henry adams became involved in impleader ron after 1900. and goodness knows there were plenty who cared about it. it wasn't what concerned or changed the character always writing about. in this book i did not in the according to the calendar. i did not end according to the historic event it ended in 1900 but that was because at that point augusta was so ill she had to come back to the united states, he left paris and the was the end of my book. i had to leave a lot out of this book. i had to leave a lot of people out of this book otherwise it would have become a catalog, and catalogs are not generally very compelling reading. but think you for the question. i do want to make one point, however, which i didn't have time to talk about why i was giving my earlier talk, and that is that it was at the library of congress for this book that my research assistant, mike hill sound and let me to one of the greatest discoveries of my working life and that is the diary of wash work which was in the library of congress but wasn't known to be there beca

that's a phrase from henry adams, by the way. and they think they're the, you know, as adam says in virginia, all geese are swans. and they think they're going to dominate. and all of a sudden, right away, this new england, new york merchant class is emerging to displace them. and what's going on? what is a conspiracy theory anyway? a conspiracy theory is a simplistic, semispiritualistic explanation for events that you otherwise don't understand. what's happening to virginians? they're all going to bankruptcy. both madison and jefferson went bankrupt. monroe does, too. the only one would doesn't is washington among the majors. slavery is not working. if you look at george washington's plantation towards the end of his life, he has 319 slaves. at any given time less than 100 of them are working. >> and also tobacco isn't working. >> tobacco destroyed the soil. he's already switched from tobacco, has washington by this time. but the tobacco economy and the tide water is like it's a one way ticket to bankruptcy. and so they all -- a

i think it was henry adams who said that great presidents are those who find themselves in office ata time when t country has to clarify its own narrative as well and to find itself. and i think we are still in a post cold war question about how are we going to create growth, how are we going to sustain a middle-class that has been the envy of the world buthich is clearly losing ground. >> rose: i see the country as in a place which n which we are looking at a totally different world and we want somebody that understands that world and somebody that can say if we do certain kinds of things we can regain the place that we were and believe we should be and that therefore we feel like we may not do as well as our children did. i mean, our children may not do as well as we did, that certain things we believed in may not deliver for us and that it's a scary time and that the world in which the united states played one role is a differentorld today. >> rose: well, onehing to remember is that america has had ten pretty tough years really going back to 91 and so if you're a conservative or a