Transcripts For CSPAN2 Books By David McCullough 20240713

There is no phone or telephone there. There is a nice view but i have my back to the view but i wont be tempted by it. It is far enough from the house. There you see general washington and some of his soldiers marching along. I hope they show it at the end of it. Always a little slow catching up. Thats my example. Thats the one. He is hes always a little behind. I work out there because when the children were young i did not want them to have to be Walking Around it is a call for me to really look in front of me. That is one of the earliest photographs of the capital i love that photograph. It is carved as it is indicated there into that mantelpiece at the state state dining room at the white house. That is the map of boston which figures very importantly in the book i am working on now and of course it figured very importantly at a contemporary map. I take everything and there is a wonderful korean drawing i think its one of the best and most representative of him ever done. I love drawing and painting. I paint and draw myself. And since the only way we can see those people is in painting and drawings i find them of the upmost importance. Those are all the bound letters of George Washington again as part of what im working on. How long had you lived in that house there. There was the eyesore of the street. We slowly began to explore it and pick it up. We spent a lot of time. We spent at least a bit of time in the independence, missouri. This is the other work area. The copy machine in the computer and so forth. That is a little sign. That is a photograph of when i spoke at the joint session of congress. I really love it. Its chose jim wright falling asleep to my eloquence. That was one of my watercolors there. With the house on marthas vineyard. We give them to children. That was one from our hotel room in boston. These are watercolors. Those are done pretty quickly. Thats the reservation. A little pen and ink that i did. It is something ive always wanted to do. John mcdonald her husband. That is the Public Library across the street where i have served as a trustee we see our house there. This is how far had to go to get to the library. We would walk across the street with a little library. The church where some were some of our children were married. Thats right around the corner of where we live. It really has some creases in it. That is a picture of my mother probably taken before i was born my aunt marty on the right. I love it because its such a wonderful time and there is a great old car in the background. I always put a car in the photograph. I appreciate that picture because my aunt marty who was in the picture is the one that gave me a copy of that. That started me reading shelby foote. I did not know it at the time but the captain but really change my life because i began to sense what i wanted to do as a writer. The author of a dozen books and a twotime two time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book award. Hes appeared on book tv more than 50 times. I look at the programs from the archives continues with the talk hosted by the Washington Post in 2002. He reflects on the research he hosted. I have a lunch with several friends in a restaurant in the Lower East Side washington. And the two friends were both engineers and they both started talking about all of the builders that they have not known as a set out to create this unprecedented structure. My first book have been about the johnstown flood which is really a study in human short sighted desk. If there is a theme to the johnstown book its really that its peerless. Because people are in positions of responsibility that they are behaving responsibly. The mistake that all were making at the cost of more than 2000 lives. It wasnt an act of god was the fault of human beings. And what happens in life and certainly happens in publishing is a very quickly typecast. And after the book came out i had two publishers approach me. At the age of about 35 i was been typecast as bad news mccullough. I didnt like that. What i really wanted at that stage in my outlook i wanted some symbol of affirmation. We do know how to solve problems. We do have the capacity to do greater things than we know. Imperfect people working together can often achieve noble and creative works. And listening to these two men talk about the Brooklyn Bridge at that lunch i suddenly thought thats it. That is the symbol of affirmation that ive been looking for. And i came out of that restaurant and i was working then as its an editor in new york. I have someone waiting for me back at the office. I just forgot completely about it. The card catalogs were. I was just propelled by this a book that was requiring a structure and structure and design in my head. All i knew is that someone had only already done it. There was no one card not one card according to the descriptions on the cord that was a book i wanted to write. If you work it out yourself. If you struggle to understand it you will know in a way that you will never lose it. This is how we teach people today. So much of it is just handed to the student. We know how we can study or have studied for an exam days and days and we go in and take the example and we do it fairly well. I could go today i could take a test on the building of the Brooklyn Bridge because its part of me now. I have to do it on my own. I have to bring much more of the lab technique. They then drove up from our home than in white plains it was a beautiful saturday afternoon. Everything was in glorious color and we got to the campus of troy new york there was almost no one there. It mustve been and mustve been a football weekend or something and we went to the library which was an old church that have been converted into a library a very dark Victorian Church and i went to the desk and i called in advance and i said were here to look at the roebling collection and they said we are so shorthanded today ill just give you the key if you go up to the top of the stairs all the way to the attic we went up the stairs. It was like a 40watt bulb and the stairs creaked. It was something out of stephen king. They took the key. There was not a closet. It is really jammed with material. Old boxes of letters and photographs tied up with old shoestrings. Its something that they formed the look