a." featuresookshelf popular american history writers and heirs every weekend at this time. a author jim rasenberger discusses milestones that shaped america. he spoke about the ford model t, the right brothers' first flight. we will also hear about how americans view technology in 1908. this program is about 45 minutes. tonight i had the distinct pleasure of introducing jim rasenberger. he was a former computing editor at "vanity fair" and a frequent contributor to the "new york

times." ger joins us to discuss his latest work, "america 1908." publishers weekly has said of the author, he renders 1908 as a series of snapshots and his camera never blinks. please join me in welcoming jim rasenberger. [applause] jim: thank you for that introduction and thank you to barnes & noble for hosting this. above all, thank you for all of you being here tonight. today is the official publication date of the book, so i'm especially honored to have all of you with me. the book, as you may have gathered by this point, it's about america 1908. [laughter] it, part ofind of

the idea, anyway, that as we stand on the threshold of 2008, the year i think most was will inee will be fairly critical setting the future course of the country with the election coming up and outstanding questions iraq, it isr in pivotal to look back at another period in america 100 years ago. moments happenng in 1908, some of which literally put modern america in motion. it was the year the model t came out. there had been automobiles before the model t, but this was henry ford's great car for the multitudes. it played a huge role in making america the automobile nation that it became.

provedght brothers to the world they could fly. first triedrothers in 1898 but no one knew the right thing brothers could fly until 1908. they completely wowed the world with their abilities. it was the year of the great white fleet sailed around the world. it was the year robert perry set off to the north pole and frederick cook claimed to discover the north pole. wasof my favorites -- it the year of an automobile race from new york city to paris. six automobiles set out on a 20,000 mile race from times square to paris. i can see some of you thinking,

how cute drive from new york city to paris? the plan is they would drive across america to the west and up through alaska, across the frozen bering strait, across siberia and towards paris. that was the plan. it did not come out quite the "ay "the new york times hoped it would, but it came close. baseball fans will not forgive forf i've forget to mention one of the greatest years in baseball history when the new york giants battled chicago cubs . almost lost in all of this was it was an election year. have to begin the 21st president -- taft

. whole books could be written about any of them. been writtenve about most of them. most treat each of these as isolated incidents, out of the context of what was going on. yearan was to present the in full, to take each of these experiences and see how they banged up against each other and imagine what it was like to live through 1908. my first task was not to go to books as i normally would when i butn researching something, to the newspapers. i went to the new york historical society and sat down and read the entire run of the all the wayes

through new year's eve. i went to other newspapers and books. it was a fabulous way to get a arrayof the year and the and people who ran through it. everything that happened in 1908 was bigger, better, faster, stronger, stranger than anything that had happened before. this is partly early 20th century hyperbole. it was also partly true. everything was bigger, faster, stranger. some of what happened that year was admittedly frivolous. then't argue that automobile race around the world that made america or something like that. some of it was transformative. the model t, for instance.

there had been automobiles before, but most cost between 2-4000 dollars. only wealthy person could afford to buy them. more vehicles of sports fan of utility. i have a wonderful ad i came upon in harpers. it is from a few years before, it captures the sense of the light that people took in automobiles. it is a car that has three people in it. airborne, twoalf wheels up. one of the people is reaching back in the basket for a bottle. there is no more exhilarating a

sport then automobile in. pleasure of a spin is greatly enhanced if the basket is stocked with scotch white label. changedeverything had largely due to henry ford. his plan was to build a car for multitudes. it wasn't going to be a car as good as those rich people drove, it was going to be better. it was better and became one of the most commercial successes in american history. trivial.e events were and expandedlected american sense of what was possible. pretty much everything seemed possible in 1908. it was absurd at the start of the year to expect anyone to

drive an automobile across the bering strait, no more absurd than somebody proposing to fly an airplane for 2.5 hours as wilbur wright did. america 1908 in the opening -- closing seconds of 1907. i begin here in new york city, times square, new year's eve. ,t is a good moment to begin not only because it is the beginning of the year, but because packed in the crowd of 50,000 people are a lot of the themes that echoed throughout the year and are in this book. 1900, new year's eve had been a relatively sedate affair.

