american revolution. host: author stacy schiff, besides the fact you have written about them, what do ben franklin, the witches of statement -- wishes of salem, cleopatra have in common? stacy: off the top of my head, they are people and moments that change our world. people that leave the world different to the one they had been born, and i think that's what i'm looking for any a subject. some subject which resonates for me on a personal level because biography is kind of a marriage. but also where you feel there's a shift in time, a shift in space. in cleopatra's case, the world came crashing down with her death and the roman empire

begins. the salem witch trials, for better or worse, as a sense of here is where you don't want to go and what you don't want to do, there is an anti-message in a way. in each of these i could make a case it is a world changing moment and i come to each of them what they certain set of questions that start to obsess me. those questions write themselves into the book in some ways but not necessarily in a way you as a reader will ever notice. this is a way of getting there in some way. cleopatra was born largely out of a series of articles of women in power. why are women in power such a toxic and difficult combination? i cap think in cleopatra is perfect but how do right a life of cleopatra when you have no material? there sometimes a driving

question were set up obsessions and i feel like they reveal privately in the book. host: one of the things you writing cleopatra is she's unaware she lived in a hellenistic age. stacy: and the person that would be her undoing would be the name of gustus. that's the beauty of reading history is that we come to it knowing how it's going to turn out but for 300 or 400 pages, the author is going to pretend they did not preordained in some way and the reader can in a good way suspend disbelief and be along for the ride. host: what was the hellenistic age? stacy: it's basically a greek age in which the greeks no longer participate. a culture has survived, by cleopatra's day, it has become alexandrian. alexandria has become the

capital of what remains of greek culture. cleopatra, the end of the hellenistic age, the death of alexander the great, alexandria is immensely written about in the ancient world. but we have two no trace of it. every traveler who went to alexandria said in short i cannot describe this city. it's impossible to describe and then they went on for 30 pages describing it because it was a city of such sophistication in such marble. if you want today dog trainer or tutor or doctor or craftsman, you went to alexandria because it was a city of such sophistication and opulence. host: i want to read a quote from cleopatra -- in the absent -- in the absence of fast, this rushes in aud of history. one record we haveonructed around a front then another.

a commanding and -- commanding woman, versed in politics, fluent in nine languages, silver tongued, charismatic, cleopatra nonetheless seemed the joint creation of roman propagandists and hollywood directors. her history was written by her enemies and the fictions have only proliferated. stacy: those are just a few of the problems writing about cleopatra. women's history for starters is more difficult than writing about a male figure. women are famously not as good at keeping their archives and their lives are not well documented through history. they often don't keep their papers, their papers get lost. in cleopatra's case, almost uniquely, she is inflated by her critics, by the romans to write about her because she needs to be a larger-than-life figure to justify the victory that octavian will win over her.

he has to magnify cleopatra's powers. so she becomes this oversized figure. she's also this larger-than-life character. from the start, by the time the romans start to write about her, they emphasized her tremendous shrewdness, her tremendous sexuality, what an incredibly crafty woman she was and poor mark antony. but they make her something of a cartoon character sometimes, but this larger-than-life figure. host: was she even a gypsy in? stacy: alas, she was macedonian greek. host: -- was she even a gypsy in? stacy: we not only know she was macedonian greek but from every angle, it is possible there is a persian princess who snuck in

there somewhere but she is macedonian greek. we know relatively little about what she looked like except what is on her queen portraits. the two conceptions about her was that she was egypt in and look like elizabeth taylor are erroneous. she looked largely like her father if the queen portraits are to be believed. plutarch tells us she was by no means beautiful specifically, but sort of sunken cheeks and a hook nose and deep set eyes, very somatic looking. other than that, all bets are off as to what she looked like. host: and she was cleopatra the seventh. stacy: exactly. host: who are the other cleopatra's? stacy: she descends from this

kind of meddlesome, rancorous queen. one of the interesting things about writing about cleopatra was women are not just powerful in egypt, in ancient world, there were quite a few females that wielded a great deal of power. at the height of cleopatra's power, she ruled over a term and a swath of territory, from libya to egypt and modern-day israel to the south of turkey. she rules over a term in this territory and she's the first female to have had that kind of power. previous women had held power as well as other sovereigns in the ancient world, but quite different than they were in the mediterranean world. host: was she raised to be the queen of egypt? stacy: all the children seem to

have been immensely well educated. the library of alexandria was quite literally in her back yard. we know a great deal about her education. her education would have been the same education marc anthony or julius caesar or any wellborn member of the mediterranean world would have enjoyed at that moment. we know what she would have read, how she learned to read, which texts she read, which comedies she read, how she learned how to speak. it seems as if every child was raised to rule because it was a very bloodthirsty family and siblings would very often eliminate each other to hold on power. everyone -- you never really know to whom power was going to

descend. cleopatra was the only sibling to survive. host: it really was a game of thrones, wasn't it? she limited her 13-year-old brother husband. stacy: her brother at one point goes to rome, an interesting dynamic at the point when cleopatra is born. when the father returns, he eliminates that sister. cleopatra will end up in a civil war with one of her brothers and in the course of that war, that brother seems to die. she will then eliminate the other brother and later marc anthony will murder her sister. so she's the only one that survived over the age of 21. host: when she descended from alexander the great? stacy: no, but the perception in

the ancient world was alexander the great, a very enterprising general, ptolemy had turned his body to alexandria and claimed descent from this family. it's like a mail order coat of arms, a trumped up family pedigree that served them immensely well in a world that worshiped the memory of alexander the great. there's something about ptolemy that in roman eyes spoke of alexander the great. a very tenuous connection. but there was this splendor about cleopatra because of the relationship, the purported relationship with alexander the great. host: was she a deity or did she have a belief system? stacy: that's one of the many unanswerable questions here. she was thought to be a deity, she dressed as the goddess isis, comports herself as the goddess isis, sacrifices are made to

her. did she think of herself as a deity? it's an impossible question to answer. certainly in the eyes of her people, over whom she ruled with immense finesse, she is thought to be a benevolent, supreme deity. host: she lived before christman even born, once you decide you want to write about cleopatra, where do you start to research? stacy: i had thought about cleopatra as a subject before and this sounds crazy, on benjamin franklin. i couldn't figure out how to write a book where we have one word at most from cleopatra's hand. we have no documents, all of our sources are roman men who most of them were not quite hostile to cleopatra. most of our accounts of her are from her detractors.

how do you possibly get your mind around it? how do you reconstruct these lives from these biased accounts? i had gone back to plutarch whose portrait of marc anthony cleopatra almost hijacks. he's writing about cleopatra and can't seem to stop himself. there is a theme of mark anthony and cleopatra out fishing one day in which mark antony, who is not faring well at fishing gets one of his men to dive under the water and attach a pre-call -- pre-caught salted herring to the line which she -- wish he reels up and cleopatra catches him and challenges him to a fizzing -- fishing contest. she then informs him that he should be fishing, he should be conquering kingdoms. which is like telling your

husband you have better things to be doing. i suddenly thought plutarch is born 76 years after cleopatra died. this is all hearsay. but you have this dialogue and he sets the scene. could you not reconstruct a life of cleopatra and give her scenes that have come down to us with some validity and real sense of scenery? once i started researching, i realized there was a lot more there than i realize and you could actually construct something like a full life as long as you kept an eye on who the chroniclers were and what side are they on and why were they saying what they were saying? you have to keep the chronicle wears them self in the picture -- the chroniclers themselves in the picture. that may have been someone -- something someone who is writing

that hated women or writing for a future roman emperor. host: act one, rise to power, back to, julius caesar, act iii, caesar and octavian. stacy: it's pretty good, right? when she comes to power, that would not have been the way she would have perceived it. an astonishing two decade long hold on power at a time when rome is inexorably on the rise, egypt is about to fall to rome as it remained for thousands of years as an independent power, but she still thinks there's a way to maintain the integrity of egypt. host: how would you describe the relationship between rome and egypt? stacy: it is an interesting one. egypt is the richer of the two countries and rome as a military power. egypt did not believe -- it believes in buying power, not