about that. They have never been untied. And there was a bust of the designer of the bridge. The door knocker. It was the volume of it to listen zero my god. They said zero my god. There goes three years of our lives. It was the trunk and the attic compounded. To take three years to go through the material. I was telling marie earlier ive written a number of books. And sometimes you write the book in the subject is sort of done it when you finish. You feel that. You really dont want to turn back to it again. It is an interesting structure and infinitely interesting work of american art art of the greatest importance. And it is a lesson of some kind that i hope and a brief way i can just talk about it. It is a great urban event. They are committed to the idea of the city. It stands at the very gateway of our nation and our country. Particularly in that day in the 19th century it was the gateway for millions of immigrants coming up the harbor to the new world. There was nothing like it in the world. There was nothing like it in the country those towers on the Brooklyn Bridge when they were completed which dont seem like very much today were the tallest structures of the north american continent. And they were an expression of the beginning of highrise. With heroic new york. The concept of a vertical city was new and furthermore it was hitherto impossible. And in the Brooklyn Bridge are the ingredients of highrise skyscrapers. The first use of structural steel. And of course seal it was going to transform this country. We talk about revolutions. An economic revolutions. They created by the advent of cheap steel. Too little has been written and too little understood. In the direction of the country. The bridge also contains in its Design Concept where and a work of engineering is performing a service to the quality of life in the city. If you had been to the Brooklyn Bridge if you have walked across the Brooklyn Bridge you know exactly what im talking about. It is how you walk over the bridge. Instead of putting pedestrian sidewalks or walks on the outside of the bridge the designer put them inside the bridge inside that great net of vertical stays and cables. And above the traffic. So when you walk across the Brooklyn Bridge you feel it contained in that network of cables and youre not on the edge of the bridge so all of the fears and uneasiness that can go with that are gone. You can enjoy the view in a way that no other bridge can. And tragically there has never been one since. As you know now the engineers who designed the bridges i think they spend weeks and months and years studying how to put that railing at exactly the point so that when you go across in the car you cant see anything. But the engineers are wrote in their original perspectives that people on a sunday afternoon or weekend day you could go with your family or your boyfriend or your children and walk up and out of the city. There were not many buildings that were more than about five stories tall. Its the title straight. There were sharks in the river in those days. The ships were coming and going them. It was also the beginning of the advent of steam. And feel the fresh air. And enjoy yourself. And have the thrill of knowing that you were in new york city. You are in brooklyn. You were in the greatest metropolis and what was thought to be the greatest country on earth. We are taking a look at offer programs. He appeared at the National Book festival in washington dc to discuss his best seller 1776. It was more important to who we are into the way we are. Is what we hold to have the secular faith than most people realize. It is portrayed as so often almost as though the people who are involveds it is figures in the costume pageant. The renditions of jefferson and washington and others in the paintings by gilbert stores. They lent this theatrical quality to them. We do not see them and photographs we have no recording of their voices. We cannot see film footage of them. They fought in the war. We have no on the spot drawings by artists and correspondents such as Winslow Homer to cover the civil war. It is almost impossible to reach them as we would reach people in the civil war for the First World War or others except for what they wrote what they wrote in diaries and letters and sometimes orderly books and records of one kind or another and memoirs and autobiographies written after the fact. The newspaper coverage was nothing like what you would expect. There was no correspondents covering the war. And by and large we would have to conclude we dont know what they looked like. But we do know what they looked like in part because of deserter notices when men deserted from the ranks when they went home or they went over to the other side. Notices would be published in the papers or end up at stores they were very descriptive because they hope to find these people. What comes through in those descriptions is a realization of how different from all of us they looked. Very few who fought with washington merged with washington in 1776. They felt that that was part of the role and the leader. To look like the leader. And look like the general. The men in the ranks were wearing everything imaginable and they were not supplied with replacements for what they wore so as the year wore on their clothing became tattered mended dirty eventually in rags or worse than ranks. In the times themselves the era in which they lived was so much harder than we understand but life or someone in the 18 century even in peacetime was very difficult by our standards. Very uncomfortable and filled with danger and threats of disease. Filled with the possible accidents and physical destruction that could come from work people were beat up by life more than we are in our time. There was no orthodontist or dennis or cosmetic surgeons to say the least. So someone with a severe childhood injury would walk for the rest of his life with a limp coming from an accident in our time. The signing of the declaration of independence. The magnificent painting. When washington returned command of the army back to the congress. After the end of the revolutionary war. John trumbull only have the use of one eye because of a childhood injury. Henry knox had part of one hand blown off in a hunting accident as a young man and on and on. People were missing teeth. They have a cast in their eye. Life was dangerous. People were resilient and tough and strong to a degree that is something we too seldom forget. We and our time we are softies by contrast its hard for us to imagine what it would be like to have the sweeping epidemic dysentery or typhoid. Sweep through our town or our city and take the lives of hundreds of people all around us. But it happened. And of course when the war came on. The suffering in the tragedy and the grief and the sorrow cannot be measured with any statistics Abigail Adams said future generations who will reap the blessings well had little idea can little imagine what we have suffered on their behalf and she was right. The war was the longest in our history except for the vietnam war. Eight and half years. It was also very bluntly proportionate to the population. 