>> he was working how the student it's sore boon were treated no -- sorbonne that were after karen american were treated no differently. >> stephen: before you go, i just want to say that everyone knows you are the narrator of several ken burns documentaries. >> yes. >>. >> stephen: and you narrated seabiscuit, i believe. you have a lovely voice that is calm and comforting and it has gravitas and i was hoping to have you read a couple things with your voice and gave them the -- give them the kind of gravitas they deserve. >> sure. >> stephen: you can start with that one right there. >> my anna kopbda don't want noneless you got buns hun. [laughter] >> stephen: david mccullough, thank you so much. >> i don't know what that means. >> stephen: neither do i. the book is " what's up, smart? oh, just booked a summer vaycay. ooo. sounds pricey? nah, with the hotels.com summer sale, you can find awesome deals for places nearby. interesting... wow, i'm blown away. you look great. hotels.com summer sale, save up to 30%. and get a free kindle. hotels.com. be smart. book smart.

you have this artistic background from, you know, from louvre and the sorbonne, and then you come intothis institution. they're saying, "hey, wait a second; you may be latino, you may be mexican, but you don't represent what el museo del barrio's supposed to be all about. >> correct, and actually, that was... that was... i was surprised a little bit by that. i think, you know, in a way it was... i was selected by my artistic credentials and my understanding of the richness, complexity of latino/latin american culture. but that... that tension that existed-- and again, at the beginning, with that... what... that pushing back, what it really told me is how important this institution was for the community. so it was a really validating factor that the museum has been doing very good work, if people felt so powerful about it, you know? >> hinojosa: so connected to it. >> exactly. so at the same time, one of the things that was very important is to make sure that as... and i think the hardest part of expanding the mission really, really was the work of my predecessor, of susana leval, who r

if you were a foreign student in france, in paris, you could go to the sorbonne for nothing, to the ecole the students who were coming the harvard or yale or stanford were coming here and going free? it was part of the policy of france at the time. so if they could afford to support themselves, room and board, then they could go to these greatest of institutions. but american medical training, for example, was woefully behind. most doctors in the united states in the '30s, '40s, '50s up through the civil war had never been to medical school. >> the paris you describe is a place that is clearly the center of the world in a sense, and we forget now because the industrial revolution had just begun. so you're describing the last gasp of the great agricultural revolutions, and france was probably the richest country in the world, and paris certainly the center. >> what most people don't realize is paris was the cultural center of the world. and we had -- this city, new york, became the cultural center of the world after world war ii. but paris was also the center for medical education, medical

the painter mary cassatt the future senator and abolitionist charles sumner, who studied at the sorbonne. oliver wendell holmes, sr, then a young medical student and so many others experienced paris in the 19th century. we considered going to paris for the interview, but settled instead for meeting at the lovely bistrot du coin in washington d.c., where i started by asking mccullough why he was drawn to this particular time and place. >> here was this big period between 1830 and 1900 about which very little had been done, filled with wonderful characters, important characters in a variety of fields, who were changed by paris and consequently when they came home or what they brought home, changed america, changed our story. >> brown: in the first chapter you write: "not all pioneers went west." it's a kind of theme for this book. >> yes, it is. >> brown: in what way were these people pioneers? and what were they seeking? >> well, we talk about pioneers in science or pioneers in medicine and some of them were literally pioneers in medicine because they went there to study. paris was the me