were gone. they needed the coal and needed to pump the water out once they figured out how to do that and

then then watts says i have an idea let's put a crank on that sucker we can make a go around. the kind of locking together, small incremental steps is what made the culture so attractive, so seductive but also irreversible. here we sit talking on zoom around the world because we can't go out. i'm sure that in the 14th century people have enjoyed doing that too. >> i think we have time for one more question and anna has raised her hand we will let anna speak if she would like to. >> can you hear me all right? >> yes.>> wonderful. i have a question on behalf of your grandson who i'm raising in the commonwealth of massachusetts. he has read the lorax.

he's also finishing up these weeks of remote learning he's finishing up a unit on the american revolution and i've been struck as i have been helping him with his homeschooling how are narrative about those kinds of american milestones have not changed since i was 11 years old. studying the american revolution and recall some of the things you told me when i was 11 years old about the american revolution that we were necessarily talking about in school. we continue to tell our children that the american revolution was a story of revolting against tyranny in the fight for freedom and liberty and that england was bad and american colonists were being treated unfairly and this is incredible victory.

certainly lots of kinds of those things are true. when we paint it simply as the american colonists with the jedi and england was the death star, how will my son and children of his generation, how will they recognize the kind of paradigm you're talking about in order to see that there is a much more nuanced story unfolding here. . how will we start to teach them to go looking for it. ? >> i started with you but trying to tell you long time ago that the story of the revolution was a revolting story. the real question is, when do you introduce that kind of critical perspective? i often tell my college students that i don't really want fourth-graders to take up arms against the regime.

because their judgments are not necessarily dependable. the republican army in africa is a good example of what happens when you arm eight-year-olds and tell them they are fighting for liberty. but certainly much sooner than we generally do we need to introduce the possibility that there is more to these stories. the american revolution will always be a tough one because of course it's the bedrock of our patriotic narrative and it's very mixed story. on one hand the idea of freedom and democracy are enormously attractive and should be enormously attractive. on the other hand, they were not pursued in the way that the narrative would like us to believe. they have been perverted and distorted over time. perhaps one of the better altar of narratives we can take up right now is the narrative that

in the beginning americans had slaves and they discovered slavery was evil and they had a civil war and they got rid of and isn't that nice? yet in every city in the country right now we are still watching people say yes, but, yes, but. we been saying yes, but, since i was 11. these things are the narratives are comforting, particularly comforting for those of us whose interest they serve and part of what i'm trying to do and part of what i've been trying to do all these years as a history teacher is to shake people out of that comfort. and get them to recognize especially in a free society have an obligation to know that

there is another side of the story. >> that was a remarkably timely way to end the program. great presentation, thank you for joining us and thanks to all our guests for joining us. before we go we want to make sure people know that they can buy a copy of "laid waste!", we encourage everyone to support their local bookstore. if you don't have a favorite local bookstore nhs's favorite shop is tried in books they have it in stock now. if you order it it will be at your door shortly and you will be supporting a locally owned business. as always we say we hope you enjoy this program, happy to present the programs for free during this period of coronavirus but if people have the ability to support nonprofits the nhs is a nonprofit we encourage you consider to support our organization.

thank you for taking time for us and everyone have a great rest of the afternoon and thank you john for joining us. >> thank you gavin. >> booktv on c-span2 has taught nonfiction books and authors every weekend coming up this weekend, sunday at 9:00 p.m. eastern on "after words", wired magazine editor stephen leavy discusses his book "facebook: the inside story" interview by author and financial times global business columnist ã at 10:00 p.m. eastern former speaker of the house newt gingrich offers his thoughts on why president trump should be reelected with his book "trump and the american future: solving the great problems of our time". watch booktv on c-span2 this weekend. >> a look now at some publishing industry news, donald trump junior has announced he will release a book next month that's critical of presumptive democratic presidential nominee joe biden. a self published book titled "liberal privilege" will be at

available at the end of august to coincide with the republican national convention. andrew wiseman, former prosecutor for special counsel robert mueller plans to publish his account of a two year investigation into russian interference of the 2016 presidential election. the book "where law ends" published by random house and for sale on september 29. in other news, publishers weekly reports on how authors are getting creative with the release of new books during the coronavirus pandemic first-time novelist melanie conroy goldman is invited readers to attend an outdoor driving event will best-selling thriller offered daniel silva is working with several independent bookstores to live stream his book launch including a virtual tour of where he writes. also in the news, according to npd bookscan print book sales are up almost three percent for the first half of the year with 322 million copies sold. the rise in sales is led by young adult nonfiction books while adult nonfiction sales

are down by about 3.5 percent for the year. the national book foundation has announced due to ongoing concerns over the coronavirus pandemic, the 71st annual national book awards will take place online on november 18. booktv will continue to bring you new programs and publishing news you can also watch all of our archived programs anytime at booktv.org. >> good evening and welcome to another stream webinar. they keep joining us. we are pleased to feature david horowitz himself discussing his important new book from hugh maddox books titled "blitz" trump will smash the left and win". in just a moment i will turn things over to david, after he speaks he will take some questions from those of you viewing and i will come onto helps to facilitate that. david horowitz the founder of the freedom center former ãb