in new york people would go down to trinity church and listen to the bells rang at midnight then go home and say their prayers and go to bed. by 1908 that changed completely. the effects of a we consider new year's eve to be today. very raucous and almost violent, out of control. it little bit like mardi gras. fact, the melting pot. that phrase was coined by a playwright. you have heard the phrase to describe america's capacity to absorb immigrants. times square that night was a melting pot in action. people of all ethnicities, economic backgrounds, clashed against each other. men and women rubbed against each other, which was rare. they lived in different spheres

at that point. one of the exciting things to do if you were a young boy or man was to run through the crowd with a tickler, a small feather duster, and tickle the exposed flesh of women, the face or the back of the net. the police commissioner issued an edict but no one paid any mine -- any mind. some women wore veils to protect themselves from this print i don't want to imply they were innocent victims. i came across descriptions of women exacting revenge. there is one bit on a group on circled some course that and could not get out of them. inside of the restaurants that

lined the great white way, women did something quite radical. they smoked, they lit up cigarettes. it was something so radical, it was reported in every paper the next day and led to a law in january of 1908 for bidding women from smoking in public. back outside before midnight, here is the image i take with me. everybody looked up to the sky and what they were looking at ball, 700 pounds -- lights around it. the first ball drop. we are about to celebrate the centennial of the first new year's eve ball drop.

that posture of tens of thousands of people looking up to the sky with anticipation, waiting for something to happen. that is the perfect way to begin a book about a year in which so many extraordinary things happen in the sky. americans have looked mainly down to see their future, to the ground, where they hoped crops would grow, or hope to find gold, or coal. where they had looked west, towards the front tier -- frontier. the new frontier was in the sky. in new york you had to be tallest buildings in the world. , it waser building closely overtaken by the metropolitan life building.

the cables of the manhattan bridge were in 1908. the great feats were courtesy of the wright brothers. they first got off the ground in 1903. in public at flown all. they had done some flying in 1904 in 1905 then stopped flying completely. many people had heard perhaps through rumor the wright brothers could fly. there were a lot of rumors about people flying. most were nonsense. no one knew if they could fly or not. many people thought the rights were cowards.

they called them buffers, all sorts of portal things to say about them. orval flying near washington dc, the rest the world came to understand what they had accomplished. i want to read you a short firstt about wilbur's public flight in france. this is august 8. it was 6:30 in the evening when he finally climbed into the sea and took hold of the wooden control levers. .e wore his usual gray suit

the evening was calm and so outwardly was he. his heart must have fluttered just a little. this would be the first public right point. of a wright plane. they would bew over before they had begun. it will be the punchline of a french joke. spectators watched from the grandstand as the twin propellers decided to spend. four seconds later it was airborne. audienceh to give the a view of wilbur as he made an adjustment. dipplane responded one wing

in the other lifting. the plane bank to the left in a half circle. coming out of the turn, the , 800 made a straight run meters. field in a long oval and brought the plane down almost exactly where he had taken off two minutes earlier. it was a brief life. throat.ng of the those hundred or so seconds were are deliberately -- were arguably the most important they are spent in the air. everything changed. wilbur could see the effect as soon as he landed. spectators were running across the land. swooning asmost swinging him.race to congratulate

they witness competence beyond anything they had achieved. magnificent, magnificent he cried out. we are decent. we don't exist. another declared we are as wridren compared to the ghts. it is not without a certain sadness that we applaud mr. wright success. mr. wright proves that we are but debutantes. another french journalist wrote that man has conquered the air. he had conquered france at the least. orval began summer, flying. you have this remarkable thing of wilbur continuing to fly, and orval flying at the same time near washington. he started flying these enormous

pistons. he flew an hour in the air. on and on it went until september 17 when he was flying with a man and crash. suffered. the other man died. blowrash was a devastating . many people worried it would spell the end of the american aerodynamics industry. plane and into his .lew for 91 minutes making a mockery of any flight that had come before. wilbur flew for two hours 20 minutes. y have not flown an

inch, this was a stunning thing for people to take can. , iing spoken of the last day mentioned -- i pick up on new boy's day with a story of a , a 16-year-old boy. i came upon this in a number of newspapers, brief items about this boy. , carrance keygo. his -- i'm not one to tell you how his bike ride inns. it is somewhat traumatic. it gave me a springboard to look at what america must have seem

like to a 16-year-old boy in 1908. i'm going to read you a short passage. has there ever been a finer time to be an american boy on a daycle, than on that first in the year 1908? the interest and passions of a 16 euro had never coincided so perfectly with those of his country. adolescent an o itself. one moment supremely confident and clever, the next undone by getting this and hormones. namely what a 16 euro boy and his country shared was a sense of glorious futures. paneling, a flurry

had sent stock prices tumbling, throwing millions out of four. to economy seemed poised grow. the future was limitless. this morning the new york world published an essay to greet the new year. the editors look ahead to the future. 1808, 1908, 2008. they noted how far the country had progress. in 1808, two years after lewis and clark returned from the transcontinental journey, the country's population was 7 million souls. the federal government was underfunded. now in 1908, with a population

of america at almost 90 million, the federal revenue was 40 times greater than it had been a century ago. u.s. citizens enjoy the highest per capita income in the world and were blessed with the marvels of railroad, telegraph, electricity and gas. tubes with mail, men shaved with disposable razor blades, and women clean their homes with vacuums. engineers had a 50 mile canal through the estimates of panama. the future.rn to