25,000 americans were killed. To us who have lived. With the 20th and 21st centuries. And suffering worldwide. 25,000 does not sound like a great deal for 25,000 was 1 of the population of 2,500,000 and if we were to fight a revolutionary war revolutionary war today with our population that would mean that over 3 million would be killed. So in their time it was a horrible war and it is extremely costly to the people who stayed home and had to make do without their husbands to work the farm. Or to be the bread winner. I would like to just read you a little bit of some of these deserter notices they are very colorful. Very picturesque. In a way that we are not used to. Very much like the characters say. One George Reynolds was a 5 feet nine and half inches tall 817. And carrie has had something on his right shoulder. Thomas williams was an immigrant in and an old countryman. He was from the old country. He was an old man it from the country. Probably ireland or wales or something of that kind. He have a film in his left eye. A saucy fellow was wearing a white coat, jacket and breeches. When last seen. Deserted from the regiment with captain harveys company. One simeon smith of a greenfield. A joiner by trade. A thin spared fellow. He head on a blue coat and a black vest a metal button on his hat black long hair black eyes. He was rather predominant. Predominate. Likewise Matthias Smith a small spark pillow. He have a younger look in his face. He said i swear i swear. In between his words will spit smart. He head on a green coat and an old red gray coat. One is red and one is green. Although he wears a something of a sober look. Likewise john davey along pump shouldered fellow. A shoemaker by trade dress his words. The slim legs. Lost some of his four teeth. These men who are largely anonymous where the ones who went and did the hard merchant and fighting and marching in fighting again and again month after month into made the words of the noble ideals more than just a declaration more than just words on paper. When we celebrate the fourth of july we celebrate the great opening paths and we celebrate that all men are created equal life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. None of that would have been possible without the man who well march with washington. Through 1776 and beyond. And dont picture them as all heroes. They werent. Thousands deserted as time went on. Thousands more went home when their enlistments were up. When the time came to go home there was nothing to stop them and many of them just marched away. When washington was in retreat and the army was down to rags and many of the men were without shoes and winter was coming on and they were coming on fast behind them and force them beyond anything that they can even imagine with soldiers who are welltrained and will shod with good close and good equipment when that was going on at one point in december the enlistment for 2000 men came up and 2000 men marched away. They went home with no shame. Washingtons army was down to 3,000 men. Thats all that were left. So in effect quite literally we owe what we have and who we are in all that we hold sacred to about 3,000 men who would not quit. They were led by a man who would not quit George Washington was not a great intellectual like jefferson or adams or hamilton he was not a brilliant speaker like his fellow virginian. What George Washington was was a leader. He was a man of phenomenal courage. He was a man who can spot a great talent and other people and give them a chance and two of the best man he picked he picked within about two weeks. He picked them despite the fact that he disk liked doing killers new england learners those two men green and knocks with washington where the only general officers who stayed the entire length of the war. Who would not quit. You make your watching book tv. We are showing highlights from the historian many appearances. They published the american spirit a collection of speeches throughout the career. About how history can inform us today. When i was writing my book about Harry Trimble truman i love the idea that he went for a walk every morning. I thought maybe i should try that as a way of tuning up your head not necessarily your body. And you start thinking in a way that you dont if youre not walking. Last summer when the comments are made by the republican candidate for the presidency were to me but not only appalling but unimaginable i thought what could i do to provide some counter review. Such as the 200 anniversary. The anniversary of the white house in the Memorial Service at dallas which i was asked to be the speaker. And commencement speeches and speeches that i have given particular occasions of importance to the history of other organizations and or universities. And i found that there were a great many where i was enforcing forcing what really matters to me. It will be fascinating. And how essential i think it is as a mean to experience this. Due to the little bit of time we will have access of the whole realm. They go back hundreds of thousands of years. I said which of these speeches might be appropriate and they have the help of my daughter dori lawson. Who arranged all of these talks that i gave. When i read the book the first time and i put it down i said he is writing in the times. Because they might be apropos to the current times. And ive heard you say before. Historians basically dont really have a role in talking about current politics. I was talking about before current politics stayed on the scene. I went