Many different places in the united states. She gives us a good perspective of how different spaces can influence an artist. She was versatile about nature but the west was something come her love of the west was born here. We are standing in front of georgia okeeffes painting. It is an oil painting on board and it is called red landscape that was done in 19161970s when she was teaching at what was west texas state college. She did the piece based on an abstraction of the canyon. She lived your twice actually and here its interesting because between 191214 she was in amarillo teaching for the Public School system of amarillo. In 19161918 she came back and got a faculty position at west texas state normal. Position at west texas state normal. She was here in two little stems. She was from wisconsin sisters interested like it midwest farm life. She grew up on a farm so she had some exposure to middle america, and the broad spaces of the west really struck her. It changed her aesthetic. We think this is her sort of first exposure to some of the stuff she sought out as part of her lifestyle. Several underdeveloped areas of the okie okeefe scholarship, s arriving, like treating her as a writer, a maker of paintings and works of art. There have been some great letter books that have been published but the majority of people who love her yet dont appreciate what a good writer she was. The other thing we have done a lot of work on that my book tries to do is her opinions about the war. We just think shes a pacifist because her art is about nature. She wasnt making direct she does a piece that is a flag but thats the one piece directly connected to patriotism but when you really look at the depth of what she is writing, and she wrote daily so we can trace her feelings come in and out of the war years. She has amazing opinions about what it means to be a soldier of what it means to be a woman cant be a soldier. That was really exciting for me to find a new way to understand history through okeefe and a way to understand okay through history. I think her position shifted. For example, she falls in love with the cowboy here who was not the student but was a student at west texas state normal. He is considering signing up and hes considering quitting school to site up. She talks about how they lay under the stars and talk about this. You can imagine anybody who is struggling with someone going away for a while or should you go or how am i going to fuel, she kind of says should i marry him . Or not . Should he go to the war or not . She struggling with the things you can imagine yourself struggling with. She so relatable. Shes not just grumpy antiwar figure. She talks about her brother whos in Training Camp in illinois and then in waco, texas, and she visits it. The first time she visits she can figure what hes doing this. The side effects she is utterly inspired by him and his soldier friends. That idea for going in that like what time she also writes about how its hard to even tie her shoes during the war. Like, to do daily life activity when she does people are dying. Then she writes about how i think if i was sent over i could be a murderer. Shes thinking what would i do around dying people . This is real stuff that we all would assume she thought about but nobody has paid attention because its this brief moment in history. America was on the part of the work for basically a year in 1917 to 1918 that thats exactly when she was here, exactly what she was writing. We had this incredible archive of it. Even indirectly would learn about wartime with soldiers because so many of her students became soldiers. Her brother was a soldier and then this man ted reed became a pilot. He wasnt a pilot and world war i but he started building jennies around the time so he was like building for aviation. We can learn things about soldiers camp life through her because she was in touch with these people. Theres so much that you can learn in these letters, so it takes a close reading it every page has a discovery. Okeefe was ahead of Art Department when she came here in 1916, but there was one person in our department is use only person in the Art Department but she is on the faculty of about 24 people. In a way i moved your kind of like her, for the job. I came to the department that is going out of what she was leading in 1916. So people get really interested in kind of walking the footsteps of okeeffe. You got to the canyon and try to find what you saw and did. Maybe i fell into a bit of that myth. I also wanted to get a little bit more historical accuracy. People would always say you know okeeffe did this or that. But i wanted to know from her what she said. Thats what i had so much fun discovering because sometimes artist dont write so we dont know if he thought thats it. Okeeffe wrote prolifically but privately. We have access to that. If you want to know what you said, she said it in her words in her handwriting so i was interested in going back to the source, the horses mouth if you will. That kind of digging to hear her voice was something i was interested in. This letter book can teach us so much more about this artist and how profound an interesting and creative and spunky and a strong woman and all of those things so can teach us about okeeffe but also about so many other thing she was an observer about. She was a constant observer about so many different things. As an art historian of what people to take away the Art Historical aspects of it, but also as a historian and so of those discovered the place geographically so rich in so many histories, i want her to be a new voice about the fact. Twice a month cspan cities tour takes booktv at American History tv on the road to explore the literary life and history of a selected city. Working with our Cable Partners we visit various literary and Historic Sites as we interview local historians, authors and civic leaders. You can watch any of our past interviews and online by going to booktv. Org and selecting cspan cities tour from the search dropdown at the top of the page or by visiting cspan. Org citiestour. You can also follow the cspans city tour on twitter for behind the scenes images and video from our visits. The handle is cspancities. Monday, president today on the booktv, discussions on u. S. China relations, reforming journalism and startups in san francisco. There were those who believed by the integration of china into the International Economy we begin to see the liberalization of chinese politics. So you said earlier that the expectation had been cooperation with china. Actually was integration with china. Now you see frustration with that. Bennett 4 p. M. Then at 4 p. M. We dont want to make ourselves center of attention or the apparent font of wisdom. We like to go out and report, and reporting is a rare circumstances the district are so much opinion journalism, very little reporting. People watching, describing. I heard people say uber couldnt exist if it didnt have this crazy culture. My question is like, should it exist . That culture, if that culture shouldnt exist and if you dont have culture, like maybe thats fine. Watch booktv president s day on cspan2. Edward j larson is with us today. He is University Professor of history and holds the chair in law at pepperdine university. He headed theze history departmt at the university of georgia