2008 bringthe year us? population of 2008 would be 472 million predicted the world. planes ase gyroscopic broad as houses. airplanes. who can say? not a day pass without new discoveries and advances achieved or promise. dr. simon flexible or was declaring his conviction in a paper that human organ transplants would be common. the very air seemed charged with

the possibilities of the wireless technology. when the expectations of wireless exports are realized everyone will have his own pocket telephone and may be called wherever he happens to be. agecitizens of the wireless will walk abroad with the receiving apparatus and tune to that one of myriad vibrations. when that is perfected we shall have a new series of miracles. indeed. i don't want to leave the impression all of life is miraculous in 19 away. it was a hard life. working,a week dangerous occupations.

in the previous year, 3000 coal miners had died in accidents. 700 coal miners had died in different accidents. anarchism was frequent. it was their version of terrorism. violence was common. racism was tremendous. no matter how much you think you know about how racist america was, there is nothing that prepares you for going back and reading the casual racism in newspapers and magazines. then there was the more violent form. it was a big year for lynching. in august of 19 away, springfield, illinois, the home town of lincoln, weiss tried to drive blacks out of town. they burned black homes and

businesses. like most, there was a silver lining in springfield because a it led to the founding of the naacp. boxer, onon, the boxing day, it was still christmas day in america, he beat tommy burns to become the first heavyweight champion of the world. in the end, everything that was wrong with america, the most impressive thing about it is the hope that the people who live then shared that the future was going to be better than the

past. it is striking how much more hopeful they are then then we are now. we live in a world that is richer, more egalitarian, healthier, easier. barelyt poll found that one third of americans are optimistic about the future. it is kind of striking. it may be the fact that we are wiser to the downsides of technologies we inherited from 1908. we can't look at airplanes without having images of dresden, of 9/11. the automobile promised freedoms but now they deliver traffic jams, carbon in the air, foreign oil. it is an odd coincidence that it was also the year oil was discovered in the persian gulf.

you think of the coincidence of the model t and oil being discovered, it is amazing. finally, the great white fleet. i write quite a bit about it. it was greeted as the 16 battleships painted white, greeted at every port with ove n arms. now that sense of american pride is tempered by the knowledge that a lot of the world hates us. we are left with a disquieting possibility that the next hundred years might be the price we pay for the pleasures of the previous hundred. i don't want to leave on a downer. it is possible to spend as much .s as i did in 1908

i spent several years in 1908. it is all i could talk about for a while. whenever i sign things with a date, i always put 08. your have a few more months to cash it. i want to finish by saying i hope this book, like most good history leaves the reader not just looking back and appreciating the past but looking ahead. someone like the editors of the new york world did when they asked what marvels await the youth of tomorrow? given the current woes of wall street i think a more appropriate thing would be the .amous words of jpmorgan any man who is rare in the

future of this country will go broke. i leave you with that. [inaudible] >> how did you come to focus on 1915?s opposed to 1901, how did you find yourself in this year? .im: it was not initially 08 when i was researching my , i spent a great deal of time reading things from the early part of the 20th century and i knew i wanted to revisit that time period.

delighted me. i don't want to play my high school history class but it is a boring idea of the early 20th century. always was stuff, i struck by how crazy it seemed. not in a good way. the ambition of people. , the sensee idealism that anything could happen. as i read more it became clear to me that there was this odd thing happening. went onevents that we to define the 20th century happened to occur in the same year. i'm not trying to position and make an argument 1908 is the only year that matters. 1907 was a great year. was to finderesting

a way all of these things fit together. i think it is cool to know that wilber right was flying and made this 91 minute flight. a week later, the model t came out. these things did not happen in isolation. >> i have been enjoying the book. less optimistic. some of reminds me of the wireless internet future, people talk about the singularity. i wonder if you saw similarities between that spirit then and the silicon valley spirit today in america. jim: there are similarities. similarities to the automobile

industry,nd the tech a few years ago. in the early 20th century there were hundreds of automobile manufacturers. they all saw the future of the automobile will have no place in it. there was a great deal of innovation of that sort. thinking about the future in 1908 was deeper into the future. moreems to me now we were geared toward election cycles in quarterly returns. that is the thing. there was so much about what america was going to be like not just in 50 years, but in 100 years. this roosevelt had conservation conference in may

of 1908. these people came to washington to talk about this. they were not talking about what to do right now and how to preserve my bit of force. but thinking about what america was going to be like far into the future. there are similarities. the since i have is no way to prove it. i have no polls. there was just this spectacular optimism about the future and thought about anyway way that i don't see quite as much now. >> you said there were no polls in there. jim: none that i have seen. >> did the optimism you are talking about, do it extend to the lower classes?