conquest. all hellenistic sovereigns were looking at the rise of rome and seeing their wad -- they are marching toward us about to devour us. cleopatra's father had essentially tried to buy off the romans. egypt is also the breadbasket of the mediterranean. so rome is very reliant on egypt and is looking at egypt and this plays an in norma's role for cleopatra. it is a land of excess, a land no one can quite trust, terry exotic, very erotic, everything is sensuous there and the romans don't trust it. so they are already being looked at askance and at the same time being looked at with tremendous envy because of its riches and incredible harvest. host: the cover of cleopatra -- who did that and why did you

choose it? stacy: i'm so glad you asked. when you write about someone about -- someone like cleopatra, how do you do the jacket? the images we have are the queen portraits. in my mind, i told the publisher we put a coin on the jacket because that was the only image upon which we could rely. the publisher replied would you like to sell six copies are seven copies? we know how cleopatra did her hair. we know from the queen portraits that she rolled pearls into her hair. this was the genius idea of the artistic director at little brown who is actually have to danish and have to minnick and. her hair is done in the fashion you see on the coin. host: so this is a photograph? stacy: it is a photograph that

looks like a painting. the earrings, which i will tell you and your viewers was done with a glue gun on a kitchen table matches the earrings she's wearing in the queen portrait. host: you spend quite a bit of time and cleopatra talking about the city of alexandria. undescribable and then you describe it. why did it rise to such prominence? stacy: it's the wealthiest city and immensely cosmopolitan city. it's a city in which you are likely to meet people from all over the world. if you wanted anything in the world, you went to alexandria. it was the new york or paris in the terms of the day. it was immensely important to make clear this was the cosmopolitan center, the center of learning, the center of sophistication. there's a reason cleopatra speaks nine languages and that's because it was this melting pot of a city. it's a city without a rival, a city of automatic doors and huge

avenues with marvelous amounts of onyx and precious metals and it gleamed like no other city. host: founded by alexander the great. stacy: founded by alexander the great. host: the greatness was because of him or cleopatra? stacy: the greatness was an inclusion after the age of alexander the great stop people had gravitated there, the library had been built there and cleopatra's forbearers -- this collection was said to have held -- we don't know if it is true -- all of the books of the ancient world, which was possible at the time. they had built this library with a terminus premium on learning. something cleopatra would have known and learned in alexandria listings that would have been

forgotten for thousands of years. she knew the value of pi, she knew longitude and latitude, new -- that is the work of the previous ptolemies and their having raised the library to the that shirt it is. host: does the library still exist? stacy: there is but it is not the same library. we don't know what happened to the alexandrian library. it may have been burned when julius caesar -- julius caesar was there. there is now a new library there. host: in the maps you have in the book of alexandria, there appear to be three temples of isis. who was isis or what was her reputation? host: iced -- stacy: isis is the supreme goddess of egypt. she combines them at her, hera,

combines all of the goddesses of harvest come of love, the goddess of families and eternal love, she sets the earth in motion, she has tremendous power. it's the reason women were so well respected -- you have this female deity who is the willing deity. we have many accounts of isis temples in rome having been destroyed because she was understood to be a somewhat dangerous cult. but in egypt, she reigned supreme. cleopatra dresses like isis, is worshiped as a manifestation of isis. host: does she have children? stacy: she has one child with julius caesar and twins with marc anthony. she has this remarkable ability to get pregnant by the right people at precisely the right time. host: did they rise to

prominence? stacy: they would have had she survived. it becomes a problem once -- what to do with her son with julius caesar which is one sees too many. at this point when he's a teenager, she tries to send him off to safety with a fortune, dispatches them from alexandria. he's ultimately brought back and killed. the other three children are taken back to rome by octavian and raised by his sisters in her household. they are displayed as a triumph in rome over cleopatra. we never hear about the sons again but the daughter is married off to the king of more -- of lord tane you and holds court for a number of years.

we lose sight of her at that point. there is a grandson who at one point goes back to rome and is murdered by caligula. and that is the end of cleopatra's so far as we know. host: died at 39? stacy: which is always good in a biography. when someone dies young. host: was she bitten by an asp? stacy: i understand why we have ended up with that story but it doesn't really hold up. we've ended up with that for several reasons, one of which is the asp is a symbol of egypt, so it makes a lot of sense. it looks great in the painting -- a woman with a bare breast and an asp looks terrific. the woman in the snake go back a long way which we like to romanticize. octavian, who rushes to the scene and finds her dead, which is not reportedly what he wants.

some libyan magicians come a doctor's known for being able to save people who had died of snake venom and saved people who had been bitten by snakes. because the fact they rushed to the scene, the indication wasn't must have been a snake. but if you go back and read, we write about cleopatra's death, some of them outright say we do not know how she died. the kind of death she has which seems to be a very narcotic rather than convulsive death would indicate she was not bitten by a snake. it would have been a much more dramatic death than the one she suffered and she and her two ladies in waiting all died at the same time which would have been a difficult feat from a single snake. it's free sure it was poison.

she was an expert in poison and had a doctor on hand. host: self-inflicted? stacy: self-inflicted. host: what is her legacy? stacy: there are a lot of halloween costumes out there. i don't know what is her legacy. we look at her as a siren and symbol of sexuality and what we lose is the fact you had a capable, clear eyed him a shrewd woman who ruled this extraordinary expanse of territory and held off the romans for two decades. but in a way, she could be the poster woman for female empowerment, but for reasons i discuss in the book, she could come to us as a siren. host: how much time did you spend in the alexandrian library for your research? stacy: probably an hour in the alexandrian library and none of it on the research. there were a review books there

-- there were very few books when i went there. what's interesting is how little of cleopatra's left. the romans did everything they could to annihilate every trace of her. in order to see her, the best place to get a sense of her is out in the desert where she camped at the beginning of the book when she is at war with her brother. she's gone to the eastern sinai to essentially plan how she's going to retake alexandria. the remains of that fortress exist and you can get a sense of her world as you can from certain temples that exist. otherwise, there is very little of her left. everything is in the wrong place -- the nile is in the wrong place, the angle of the moon and the sun are probably all you have to go on. the core of alexandria remains the same.

i spent a lot of time in the new york public library, where you can read your way through the works of the ancients who were so astonished and wide-eyed at the alexandria of the ancient world. host: what is your advice to someone who watches the 1960 three movie cleopatra with elizabeth taylor and her husband? stacy: get a double popcorn is my advice. there's an article about the makings of that movie which i would recommend reading after you see the movie to find out what had gone into the making of it. it's almost as extra neri a story as the movie itself. host: from 40 bc 21690 two new england, i want to read a quote from your 2015 book, the witches. america's tiny rain of terror, salem represents one of the rare moments in our enlightened past when the candles are knocked out and everyone seems to be groping about in the dark, a place where

all good stories begin. easy to caricature, it is the only tragedy that has acquired its own annual unrelated holiday. it is more difficult to comprehend. what happened? stacy: which end would you like me to start with? i think halloween seems to be our theme today. it happened is in early 1692, january of 1692, 2 little girls, 19 and 111 administers house begin to exhibit signs which they begin to rise, grimace, barf and yell and shutter and are ultimately paralyzed and unable to speak and speak in what appeared to be nonsensical terms and throw themselves into fireplaces and fall down a well. no one can quite figure out what these symptoms are meant to convey. medicine in 1692 massachusetts

was primitive though epilepsy was known about. no one had -- there had been an outbreak of witchcraft which had been very well described by a minister any best-selling book and those symptoms and the symptoms were identical. no one rushes to an immediate diagnosis but several weeks after these girls begin to exhibit the signs and after they have spread to another household, a diagnosis of witchcraft is made. this is in the house of a minister, so it is particulate difficult for people to comprehend. the girls would have felt even more on display as the minister's daughters. once the diagnosis of witchcraft is suggested, obviously a witch needs to be found. somehow in the subsequent weeks, fingers are pointed and three women are named.