back and read them a second time thinking what is a sense of what is the paragraph. What is the point that he has some take care. I went back and i read a second time. What is the one point hes trying to make here. Let me pick out a few of them. I wont do each one but i think 12 out of 15 i found the pertinent point. The first speech in the book from 1989 Margaret K Smith you have the guts to rebuke joe mccarty. I dont want to see the republican party. Read the political victory fear, ignorance, bigotry. It is the interesting word here. And why did you think that have application to the current time. Charlie you would be perfect if you only have a sense of humor. Can you imagine someone reading this in the current political climate. In that the republicans to see that. One of the rare women in the senate one of the bravest most admirable political figures we have ever had. And not many republicans are standing up now. 1998 speech quoting benjamin rush. Some other patriots of that time. One of the original signers of the declaration. Speaking of good nature that mattered most in human relations he said and you call him in the book. I included tender, and gentleness in disposition to speak with civility. And listen with attention to everybody and then you added in 1998 in the speech. And perhaps in the own day more than ever. Benjamin rush as one of is one of my favorite characters and absolutely remarkable man. Someone who is interested in almost everything. He was an accomplished physician and one of the first people to encourage the fair and humane treatment of people with mental illness. And not to just stuff them away in the cell as if they were animals. He was extremely courageous in his ability to go into places where the plague was rampant. He risked his life over and over. And he was one of the signers of the declaration of independence. And when he signed the declaration of independence he was all of 30 years old. We forget how young those people were jefferson when he wrote the declaration of independence was 33. Imagine. Washington when he took command of the Continental Army was 44 years old. We see them later on with her white hair and their wigs in the elderly statutes and so forth. They were very young. I think that is encouraging part of that story. I dont thing we can ever know enough about the American Revolution and by the way the new museum of the american reference dilution is just open in philadelphia is a must. It is marvelous. Is marvelous. And particularly as a place to take your children and your grandchildren to get them hooked. On history. It is brilliantly organized and spectacular a building by as i write in the center of where all of this started in the neighborhood. Only us a few steps down the street from independence hall. We who live in the boston area assertive sort of take that reality of the miracle of that era as part of our environment in our world. That is good, that is great. I love kennedys profile of courage. I read that when i was still young and not really aware of what i wanted to do with my life. I love his regard for john quincy adams. What i like in that quote and im not here to comment on anything. What i like so much in that quote is civility. And the sense of comedy that existed among people who share a common goal and needs to be a common end. We have deep chasms of division in this country but we come out of it. Lets get to bring us out of this one. The two side sides seem so unimposing. When the sense of a National Goals is gone and particles magic matter more. What brings us out of this. Leadership. Leaders who have the courage to stand up to their convictions. You have the backbone to do is what is right irrespective of what it means to their political future. And it has to come mainly from the people we talk about which i we talk about the segments of government. But there is a fourth factor. A people all of us and when we stand up and say no more of this we dont take this anymore. When we scene up and say there is a person right there saying the right thing and doing the right thing. Where to get behind him or her. And make sure that the attitude becomes potent and even decisive. When they read about Margaret Chase smith. Thats it im in a deal. Someone in the government right now. Out of necessity to survive we can expect that. We are i believe. We are centric nation. We are basically a country where 60 of the people are in the middle. And they want government to get something done. We aint doing it. Very baffling times and very pessimistic times. Inappropriate behavior times we have come through them all. These difficult times are clotted sky times when we do come through we are better for having done it. That was a simpler time back then. It never was a simpler time. So for boating. Yes they have. And if you dont understand that. You dont understand the reality of our story. I like twopoint out the influenza epidemic which my parents and your parents probably went through. 500,000 americans died of that disease a disease where they didnt know where it came from. They didnt know whether it would ever go away at all. If that were to happen today. Given the size of our population. A Million People would die in less than a year imagine if that was on the nightly news every night. And then will be all more the terrified. He would be next in our family today. Just as the depression in the civil war horrible types but we came through them. We have the faith that we would. And because we understood that nothing of much consequence is ever accomplished alone and has to be a joint effort. Thats what they have to come back and understand. Our look at David Mcculloughs Program Concludes with his recount of the pioneers who settled the northwest territories. This event is from 2019. The big sudden revelation that he was something i have eventually after i finished the wright brothers. I got down to marietta because i heard there was a collection of wonderful archival material there. And my assistant who is part of the greatest researcher in america today. I saw this breathtaking collection i knew we have open king tuts. It was really thrilling. Let me just try to describe why it was thrilling. There is so much of it there are literally thousands of letters and diaries moores unpublished journals maps data of all kinds. And magnificent oil paintings. It