the people opt in sinclair was their view of the future? jim: it did extend so far as i can tell. there is less written about poor. newspapers cover the plight of the middle class and the rich more than the poor. found, there was a and itf great optimism makes sense. immigrants were pouring into the country. 1907 was the largest year of immigration. you did immigrate to america if you didn't come t with hope. dashede may have been quickly in the coal mines but they had an expectation that things were going to work out for them here.

my answer to that would be yes, it did extend. i've read other things through that part of history. there was this great sense that working hard, and making your piece of the pie was a glorious thing to do. >> maybe we can speculate the reason people were optimistic was because they were poor and that made a difference to them in a way that it doesn't now. if i'm 10% richer now than i am this year maybe i will be a little happy but i don't have to worry about where my next meal comes from the way i think so many did. there is a qualitative difference between a life without electric lights and one with. , i havephone is cheaper

a blackberry instead of a landline. i don't think that affects us in the same way. jim: i agree with you. i sort of think sometimes america in 1908 as being an -- itcent, having these is not quite the same thing you are saying. america was a growing country. now we are in middle-aged country. our infrastructure is crumbling. the bridges and skyscrapers are up. so many of the things america was striving towards they have got. .e have more to fear now more to fear in part because those glorious inventions from the early part of the century is

part of what we were afraid of now. nobody was afraid of technology in 19 await. people were terrified of automobiles. that they were going to get mowed down. but they didn't seem larger implications of global warming. the only pollution concern was that people thought they helped collusion because they got horses out of the cities. 120,000 horses in new york and each one with a daily deposit of 22 pounds or so and this would dry up and go into the air and it was presumed to cause disease. automobiles will solve the problem of air pollution forever. [laughter]

>> what project are you working on now, 1909? jim: no. [laughter] i'm not sure. you, but i'd have to -- well. [laughter] i have ideas. i have a number of things i am ing away with. i will let you know. >> given that you were reading about 1908, 2008, any projections on 2108? jim: i'm going to write an article try to get a survey of 2108.'s opinions about it occurred to me that if i'm going to ask people that question i should have an answer of my own. i don't really. there are two things you come away with from reading.

the first thing is, we are assuming that things will go a and thea steady state changes will not be cataclysmic. oneou assume that, you get set of possibilities with skyscrapers and new technologies. the most striking thing are these future predictions, how right on some are, like the wireless telephone. i have a picture of a guy walking around with a wireless telephone in harper's magazine. these -- some predictions are right on. some are ridiculous. whaterall feeling is that we think about the future turns out to be right or wrong, it is

healthy to think about the future, to keep it in mind, and not just the next few years, but the distance future. that is a sign of a healthy society. i will leave it there. i would love to sign books. [applause] >> thank you ray much for coming. -- thank you very much for coming. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] >> to watch programs anytime visit our website, c-span.org/history.

you are watching american history tv all week and every weekend on c-span 3. >> in 1935 roosevelt put his mature on the social security act. >> this social security measure gives at least some protection to 30 million citizens who will reap direct benefits through a of, old-age benefits, and the protection of children and prevention of ill health. congressrs later passed a law designed to meet today's needs signed by president truman in 1950. it gives social security a new meaning for you. today, this is the portrait of the future, a picture which social security helped make

possible. most american families are now able to ensure for themselves and income that is guaranteed for life. it is an income provided not by charity that by federal old-age and survivors insurance that is bought and paid for. >> first lady helen taft made several changes to the white house. she led an effort to raise funds to create a memorial for victims of the titanic. her greatest legacy was bringing thousands of japanese cherry blossom trees to the nation's capitol. examining the public and private lives of the women who filled the position of first lady and their influence on the

presidency from martha washington to michelle obama. founded in 1865, the nation is america's oldest weekly magazine still in circulation today. up, victor navasky and katrina vanden heuvel talk about the history of the magazine with timothy naftali. they talk about more recent events, and their own experiences leading the magazine. this program was hosted by new york university and the nation. >> i am sure that i don't need to introduce the people. we are honored that nyu is about to