as potential suspects. that is january and february of 1692. very quickly those women are deposed. two of them say they have no idea, they are innocent, this is not of their doing. they say the three most likely suspects, one is a woman known for coming by peoples houses -- sarah good. being quite unpleasant, she had been turned out of other people's -- sort of a vagrant -- she was turned out of other peoples houses because they feared she was going to burn down their barn. she and her husband were known to fight with each other. she recently paid a visit to the girls and seemingly terrified them. the second was sarah osborne who was a litigious woman who had been disputing a will for some

time and that made her unwelcome in the community. the third and we don't have an explanation for why the third woman is named is a probably indian slave in the minister's household who would have known these girls intimately and played with these girls and probably slept in the same room with these girls -- with these girls and she's the third person named. when sarah osborne and sarah good deny all instances of witchcraft, she will offer an immensely colorful confession and as soon as someone had confessed to witchcraft, they -- the witchcraft trial is set in place and things begin to play left and right. host: how many salem witch trials were there? stacy: the actual trials begin in j and end in ocbe people are deposed throughout

that time in various p there are four sets of trials. this thing moves very quickly once the trials begin for the following reason -- fairly early on, fingers point ft and right and the symptoms the girls are suffering spread and the accusations spread. fairly early o its own if you confessed to witchcraft, you go to prison you don't hang. so confessions begin for various reasons. when you confessed, one of the best things you can do is confess and to name someone else perhaps practicing witchcraft who is perhaps the real culprit for whom the authorities are looking. at this point, the entire infection or delusion or whatever you want to call it begins to spread. by this time it spreads to to pay five towns. to call the salem witch trial -- new host: 14 women, five men,

two dogs all executed for stacy: witchcraft. stacy:when you read that line allowed, people always say off for the dogs. -- say aww for the dogs. the first person who is tried is tried because she's a person who has a long criminal record. it's a prosecutors dream. she has years of infractions, she has been accused previously of witchcraft, she's been in trouble before. it's the obvious place with which to start the prosecutions. it is the men who are sometimes more unusual in the sense that some of them are very powerful men. at one point, the richest man in salem is accused. it is often men who had been constables and told people things they may not have wanted to have heard. in one case, a man who expresses skepticism about the trials

because that makes sense -- to express skepticism about what was happening was to invite an accusation. another is the minister, one of the previous ministers in a village who is a difficult man who left on bad terms, had been an abusive husband, had failed to ingratiate himself with the women of salem village. it -- it starts as an epidemic of witchcraft but ends by the end of the summer as a conspiracy, a plot to overthrow america. he, this x salem minister understood -- is understood to be a diabolical mastermind behind the entire plot. host: what happened to our two original girls? stacy: betty is shipped off to

live in a different town and we hear nothing of her again. abigail will be involved with the girls who go to court -- i should have said it spread to a bunch of teenage girls, prepubescent girls who will be in the court and they are vivid aids for the prosecution because as they writhe and grimace and believe in the courtroom, it's very hard to deny their much -- there must be witchcraft at work because there's no other explanation for the symptoms these girls are displaying. you have a chorus of girls who are screaming and suffering from something very vile. it seems to make the case that much easier to prosecute. host: stacy schiff, our old friend cotton mather has a role in the witches. stacy: cotton mather was the

author of the best-selling book on the earlier witchcraft prosecutions. i should preface this by saying to a man, everyone in 1692, as far as we knew, his belief in witchcraft -- this is not a benighted people laboring with superstition, this is part and parcel of the religion. to believe in the gut -- to believe in god was to believe in the devil and to believe the devil was to believe in witchcraft as well. some of the finger-pointing, much of it was being done out of a sense of piety because you felt you were doing your good to the community by helping to eradicate this terrible plague of witchcraft. if you have a screaming child in your household or in the courtroom, you were -- you would have been fairly certain you are looking at this manifestation of evil, which people like cotton mather helped to identify.

so he had written an earlier book which helped people to both understand what the symptoms were and what witchcraft look like. until 1692, there had been i think a hundred accusations of witchcraft, very few people were prosecuted. the prosecution rate was a quarter. that year, no one who walked into that courtroom would be declared innocent. it's a very different set of parameters. that's largely the work of cotton mather. he's 29 at this point come a shining light of the new england ministry. he descends from a very illustrious father, he seems to write a book every time he breathes. he's a person to whom the authorities would regularly turn for help in figuring out how to prosecute this, how to think about witchcraft, members of the court are sometimes mystified by the procedures and you will see

them turn to cotton mather to ask them -- ask him to help them figure out what the proper diagnostic is and what has been done in the past. if you look at what cotton mather responds to those men, he never writes a statement that doesn't have the word nevertheless in it. on one hand this come on the other and that, he's really invested in the prosecution. for his own reasons. i say that because at the end of the epidemic, after everyone has realized this has gone too far, that somehow justice has not been served, cotton mather will privately be writing he has no regrets about what happened to those 40 women, five men and two dogs because god has disciples and he sees this as a -- as an embrace of religion in some way.

host: describe salem in 1692. today it's basically a suburb of boston. what was it like in 1692? stacy: there were two salem's in 1692. the village was on the frontier in which the witchcraft breaks out where samuel parrish is a minister. it's a pretty little town that bills itself as an outpost. these are years where there had been wars against native americans and people felt very vulnerable. at a time when the colony was politically vulnerable. salem village, about five miles away -- salem town, i'm sorry, is a much more sophisticated, larger town and that is where the trials themselves took place. this is a town that has jurisdiction over salem village and that is an unusual relationship. the farmers in salem village are

not particulate pleased they have two give access to the ones in salem town because they are more vulnerable, salem town is a much more larger and wealthier community and should be protecting them. host: here are some of the things i wrote down and reading this book and tell me which apply, if any. they were talking about the witches -- class, sex, teen thanks, religion, peer pressure, conspiracy theories. stacy: i think you pretty much covered it. it's a similar manifestation of the same kind of conspiratorial thinking we engage with today. everyone has a conspiracy, whether we want to admit it or not. you have an inexplicable event

that no one knows how to adjudicate or alleviate the symptoms of these girls. the great mystery to me, other than aside from what's actually ailing the children is why the prosecution is so intent and so robust. why is there a 100% conviction rate which had never happened before? the political unrest in the massachusetts colony had actually sent a royal governor packing and it was waiting to find out what it's penalty was going to be, how it was going to deal with it. there's a certain amount of anxiety around that. any new administration to which the judges on the court needed proof they were a law & order place, this was a community in which justice could be served. host: good afternoon and welcome

to book tv. this is our "in-depth" program. we invite one author on to talk about his or her body of work. for the last 40 minutes, we have been talking to author stacy schiff. we have talked about two of her books and we want to make it through a few more and we want to get your involvement as well. stacy schiff has written six books, beginning in 1994 -- a biography about antoine cemex paris who wrote the little prince and then fear, portrait of a marriage, about vladimir novikov's wife. -- vladimir nabokov's wife. and a great improvisation -- benjamin franklin and the birth of america came out in 2005. cleopatra came out in 2010, the witches in 2015 and her most recent book come of the

revolutionary: samuel adams, which we will get into in just a minute. but we want to let you know how you can participate as well. the phone number 202-748, 8200 in the eastern and central time zone. 748-8201 in the mountain and pacific time zone. you can send a text message -- 202-748-890 three. include your first name and city if you would. we will scroll through our social media sites so you can make a comment on their or facebook as well. just remember at book tv as they handle for that. we will begin taking those in just a minute. before we leave salem, how does salem celebrate or acknowledge their history today? stacy: what happens after the

trial, and the immediate aftermath is a silence which is almost universal. sermon books are purged of those months, the books samuel harris would have kept for the salem village ministry is purged. people's correspondences, private diaries, those nine months just disappear. even in the early 18th century when some of the survivors were offered restitution for family members they had lost, the word witchcraft is rarely mentioned. they read -- they talk about the recent unpleasantness. nobody wants that loaded word witchcraft. that there such regret and shame and tenderness around what had happened that year that nobody would talk about it. arthur miller goes back to salem in the 1950's. he finds people were unwilling to talk about it, it was an

unmentionable thing. and then in a stunning turn of events, an episode of bewitched was filmed in salem. suddenly -- new host: does that make a difference? stacy: a film studio had burned and they make an arbitrary decision to let stillness in salem. there was a whole scale embrace of the past and in a way which contorted the witches, as we understood them in the 17th century, which was a construct of religion and the witches today, which is a super stitches kind of construct and i think this is your question, salem is now halloween central and a place that celebrates the magic, the wiccans, the history, all of this looped together in a superstitious view which is not

