, but they have their own problems at westinghouse and have their own problems with -- amongst the liberalmunity. so that is just the way it is. >> who's r. c. buhly and why such an influence on you? >> she was a pulitzer prize winning historian at indiana university and he was... he's -- we had a good history department in indiana when i went there and most of them were liberals and liberals in those days were a little, generally speaking, less partisan than they are today and were very nice people, and it also had to stick in their craw that r.c. buhly down the hallway won the pulitzer prize and the only one in the department and, he was a really right wing... one of those guys, he was one of those, like my grandfathers, hated fdr. and he had every, every fdr story imaginable, he had, and, he used to trot them all out and i believed all of them, until i got to be about 40 years old and read some other things and finally came to the conclusion that fdr was a pretty good president, and we wouldn't have -- i don't know if we can imagine us losing world war ii but we would not be the interna

, but they have their own problems at westinghouse and have their own problems with -- amongst the liberalmunity. so that is just the way it is. >> who's r. c. buhly and why such an influence on you? >> host: who is r.c. beautifully and why such an influence onitze you? be. >> guest: he was a pulitzer prize-winning historian at indiana university, and he was, he was -- he's the rare -- we had a very good history department at indiana when i went there.hem but -- and most of them were liberals, and liberals in those days were a little, generally speaking, less partisan than they are today, and they were very nice people. but it also had to stick in their craw that r.c. buelly dowl the hallway was a pulitzer prize, and the only pulitzer prize in the department, and i think he was -- [inaudible] [laughter] he was really right wing. he's one of those guys, he was one of those like my grandfathers, he hated fdr, and he had every, every fdr story t imaginable he had. and he used to trot them all out. and i believed all of them untia i got to be about 40 years old and read some other things and f

hard to argumentallize the eliminationme of wrongdoers.e by harnessing his competitor, h george westinghouse, alternatine current mechanism to the device he called the electric chair, edison's company promised to dispatch killers both quickly and humanely.erfo they would have done better using an axe, an angry westinghouse declared, yet suchc recognized process a long stepns forward from the macabrer executions and hangings of bygone years. as with other wonderful inventions that closed out theno age of lincoln -- the cash register, barbed wire, the the zipper, bicycle -- novelty seldomly seemed an accurate indicator of social progress. the sewing machine and the m machine gun creating genderedrce atmospheres of -- spheres of. labor. the marvelous writer, julia j keller, tells us one of thesein inventions and weaves a great story about the birth of modern america in the process.ll u she tells us, in fact, something we don't always want to hear about america: why guns matter. julia, would you like to start out and maybe introduce your book a little>> bit? >> t yeah. let's do that, and then we