is the quality of it all the quality of the writing, and the thinking of the odyssey of expressing what they were brokenhearted about what they were fearful about. All of the work they have to do. The onset of epidemic disease in the natural fiascoes of storms and earthquakes all of it happening in one after another. One year they almost starved to death. Compared to them we are all a bunch of softies truly, i could go on for hours about the lessons of history and why history is so beneficial and so important so enlarging of life but i think two of the most important lessons to be learned passed on to our children and grandchildren the first is empathy being able to put yourself in the other persons place to imagine what life might have been like that. And what they went through and it is the same for people in our own time. You have to understand why other people feel as they do about things put your thing dash mike put yourself in their place. And secondly gratitude. They are for all the other people do for our benefit. R did long ago we should never just say oh thats the way it is. In one of the things that we have taken for granted is the Public School system another thing is that all men are created equal not just on paper. But in fact. Those two parts of our National Life began here. The first Public School system anywhere and the country. In the country. Here in ohio. Because of one man. He charters the northwest ordinance. 1787. And states very clearly there will be public education. There will be complete a complete freedom of religion and there will be an attitude toward the native americans that is fundamentally respectful and descent. And there will be no slavery. Now remember there was slaves in every one of the original 13 colonies still we had 150 slaves over here in the slave quarters. At second it be that way and zero how they determined. And that was due primarily if not to say in heart in full the polymath they knew a lot about everything. They were interested in everything. And they were a dr. Of law and medicine. All three and practiced all three. He was probably i would say almost certainly the leading american of his day. He was an astronomer. He was interested in everything. And he believed in the importance the love of learning like very few americans have come to know or read about. He never lived here. Have too much going on back home in hamilton massachusetts. Or so there in very superb conditions. And, his son came out here. With his wife and four children. And they are young and hopeful and theyve known how to dress themselves with hard work. But nothing even the most difficult daily task of being a farmer in the rocking ground of new england was not going to be anything comparable to what they face here. Two of their childrens children died of disease. Imagine. They arrive here in mrs. Cutler had stepped off the vote the barge at one point. And turned her ankle badly. They have to begin by hard work. We have no idea how hard those people work. Every day. And all of the children. E from cutler have not have the education his father head. He had been raised by his grandparents who were farmers in connecticut. Because of what he then did. I was asked in an interview just the other day of all the scenes in my book. I knew right away. There was a big commitment that came after election. They had decided they were going to get rid of this rule that there would be no slavery. And to people in the legislature were leading the fight in the and the charge to stop that. To keep it from turning into a slave state. In effect the leader of that that came out to celebrate. Absolutely devoted to stopping this change. He could hardly get out of bed. And there was some question if he would survive. And the day of the vote that was to take place rufus putnam came into the room the boardinghouse room nearby and he was old enough to be his father you must get well. And be in your place according to one account. Putnam and another man carried into a convention on the stretcher but there is no reliable evidence of this. Cutler himself wrote only i went to the convention and i moved to strike out the obnoxious matter and made my objections as forcibly as i was able. It was an act of fortitude and the result was never to be forgotten here. It cost me every effort i was capable of making he wrote and it passed by a majority of one vote only. Because he have gotten up from his suffering and gone in and voted he was stopped. And there would be no slavery not just no slavery in ohio but all of Northwest Territory which included indiana illinois imagine if the slaves have been submitted imagine what had have happened. There wouldve been no underground railroad there would be no. Beecher snow into the influential novel ever written by any american. If this head been a slave there wouldve been no grants. The whole picture would have been different. This one man there was no statue of him. He was not mentioned in any of the history books. Imagine the excitement we felt that care were all of his letters all of his private correspondence with his right wife and others. While over a thousand pieces. If you miss any of these author programs with historian David Mccullough or want to watch them in their entirety you can visit our website. Access our archives by using the search box at the top of the page and search David Mccullough and book. As a coronavirus continues to impact the country here is a look at how it is affecting the publishing industry. Many bookstores in states have loosened their orders theyre trying to determine whether they should be open to customers or continue with online sales. In dallas one of the few to open their doors but allowing no more than ten people in the store at a time. In accordance with state guidelines bookstores had also been to the author events. I had had mixed results in transferring that to book sales. Also in the news. Npd book sales were flat for the weekend. Another week of losses with a 15 decline and now down 10 for the year. And many book festivals and conferences that are forced to cancel are now offering them a book festival. They will now provide online programs. It kicked off a month of virtual author talks last weekend. Book tv will continue to bring you new programs in publishing news. You can also watch all of our programs anytime at book tv. Org