quite as solemn as the events might call for. host: given the fact that there was a scrub of this nine months, wasn't hard to do the research? stacy: it was hard to do the research for this book because we don't have the court records. we have the depositions. we have pro-women airily what people said. we can reconstruct a little bit of the court seen but we don't have the court papers. the court papers may have been very perfunctory because everyone knew what was going to happen. except one person, temporarily. you have the depositions, we have some thousand pieces of paper from that era but you have very little in terms of personal diaries. the only exception is one of the witchcra judges who is probably the best of the th-century diaries who comes to terms slowly but very tenderly with what had happened that year and doesn't write about it in his diary and is the

only member of the witchcraft court who will apologize for his role in the event. host: what is your conclusion? stacy: in terms of the prosecution or what happened? what seems to a girls is -- does conform -- we have a lot of descriptions of what it looked like and it conforms perfectly with drawings we have come 19th-century drawings of what was known as hysteria and what is known as conversion disorder. there have been other instances of that breaking out, usually similar cases in the sense of isolated communities among adolescent girls living together which has a contagious aspect. that does seem to hold up from the printed descriptions we have of the girls and their antics and what we know as conversion

disorder. as to why the robust prosecution, as our friend cotton mather had a great deal in encouraging it. when the court looks to him, very rarely does anything other than a serious prosecution remain in order. the attempt for massachusetts to prove itself as a place that understood the law and could adjudicate its own cases in the eyes of the crown was very important. at the head of the witchcraft court in particular, was eager to do that because he had been a politically agile player in several early administrations and one did to prove he was able -- wanted to prove. host: a text message for you -- it ended very quickly. what happened to end the witchcraft trial. stacy: massachusetts has a new

governor and he is not a member of this monolith of the civic and religious authority that and it together to found the witchcraft court. he's not exactly skeptical but doesn't buy into this whole apparatus like the rest of them do. the accusations at this point have gotten -- have gone so far afield, they are affecting people in power. so now is the moment, can there possibly the be -- can there possibly be this many witches in the massachusetts state colony and can they be people in power? the interest in witchcraft naturally waned. the new governor reached out that fall to the new york ministers and he wanted another opinion. those ministers essentially

submit a very different answer than cotton mather and his politics. it was a number of things coming together. a couple of people who quietly, anonymously begin to speak up which was a very delegate thing and dangerous thing to have done. one of those was a young, 35-year-old, harvard educated anglican. he was wealthy enough but separate enough to be able to speak up anonymously and essentially wrote a long track about how these girls were seeing things with their eyes closed, that's actually imagination and this is going to be something massachusetts would continue to prosecute as it was doing, it would regret for years and put a permanent stain on it. host: were these trials

well-known throughout new england? stacy: one of the lousy things about 1692 is no newspapers. it was known by word-of-mouth and people were worried in their communities because accusations had spread to those communities but there is no news account as we would understand it which could be disseminated. an interesting part of that year, one of the parts of that story was how much oral culture and internet culture have in common and how quickly the news and reputation could be spread and decimated. many of the people the girls accused of witchcraft were people he had never met so when the accusations come to their doorstep, they were flabbergasted. host: true or false -- ben franklin was not in the colonies during the entirety of the revolutionary war. stacy: that was quite a

transition. that was true. he leaves when the revolutionary wet -- when that revolution begins but doesn't return until 1785. for those years, he is based in paris. host: what was his role? stacy: when congress declares independence, it has a problem on its hands. it wants to declare independence but what really needs to do is find a foreign power who will help it to bankroll its revolution. the two questions are intricately tied together -- find a suitor first or declare independence first? the conclusion seems to have been one needed to declare independence to go visit a foreign power to say would you like to help us undermine the dish? when you are interested to undermine the british, your first port of call is france.

benjamin franklin is dispatched to paris as the american represent of to do something but the fact the colonies have declared independence without the means of achieving that independence because they have no men, no material, no munitions and no money. it's his job to secure those things. he has spent a lot of time in europe already. he's a famed celebrity in paris but he's also able to speak french alaska which he doesn't do when he first arrives. host: could the american revolution have happened without the money from france? stacy: not in my view. someone would have had to underwritten it and the only candidate was france. france had been watching the colonies very closely. far more closely than the colonies had been watching themselves and anticipated there would be a day when they would have this opportunity.

to essentially annihilate their rival and undermine the british in north america. and at every juncture, there is a colonial collision, the french are getting reports almost as quickly as london is getting reports. host: louis the 16th, marie antoinette reigned during this time. stacy: it was franklin's job to go -- franklin arrives and cannot immediately be seen at court because he's there on a covert mission. after saratoga, when there is a treaty of alliance, he finally is understood to be the french ambassador, and he goes to court and it was his obligation to go to court weekly to pay homage to louis the 16th, which was the bane of franklin's existence

because it was a long carriage ride there and back and a lot of standing around for an elderly man. but having researched that to the hilt, i did realize if franklin went to court every week as the ambassadorial core and stood around, all the other foreign ambassadors who were come all of them utterly transfixed by whatever that thing was that was going on in america would have written accounts back to their home court of benjamin franklin in court. so along with the material for this -- a lot of the material for this book was found in archives of the various german republic, counties because these were the ambassadors watching franklin very closely and were able to report on the conversations. host: what about franklin and the english investor? stacy: the english ambassador had immense dexterity and fist

occasion. he's aggrieved by franklin arriving in paris. he is recalled once franklin is recognized in court. he's doing everything to undermine franklin's efforts and franklin's doing everything covertly with a few friends and french friends who are very interested in the machinations behind the queen, trying hard to point out there are these conniving americans in their midst and playing a double game of those are not munitions you are seeing being shipped to america. host: ben franklin calls louis the 16th the father of america. stacy: it was a wonderful, i'm sure off-the-cuff remark from franklin -- i don't member which foreign investor reported on this. at the moment when america is recognized by france, it is an

astonishing moment. it's an unthinkable thing for a monarchy to have found a republic. this had never happened before. franklin goes to court for the official recognition and in a in the few minutes he spends with louis the 16th, he says as he is leaving something along the lines of if all monarchs ruled with the benevolence in your heart, republics would never be formed. it's kind of a treasonous thing he said. host: let's take some calls. thank you, audience. we have made it through three of her books. we have not touched yet samuel adams, her most recent. if you have read it, you can make a comment. cornelius, alexandria, louisiana, you're on the air.

can you start again? i forgot to punch the button. caller: [laughter] peter and stacy, god bless those of you all and thank you so much for writing about cleopatra. i'm here in alexandria, louisiana, ms. stacy, and what i want to ask you is if you had a chance to write about the woman king that this new movie is out. god bless you and i really enjoy "in-depth." host: is that the viola davis vehicle you are talking about? stacy: i think it is. i haven't had a chance to but i love all questions that come from towns and cities named alexandria. that's a great idea. i'm looking for a new subject. i'm sure we will come up with one today. host: you spend five to seven years between your books.

why? stacy: i don't seem to be able to do it more quickly as the short answer. i'm usually researching for a good three years. i have a lot of biographer friends who do this and what i consider to be a more efficient way. they write while they research. i can't seem to do that because i don't know the confines of the material where the ark of the story. i don't know where i'm going to go until i entirely immerse myself in the material. by that point, pre-or three a half years income you realize you are ready to write. and you are eager to get to your desk. once you start writing, you generally had a plot point or there something you failed to research and have to go back. but it takes me a year and half to write in three years to research. host: rich from orange california text in, can you talk about your research techniques and how they may have changed over 30 years?

in the introductory paragraph to the adams book, you refer to volumes i have regularly pulled from the shelves. is your research still old school as in books, legal pads and notecards? caller: rich is revealing -- stacy: rich is revealing me for the dinosaur that i am. not notecards -- very much legal pads. r -- obviously in archives, i'm working with a computer but i'm very old-school in the sense that when i read an article i think i'm going to be going back to or find it useful, i want to print it out and write in the margins because those are the ones that usually wind going to begin to simmer into the book. the short answer is, i take the computer files when i go into the archives. i keep paper files which are my

subject. for example with the samuel adams book, there would have been a sam -- stamped back file, a file on the land bank or boston tea party. sometimes, those files are subdivided depending on how large the category is. i write at last on a legal pad with a pencil. for the simple two reasons. i have always done it that way. i am superstitious like all writers. it slows me down. i am a fast typist. i type more quickly than i think. i think we all go one at greater lengths when it is easier to. typing is easy, whereas when you are writing, i think my thoughts are more distilled when i write. i feel like i write with more concision. it is arduous, especially these days, to drag the pencil across the piece of paper. my handwriting is disintegrating as i say this. i do still write on a legal pad

for the first draft. then, i will enter that draft onto the computer. that is an editing process in of itself. subsequent drafts are computer printouts from there. host: i was not sure i was going to mention this. in reading you, you seem to have fun writing and fun in your sentence structure. fun such a bad word to use, but that is how it struck me. stacy: there is meant to be delight in those lines for the reader. host: much better word. stacy: i think that comes on the page. i am sure if i were younger, it would be on the screen. those collisions, the ideas coming together only happen as i sit down to write. the beauty of this, the thrill of this for me is when you sit down in the morning, you do not know what is in store. there is all sorts of deep anxiety, of course, but you do not know what is going to happen between here and there. that is where the thrill is for

the reader. host: buddy, savannah, georgia. you are on with author stacy schiff. caller: hey, stacy. i really enjoyed your program this morning. i was curious about if you consider about writing about rome or alexander hamilton, either one. just for your information, you do not look like you are 61. thank you. stacy: [laughter] host: why ava perrone or alexander hamilton? that is quite a combination. caller: i was always interested in her. i wrote -- i read a book on alexander hamilton. he was really interesting. if they were ever to -- i cannot remember the author right now, but it was about a 700 page book and it was great. they should put that in all the schools in the united states. something is wrong with the united states, i am telling you. thanks you. stacy: thank you, buddy.

that 700 page book is by john turnout. it is a spellbinding 700 pages. because of it, i would never write on alexander hamilton because i think that book is superb and unlikely to be rivaled. what is an interesting idea, i have had trouble getting my mind around writing about someone there i do not speak the language. this has come up a few times for me. i did write a book about -- and i do not speak russian. i had a translator with that book. i was looking in that book, the book guns in russia, makes its way across europe. it is basically a tripartite life with a russian chapter, a european chapter and an american chapter. he writes very often in english or french with his correspondence. the russian material was limited. i have been weary about doing a

book where i cannot read the persons native-language, although i would be thrilled to learn. that is a great topic. host: speaking of, why did you write about vera rather than vladimir? stacy: he had two biographers, both of whom had made clear that she was utterly central to the story but had then not written about her. they both included in their books some variation on the li, there was a hole in the center of the book called story in there always will be. that just is not seem right. a new relative, it was a close marriage. i knew relatively litout her from the start. i knew all but one of the books is dedicated to her. when you look at the dedication page, there is a story behind every dedication page. to dedicate all of your books to the same person, which qualifies as a nervous tick, is astonishing. every book is dedicated to her. i knew she was jewish and he was

not. in the aristocratic circles which he held was unusual. she carried a gun in her purse. i knew she went into class with him every day when he taught in cornell in the 1950's, which was strange. i think on some level, this is what i mean about the private questions embedded in the book, i think i was probably interested in writing about a marriage. i was newly married myself at the time. it was my second book. i wanted a family life, something that was structurally more intricate or ambitious than my first book had been. she was the perfect vehicle at him, not only as people said she was centrahe sory, but he was famouslycult and famously controlling. i thought if you could look him through the marriage and through these two people who had made their mara wo of art, you could see him and his work in a different way. host: you won the pulitzer for biography for the book, correct? stacy: i did.

host: when lolita came out, what was the reaction? stacy: the relationship with lolita is interesting. here is a book -- a moral, middle-age man falls in love with a 12-year-old girl. problematic for us today. vera was his greatest dissenter. the author was frustrated with his inability to make the book work, tries to burn the many script in his backyard in his backyard and if the cup. it is vera who comes in and saves it from the flames. she sends it to the hilt, herself takes it in a package to new york to try to find a publisher for it. in the book, we aren't afraid -- afraid of entrusting it to the males because it could be considered risky. she is always its greatest

defender. i do not think either one of them could possibly have anticipated in what seemed at the time and unfair level book that it would become in 1958 this runaway bestseller that would allow them to completely reinvent themselves yet again and allow him to retire from teaching at cornell and move back to europe and to switzerland. it is a novel that finally after these years of believing himself a complete genius, put some on the map as a real genius. in a brand of ringlets no one had ever before deployed. -- english no one had ever before deployed. host: what was the spark about that book? the subject matter, the writing? stacy: this was 1958, so it was interesting from the get go. the book at this time was attacked by the right. today, it has been attacked by the left. it is a controversial book no matter how you look at it. this book includes scenes

between a middle-aged man and a nonconsenting 12-year-old girl that are extremely sexual and extremely colorful, to say the least. it is neither about and its session, about passion, at its heart, it is a love story. it is initially published abroad because the understanding was no american publisher would touch it. putnam took the dive thinking he might well be prosecuted for doing so and published it in america. it is published in the same season as dr. chicago. the two of them fight it out on the bestseller list. he thought passionate was a terrible book. lolita getting ahead of the doctor on the list. host: mark, scottsdale, arizona. thanks for holding. you are on with author stacy schiff. caller: hey, stacy. you seem very knowledgeable. you make a lot of good points.

very interesting. i wanted to ask you about witchcraft. i guess that is what the topic was when i first tuned in. i want to ask you whether in writing the book, whether you actually -- i do not know, you are in a story, i guess. isn't wicca actually a religion that many people follow? stacy: thanks for the question. it is. i did not spend a lot of time -- i spent a lot of time with wiccans because they spent a lot of time in salem. did not spend a lot of time attaching that story to the events of the 17th century because i was really immersing myself in the theology at the time. when you go back and look at it, what is interesting about witchcraft literature is how specific it is in feel.

it doesn't have anything to do with what a week and believes today. it is in this case an alcove of what the puritans believe of witchcraft. there were witchcraft trials all over the world in the middle ages and through the 17th century. by the time we get to 1692, most countries are no longer persecuting women as witches or having any other witch trials. they have been outlawed in many countries. massachusetts has been insulated by its ministry from the messages, insulated from skeptical literature. it is still holding this belief in witchcraft. i should say, was a biblical construct. she was thought to be an accomplice of the devil, did the devils work with the help of imps she cut, which is why animals lay a big role in the salem story. the richer about her is codified -- the literature about her is codified. a which was only understood to

cry from her left eye and three tears at a time. putting a witch in water was a way you can tell if someone were a which. there were all sorts of codification and specifications through the ages. the ministry howled that literature under its belt. it is a moment where you have a bunch of men, they are all men, very well-versed in this phenomenon but led astray by their reading. i spent a lot of time with that body of work because it helps us to understand what the court was thinking and what the people thought they were seeing when they looked at these writing girls. host: before we get too far from matt in savannah talking about alexander hamilton, what was the relationship, if any, between samuel adams, ben franklin, alexander hamilton? stacy: hamilton, i do not think,

is on the radar because he is so much younger. franklin in particular and samuel adams are a generation older then john james madison, they are old enough to be their fathers, really. jefferson and samuel adams have a tight relationship. franklin adams are interesting. they are both from boston. franklin left as a young adolescent to philadelphia. i do not think they ever meet until 1770. there is one moment when franklin goes back to boston, tried hard to figure this out. i do not believe the two of them ever crossed paths. they are related because franklin becomes the massachusetts agent in london, there is a lot of correspondence between the two of them. committees between which adams sits and benjamin franklin. adams would be slow to believe franklin is sufficiently revolutionary. as our many people. many people find ben franklin's politics suspect.

he has taken on british heirs. he tried hard to keep the entire impart together. he has counseled massachusetts to be more prudent. adams seems to think he is not on the side of liberty. very quickly, the two of them realize that is not true and they become good friends in philadelphia. it is interestingly samuel adams who makes franklin a great patriot because the news of the boston tea party will arrive in london just as ben franklin is about to be held responsible for having sent a cash of stolen letters which were published by samuel adams and his friends in massachusetts. ben franklin is hauled in for the prison counsel in london and loudly humiliated for his role in that affair. the humiliation is days afterward has arrived in london that this tea has marinated in boston harbor. suddenly, he is being held responsible for all of this.

it is certainly that drifting down that makes him the patriot he becomes. in a funny way, it is samuel adams indirectly who makes us franklin the patriot. host: give us a sense, how long did it take for london to find out about the tea party? stacy: quickly, in this case. it could take several months. i think in this case, it was january that word arrived and the sender that the tea was falling overboard so to speak -- december that the tea was falling overboard. host: what is the shortest time span that happened? stacy: three weeks or so, it could be as many as a couple of months. when franklin sales for rants, i think it was a month. it could take a wild. that disconnect's planes a lot of -- explains a lot of the problem in the colonial relationship because often, a royal governor will write back to london for instructions on

what to do. there is a month. he has to wait for his answer. there is another month. it is faster in one direction then the other. if the lag would be able to respond in a responsible way to what the colonists are doing or thinking. host: warships sailing daily? stacy: definitely not daily from massachusetts. at this point, boston has fallen behind new york and philadelphia. i do not know about new york and philadelphia's shipping schedules. i'm good on boston. you waited for the right ship good i think they might be smaller vessels. for a big ship, you booked your vessel several weeks out. that was an event. host: rockville, california. though ahead with your question or comment. caller: ms. schiff, you're -- books are wonderful. i am curious, in addition to chronicling your sources, what you look to as a writer that makes a good end note and what

you believe the value is for a reader to read endnotes as they are consuming the book? host: bill, before you hang up, what made you pick up the samuel adams book? caller: i love history. american history. i love ms. ships work -- ms. schiff's work. i love nonfiction writers that do e notes. it unscrambled the egg. stacy: such a lovely question. there is nothing better than knowing someone reads your endnotes, partly because there is a certain circle in hell which is endnote hell. i am noting it in a way to add skeletal endnotes while i am writing, that takes you away from the narrative. i generally make notations to myself within the text.

ultimately, those will grow up and become the endnotes. those are two or three years later often by which i cannot read my handwriting anymore. i am often left to construct something i had a small trail of earlier. for that reason, you can over annotate. i do not think you need to annotate -- it is d-day, i do not think you annotate the new york times headline on d-day. i think you need to annotate anything you are either looking from a great number of sources and want to be able to give the reader a bouquet of what those resources are in case they want to go back to them. any curial that is directly quoted must be annotated. otherwise, it is invalid. sometimes, i do the former, that bouquet as a headnote for every chapter. for example, in the cleopatra book, those descriptions of alexandria came from maybe 30 ancient chroniclers. i glommed those together into an

in note. the discussion at cornell, i probably spoke to 150 cornellians. their names are all on one endnote. interpretations, interesting little bits, the dirty secret of endnotes is, when your editor has cut out something that you want to put back in, a dirty secret is you stick it in your endnote because you can probably get away with that. little bits and pieces of things you think are integral to the book, but the editor may not agree, will turn up in the in notes. host: what percentage of your time is spent on in notes in the totality of your writing? stacy: i probably did the in notes in six or eight over caffeinated weeks. think you are finished, you hit your deadline, you have not written the endnotes yet. there is a mad scramble at that point to pull every thing off the shelf. inevitably, there are two or three where you just cannot

restrict how you came up with this. you cannot find the source. that has been helped tremendously to the fact so many books are on google. you can google search a document. which in my first book, was not available to me. it depends on what kind of archive you have at your disposal. with my other book, i was working with material that was unpublished from an archive in switzerland or unpublished from an archive at the new york public library. none of that is online. i could not have searched it that way. host: it is 1994. your first book is being published about antoine de saint-exupery, who are you writing it for? stacy: you, all these years later. the genesis of that book was i had been in publishing and had reread -- one of his biggest

selling books and was surprised by how brilliantly it held up by the best accounts we have a flight. it is a romantic book, a generous, hardened book. it made me go back to the rest of the life, during which i had discovered much -- he had done much of his writing in new york riourelationships with various americans which were instrumental in the work. i noticed there was not a book on the shelf that did not do him justice, i thought. i was looking for a writer whom i could commission at the time to do a biography. every time i went to lunch with an agent that might provide that writer, i failed to mention i finally realized i wanted to write the book which was why i couldn't seem to ask someone else to do it. i left i job in publishing to write that book picking, i will write this one book and go back and publish it. i am not sure i had an ideal reader in mind. i just felt he was right for

rediscovery. i thought -- writers do not necessarily lead interesting lives. he leads a fascinating life. it contorts to that dramatic -- of keep your hero in trouble, he is constantly either crashing an aircraft were able to find himself in an aircraft. it is a deeply compelling, romantic life. there was a real sense of wanting to bring the literature back into focus. very many people are crazy about the little prince and do not know his origins, he was born out of a tremendous amount of pain on the author. it seemed like a right moment to do it. host: how did it do? stacy: i think it sold seven copies. it got tremendous refuse. it was a finalist for the pulitzer prize, it sold nine copies. host: samuel adams is currently a best seller. have all your books been bestsellers? stacy: no.

i think leo batra outsold the rest of the books combined. the witches was a bestseller. host: mike, detroit, good afternoon. caller: oh, yeah. you covered a lot of ground from cleopatra to the enlightenment, for sure. one thing that is fascinating to me about ancient rome and egypt was, they had this huge pantheon of gods. i wondered, how did they maneuver through that? they did not have the scientific knowledge we have or the scientific method. was it just politics to them? both cleopatra and caesar eventually took on godlike identities, which may it led to -- it is fascinating. do they really believe in these pantheon of gods? stacy: such a great point you make. thank you for bringing it up. they very much believed in the pantheon of gods. cleopatra in particular did a lot of mileage with her

association with various goddesses. something like the isis cult in rome was founded upon particular because it was a fema supporting, a female friendly cold. when cleopatra is summoned by mark antony to appear before him at the entrance about which shakespeare writes, she says in advance to marc anthony as she is making her way this crystal river to his and cameron, this is venus coming to contort herself with bacchus for the good of asia. they associate cells with gods and goddesses in very much take on those characteristics. it is very much the vocabulary of the time. a great point. host: let's hear from carmen in new york city. go ahead with your question or comment. caller: yes. you are on. hello? host: got to turn down the

volume on your tv and ask the question. caller: ok. my question is, back to salem. there were only females, no males. how and why? host: thank you, carmen. stacy: i think you mean among the accused. there were both men and women accused. ultimately, there would be 14 women and five men who were executed. the executions begin only with women. fairly quickly thereafter, men are added to that mix. it is obviously very difficult to say who was accused and why. at a certain point, the minister of the neighboring town of andover discovered he was related to something like 30 witches. people all around him are being accused of witchcraft. one of the men accused is john proctor, whose name appears in

the crucible. he becomes a character in arthur miller's the crucible. he is probably accused for the fact that he does not buy into what is happening. he says he would rather thrash his servant then rather let her go to the witch depositions taking place at this point. because of his skepticism, he is probably named. anyone who was in any way a standout, anyone who had firm opinions, people who -- elizabeth proctor, john proctor's wife, who had a book in her pocket at all times. people who were overly intelligent or seemed overly intuitive were very often accused. among the women, it is very often people who -- female relatives had earlier been accused or who had themselves been accused. among the men, it is hit or miss. it is not white so scientific seeming among the men. yes, men and women are both accused. the only thing -- mothers accused daughters, daughters

accused grandmothers. the accusations go in all kinds of ways. the only familiar relationship i think is not compromised his fathers and sons, never seemed to accuse each other. husbands very often will save their widespread i always suspected she was a witch. host: executions, 14 women, five men and two dogs. why dogs? stacy: they were understood to be diabolical accomplices. afterward, --'s father said the dog could not be an accomplice because he would not have died when they shot him. there are a lot of questions about this. host: walter. ohio. hi, walter. walter? caller: wonderful program. ms. schiff, years ago in college, i had a revolutionary war class. the professor said that, he says

highly suspected it was sam adams who fired the first shot at lexington. i was wondering what your thoughts were on this. stacy: thanks, walter. i think adams gets a lot of credit for things he did not do, especially among the officers in boston, he its credit for a lot of things he did not do and does not get credit for the things he did do. one thing i am fairly certain he did not do is fire the first shot at lexington. he is in lexington as troops march out. this for me was the point of entry into the book. we all know that paul revere gets on his horse and gallops wildly west at night. i think none of us stopped for a minute to think, where was paul revere going? he is -- as sam adams closest associate to warn adam hancock there were about to be arrests. the reason revere gets that message is because that actually

was the order from london. the order from london to didn't -- two general gage in boston was to arrest as quickly as possible. there was nothing in there about collecting munitions in concord. gage, for whatever reason, i think i know the reason -- extends the message with his officers that they are to collect the munitions in concord. he does not mention arresting adams at hancock, which would have been too dangerous at that point. he is not eager to detonate a revolution at this moment. paul revere heads off that night. his mission being to alert adams to hancock. that is what he does. he rides the parsonage in lexington and warns hancock, who not as quickly as they should have, finally vacate the parsonage and are hiding in a swamp a few miles from lexington when those first shots are fired. paul revere will be on hand, he will be near the village green at that moment. he will hear the first shot, but not see them.

adams and hancock are safely a few miles away. host: text message related. would the colonies have declared their independence of samuel adams did not stacy: i think it is pretty clear that the colonies were independent now, at least bound toward some sort of rupture with great britain. what adams does and does in a way that is rather dazzling is articulate what the thinking is to essentially funnel these ideas out of the air, give him a vocabulary, disseminate them and stand by them over the course of 14 years -- 12 years, i guess, when everyone else has deserted the cause. not necessarily decided that american rights and privileges are worth fighting for. the fact he insists on these

measures and articulates these measures, i think we owe him a massive debt. there are a lot of other people who are writing similar subjects at a similar time, just not as tenaciously or articulately. host: and the relationship between john, john quincy and sam adams? stacy: he is an immensely good recruiter of men, good at recognizing talent and folding the new recruits into the cause. one of the earliest recruits as his younger cousin, john, 13 years younger. he looks up to samuel and a starry eyed way, samuel is his older cousin. john's descriptions of him are remarkable. he is a starry eyed when he looks at samuel. he often helps with legal advice and the two of them become very close collaborators.

later, john bullock lips samuel, they do not see i tied by the time america is founded. -- see eye to eye when america is founded. when john goes to france, samuel is so much more influential and a greater presence. host: john adams was also the defense attorney for the british soldiers after the boston massacre. stacy: the conversations between the two cousins in 1770 must've been remarkable. the massacre takes place in march, that fall john is the defense attorney for the soldiers. among his colleagues is someone whom he took the job because samuel adams insisted he do so. it stands to reason samuel adams also had a role in recruiting john for that defense team. there were a number of reasons,

you wanted to adjudicate the property, you wanted for some secrets not to come to light. john could be counted on to do both those things. but john manages to see the all of two of the men are exonerated , he masterly argues the case, almost everyone is acquitted. samuel after will spend six months relitigating the entire case in the papers, despite the fact his cousin and collaborator just arrange for the acquittal. see that as you may. there is not any bad blood, the two of them are still very close. it is the result they might have liked from the start. host: steve from new jersey, text message. i just finished samuel adams. after all the time you spent on him, do you come away liking him? i am not sure if i do. stacy: [laughter] i came off admiring him tremendously. i will tell you why.

the things on which he insists and the things he models are integrity, public service, all of these things. dignity of the man is stunning. very unusual, especially these days, very inspirational. where there a lot of backroom negotiations that went through a great deal of strong-arming, things like relitigating the boston massacre trials after the boston massacre that were not so straight up? yes. they were always, to my mind, done because he was on the side of the angels. he knew where he was going into this was part of his strategy. john adams descriptions of samuel tend to be descriptions of him as being very refined, very affable. strangely, a man always on the side of rubens and caution,

which is unusual in a revolutionary. -- prudence and caution, which is unusual and revolutionary. stacy: my website, send me the information. host: have you heard of him? baseball? stacy: i have not. host: a longtime manager i believe of the cubs, i will be corrected shortly, i am sure. a gruff little guy. stacy: it is funny, i've been toying with sports figures. someone is reading my mind or my email. i have not mentioned it to my publisher or agent, this should not be the foreman which i do so. -- forum in which i do so. host: looking at your books

here, option for movies that you can talk about? stacy: the want to talk about is a great improvisation will be an apple miniseries probably next year with michael douglas playing ben franklin. it is the most beautiful thing -- i think it is great. it is the most sumptuous piece of film you've ever seen, every image in the series is like an 18th-century painting. host: have you been able to consult? stacy: i was able to consult on some of the writing, the rest of is someone else's baby, not mine. the director is immensely talented, he done an extraordinary job. shot in paris. survivor franklin stood -- so, right where franklin stood and hallways he walked that looked a

lot like his home outside of paris at the time. with his grandson in tow, it is a piece of american history. it takes place abroad and we therefore have lost sight of. as part of the revolution, we would prefer not to remember because we did not do it ourselves. we would rather focus on george washington as opposed to what ben franklin did for the war. host: when he came back to the colonies, the states, it was not a grand reception? stacy: it was poignant. he's been gone for 8.5 years, he is not certain at first of whether he should even return. he is comfortable in france, beloved in france, a celebrity. there is a woman he would very much like to spend his life with. on the other hand, what is this nation he's helped to create?

he wants to see it, his family is here. he arrives only able to recognize people by their voices. he's been gone so long. very much disoriented. wondering how he's to be thanked for these eight and a half years he spent abroad. the answer is not at all, no one really wants to think about our debt to a foreign power. we prefer to think this was the little country that did and had. there's no recognition. he sees other people being reimbursed for their charges abroad and does not understand entirely why he lost sight of the good graces of congress. host: he survive for another three years or so, constitutional convention, governor of pennsylvania at one point.

stacy: he died 1790, 5 more years. host: joe from maine, thanks for holding. you are on. caller: when you are talking about the library of alexandria, you seem to skip over who destroyed it. there's always been a rumor some christian bishop destroyed the library, what is your take on that? stacy: i may have skipped over the rumor because there are a lot of rumors. i do not know the one about the christian bishop, it is something of a question mark as to how big the actual holdings -- how fast the holdings were. we know an earthquake probably carried off what remained of it, there are some theories it was a casualty of the alexandria war. it is one of the great unresolved mysteries, which may be one day will be resolved. they are evidently still pieces

of it in the harbor of alexandria underwater, i have not seen those with my own eyes. host: victor in los angeles. caller: hi. i am really enjoying the interview. my question is about the relationship between marc anthony and julius caesar, was it a jealousy between marc anthony and julius caesar? what was the rivalry about? it seems cleopatra admired both of them. stacy: it is an interesting situation. after caesar's death, cleopatra has a child with julius caesar and winds up in rome, where i do not think most of us think to place her, when caesar is

murdered. she and her child are in rome on the ides of march when caesar is murdered, she is quickly shuttled out of town and returned to egypt. after his death, there are a number of claimants and one of those, among the closest, is marc anthony. who is a very different man from caesar, caesar was precision and control, marc anthony is more of a frat boy. he assumes he will be the heir to caesar's mantle, no one counts on him naming the untried, yellow haired, slightly frail octavian, who becomes a gustus. it comes as a surprise to everyone.

in the days after caesar's murder, there is a real reshuffling of who is important, who is powerful. there are packs made against caesar's former associates and cleopatra has to figure out, has to navigate her way among the claimants to figure out who is best going to guarantee her and egypt's future. she is hesitant at first to come to anyone's aid, everyone appeals to her to help them, to contribute to their efforts, contribute money. she tries and so far she can to hold back and ultimately will throw in her hat with mark antony. host: do we know where cleopatra is buried? stacy: we do not. there is a modern theory that you may have read that she is buried at a temple west of alexandria, there is a dig being

done periodically, is a difficult place to dig. i think it is still going on, i have not read about it for a while. it is difficult, partly because the water table has to be exactly right to dig. i think there was a summer home, you could not dig when they were in residence. it is believed cleopatra makes a trip on the day of her death and would not have been able to do that if indeed that is where this took place. we do not know the answer. it is not impossible we will discover a tomb one day. host: you said 70 years after the death of cleopatra, he is writing. what was his importance in the roman empire? stacy: he is one of the few dispassionate chroniclers. often, he is proving a point.

it is a portrait of dissipation, to some extent. but let me put his perspective -- when mark antony is in alexandria, the two of them are a feast after feast, revelry after revelry. there is a lot going on, pigs are being roasted daily. one of the cooks invites in a friend of his, so he can see this extraordinary act being performed in the kitchen. the student who gets to see the magic is -- sees the kitchen, hands down his story to his grandson, who tells it to plutarch. that gives you a sense of how close he is to the events of which we know. host: the next call comes from

elizabeth in oklahoma city. you are on book tv. caller: thank you. in doing genealogical research on 17th-century maine, i read a book in the devil's snare, her point that at least two of the young accusers in salem had been part of or any garrison houses attacked by the natives. the psychological part of that she uses. i wonder if that is part of your story and history of the witches. stacy: absolutely. these people are under siege in so many ways, i think it is hard for us to get our mind around how vulnerable they would have felt. several of the girls had been orphaned, because of wars with native americans in those years.

this would be true of a later epidemic of similar symptoms, one that happened in new york not too long ago, several of the girls are living in homes where they are not with their biological families, particularly biological fathers. they are often orphans of the war or girls who have been apprenticed out to other households. everyone in salem village would have known either a family member or friend who was a victim in all of the wars, it was traumatic. every woman in new england would have conjured in her mind how she would deal with being taken captive or meeting with some intruder in the night. when you read the accounts, you often hear a confession of a read a captivity narrative and thought what i would do in that position, or i did not know if that was the devil or an indian in my parlor.

i had a dream there was a dark person. everyone is working from a similar playbook of fears. they are compounded with what they are hearing in sermon, you see a lot of that imagery as well in the witchcraft testimony. you have a whole culture, for lack of a better word, of fears. in particular, the girls and women shared. there is clearly some kind of frontier trauma. to that i would add a certain amount of teenage angst where the imaginary world plays a great role, then you have girls like abigail hobbs, who moved the trials along forcibly, she does in a way most teenage girls would like to be able to say to their parents, i am done with you. she floats both her parents down the river and in doing so amplifies the fears that have been at play until that point.

host: text message to follow-up from rita, i've been a clinical psychologist for 25 years and always believed there was a very high probability of childhood sexual abuse within those communities. i see it all the time in the work i've been doing and i wonder if you researched any of this regarding the hysteria and conversion reactions of young women. stacy: i researched that as well as one can, i will tell you why it is easy to research. 17th-century new englanders were expert bookkeepers, except for when it came to the nine months of trials. we have a marvelous set of documents of essex county, which are nine volumes, 11 volumes -- court cases of the previous years. in those cases, you see a lot of the tensions that would've wrapped, a lot of the

confrontations between families who come to blows in 1692 in you see a lot of sexual abuse. servant girls who accuse masters of abuse, gross were abused at the hands of fellow servants and the families. you have a lot of pitchforks in the salem testimony. what you do not have is any girl that year who made any accusation of a sexual assault of any kind. there was nothing i could connect between the prior testimony, in which there is so much detail about all of these assaults and mishandling, and what the girls are suffering from at that moment. host: you use the word servant, not slaves. no slavery in 1692? stacy: girls were servants,

apprenticed servants and other households. kids were farmed out to homes not their own, no one is entirely sure as to why this practice came to be. the understanding seem to be adults could better teach and discipline you than your own parents might be able to. many of the afflicted girls were servants and other peoples households, that is how they were meant to be. that was their apprenticeship for those years. host: the role of the broomstick and how that came to be for witches. stacy: the witches of salem are, for the most part, anglo-saxon witches. they conform to the literature and imagery of communities from which these characters had come, with two exceptions. they fly, witches have not flown in new england before 1692, and indulge in diabolical witches sabbath. there was a plot to undermine

america, it took place at the sabbath that many people gave very colorful details about. those two elements came from continental witchcraft. continental witches and literature tend to have more fun than anglo-saxon witches, they tend to have more sexual dynamics and really disrupt households and much more perverse ways than the anglo-saxon witch. those elements, in my mind, came to new england thanks to cotton mather. those elements were incorporated into the imagery in 1692. host: brenda from minnesota, we have about 10 minutes left. caller: thank you. i am descended from mary, who was hung for witchcraft in salem in 1692.

she was hung with her sister, rachel, and her other sister, sarah, was accused of witchcraft but never hung. i would like any tidbits you have about my ancestry. stacy: you have an amazing set of ancestors. mary wrote a petition to the court, which is bone chilling, essentially saying, couldn't we be moved to another court? could we be tried elsewhere, where people are less -- perhaps a little more objective? could we have evidence other than that provided by the clearly diluted girls? it is a very beautiful, pathetic piece of writing and heroic piece of writing. all three sisters seemed to be accused because of an earlier land dispute near the border of

the village. if you go back to the records and files of the courts, the families are in court for years, generations. suing and counter suing each other about land boundaries. boundaries were defined as from the rock over there to the yellow tree to the wall at the corner. it was not exactly an objective way of delineating boundaries. there is a lot in the records and files about the land dispute , which seems to be the reason why the three sisters were all accused. it was understood witchcraft reagan in families, so once a woman was accused, it was not unusual for female relatives to be accused. host: we should note that stacy schiff was born in adams, massachusetts. whether that is significant or not, we do not know. every author that appears on in-depth, we ask favorite books and what they are currently

reading. here are her answe favorite books, shirley hazard, the leopard, some people, and more. currently reading three books, the go-between, snow and this is happiness. speak to one of the books you are reading. stacy: i want to say and not reading them simultaneously. if i can go back to adams, massachusetts, i was mortified it was named for samuel adams and i did not know more about it. let me talk about hartley, this is a novel -- it comes up in oblique ways and i never thought to read it. it is a 1950's novel by a frilly eccentric writer.

the first line is famous. the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there. you can see the appeal to someone who writes history for a living. it is a very odd, beautiful book . it seems like it is a cousin to atonement, it is wrapped around a young man looking back on his younger self. it has a beautiful frame. it is remarkable. host: do you think you could write a novel? stacy: i fear not. i should love to, but i fear not. host: why? stacy: maybe i will go home and start one today. i feel like there's something about nonfiction that really appeals in some way, there are boundaries of some kind, a chronology of some kind. there is something built in that i find very comfortable.

biographers are referred to as an artist under oath, you cannot make things up. i feel like that somehow fits better with what i do on the page. host: we want to show a tweet you sent out. oh my goodness, and what astonishing company. barack obama's favorite books of 2022 and on there is the revolutionary samuel adams. adrian is in las vegas, you are on. caller: hello, you're a wonderful writer. a few years back, i read cleopatra. i cannot member what you said, a great mystery for me is about her death. did she actually commit suicide, or did octavian's men get to her first? stacy: she does commit suicide. one of the mysteries -- there is a counterfactual way to look at it.

octavian may have encouraged her to commit suicide. we have the story from two sources, which cannot be reconciled because they are so different. she commits suicide and he is astonished, in a way frustrated because he hoped to prorate her in his triumph in rome. he is taken aback, he did everything he could to keep her alive. she tried to starve herself, stop herself. both times he interceded, he did everything he can to make sure she remains alive and her treasure is not lost to him. there is a counterfactual line of reasoning. it was not necessarily a good idea to parade a very powerful female captive in rome, that had been done sometimes to pity and might have been more convenient for him if she simply eliminated herself. he could not be the one to do away with cleopatra, whose beloved by her people.

i deal with this in the book, there is a line of reasoning that could go it was convenient to him, he made it possible for her to dismiss herself from the picture. host: is the intrigue you've explored, especially in cleopatra, doesn't make us look like amateurs today with our political intrigue? stacy: cleopatra is shrewd and conniving. i was halfway through writing the book and i got my mind around how shrewd and conniving and what an expert of timing she was. she is utterly resourceful, a tactician of the first rank. when you read about american politics of the 18th century, you think many things have remained the same. the conspiratorial thinking -- what is interesting with the revolution is the patriots accused the officers of conspiracy and the crown officers accused the rebels of

conspiracy. the idea there is conspiracy is very much baked into the fabric here. host: we are out of time. the last two hours we have been with author stacy schiff talking about her books, her most recent the revolutionary samuel adams. we appreciate your time. but tv now continues.