Radio, tv, not much of the man left here. [laughter] rick i wanted to set it up. And i think a little bit of my thunder was stolen already. Marks latest gem, it is called the food of a younger land. A younger land, what does younger land mean . It depends on how far you want o go back. If you are anthropologists, they think the diet went to hell about 7000 years ago when humans stopped foraging, stopped hunting and gathering, and had a iet of minerals and vitamins and amino acids perfectly in tune with the seasons and went to a lower grade of eating called agriculture, with its deficient grains and so forth. Or you could go to a younger land, back to the late 19th century in philadelphia where they were already fishing out the oysters and the shad and the catfish. They were used to the catfish dinners here, catfish dinners all over town. And even the sturgeon fisheries on upper delaware bay, which in the 1880s, actually produced the worlds mightiest share of caviar, which i dont think most folks know. Mark i am sure knows. Or how about 1902. That is when the automat debuted, Assembly Line eating for an industrializing city. You could almost hear the Fast Food Movement revving up in the background. So it was not long after that, after the first world war, but for the second, before the national highway system, chain restaurants and frozen foods, that Mark Kurlanskys younger land held sway. He real genius of this book, which i absolutely find a treat, is that he lets the voices of that moment tell about it and witness it. Firsthand. So you get rants about the lost art of mashing potatoes properly, about the incessant fakery of the new York Literary tea. And we can talk about some of this, tales of western land fries, which is a rather euphemistic term for what was going on. Tussles in kentucky about how to make mint juleps. And reports from a magical land far beyond the reach of jim crow that was called diddy. They were collected by pollitz, inspiring novels. Inspiring novelists like saul bellow and others that we can talk about among them. And that most pitiful species on the planet, out of work newspapermen. [laughter] hired by the depression era federal writers project. Kurlanskys own works, the oyster, salt, and many others and his iconic landmark book, history at its finest, the last one although about how the singular fish, the card, the spirit of discovery and liberty and in the cane fields of the andes by contrast, a brutal slave economy. This latest book is something else. It is a rough draft of history. Curiously light, i thought, on lamentations about the depression for the time that these stories were collected. And, rich with wit. He might give us a little sampling of some of the new york luncheonette jargon. And alternately affectionate and unsparing essay called the short history of the american diet by the novelist, nelson of ran. That might be a good place to start, because it is where the masterful Mark Kurlansky started, but lets welcome him one more time today National Constitution center. [applause] rick so, why dont you tell us a little bit about how you got into this project. I think it was the rabbit hole that was nelsons papers. Mark yes, there were five regions that the federal writers project divided up into, and each region was supposed to have a central essay, and the person assigned to the central essay for the midwest was nelson. These were 100, 120 page essays. I only give excerpts of them. Rick what about for some of the younger folks, what were some of his works . Rick mark walk on the wild side. He was the first recipient of the National Book award. And he tended to write about sort of the seedy side of life. A wonderful writer. Very original. Nd a copy of this essay there is a copy of this essay in the archives, but theres also a copy of this essay in his papers. When he died, the university of iowa ended up with these papers and they published the algoran essay as a book, which they called america eats, published i think in 1993. And that is when i first realized that there was such a thing. Of course, actually, there wasnt. But there was supposed to be. And then i thought, well wpa, was Government Works so they do not know what to do. They dont dump in the basement of the library of congress. So i called the library of congress and i said, do you have papers on a federal writers project called america eats . They said yeah, yeah we have boxes of them. So i went looked at them and it was kind of a wonderful xperience, looking through these boxes, because it was like opening a time capsule in 1940. They were all on onionskin. Remember onionskin, the thin paper . Rick i even remember typewriters. That is how old i am. [laughter] mark these were all carbon copies. The kind of carbon copies on onionskin. And a lot of them, a lot of these manuscripts probably, i was the first person to read them because they never got to the editing process. Rick i want you to stop right there for a second, just to give these folks the taste of some of the just pure jewels that there in this collection that mark has compiled, i just xeroxed one little passage from nelson algorans essay, and if you would be kind enough to read it, this is about the white settlers first encounters with the native indians, broadly speaking in the plains, in the midwestern part of the united states. So, in the first sentence, the people he is talking about are the white settlers, so theres just a few graphs here. And, just listen to this language. At least i was moved by it. Mark so in all means of developing grain and providing against the future, he was more thoughtful than the indian. In the killing of wild game, he was prodigal. Before the homesteaders had come, the great clouds of wild pigeons were gone, the buffalo were going, and the wilderness streams were fish dry. And killing he surpassed any savage. Imaginatively as he might go dancing. For the anticipated pleasure and the relating of it after the slaughter was done. Domestication brings, that somes was put to the destruction. By that time, the indian was eating government rations for tins. In a divided time the war between the states, the whites had a modified the indians natural diet in more ways than one. In fact, it just about put a in fact, it just about put a stop to it all together. Rick that is just the kind of writing that algoran was doing. Now, he was a professional writer. Rick one person said it stopped him from suicide. Mark probably al green algoran said these things. Rick so, heres the question. So, are we right now with all of these journalists and so forth walking the streets ripe for another federal writers project, or expanding on that, do you see any parallels between the time when fdr, and not simply for writers, but when fdr was trying to get people back to work, and the obama moment mark it is a totally different thing. Back then, you had a newly elected, a charismatic democrat replacing a very unpopular republican. [laughter] mark at a moment of economic collapse. [laughter] mark and the president decided that he wanted an economic stimulus package, which the republicans opposed. Rick that is really different. I am picking up on that. Mark what was different about it, you know, and obama probably did study this, but he missed something important. And that is that roosevelt got a bill through congress, budgeting hese projects. And it didnt specify what the projects were. It just said, there would be many small projects. And you know, he got the budget for it. And then all of these things, the wpa was never voted by congress. It was created by an executive order. The federal writers project was an executive order. There were a lot of people in congress who hated these things. Congress investigated the federal writers project. The unamerican activities committee, to see if they were communists. Rick which they were. Mark which they were. [laughter] right. And the constant accusations of boondoggles, my favorite of which was that federal writers project did a translation into yiddish of the song of songs, from the agent hebrew into yiddish. And somebody, a congressman who clearly wasnt jewish, he looked at one and he looked at the other, and he said boondoggle is the same language. Beautiful. Rick lets talk about this. We talked on the phone about this a little bit. And i was fascinated. You are around a contemporary mind. You grew up in new england, a bit like growing up in massachusetts. I guess you were down in the hartford area. And you may be caught the last bit of, you know, before the interstate highway system, before the chain restaurants when there was a little more regionality in the food. So, tell us a little bit about some of the things you remember. Mark i came from a family of six. We had four kids. And the six of us would pile into a huge buick every ummer. Is car was so big that it comfortably sat six people. We would travel around america. We would go out west. If you come from new england and go through the west coast, on the way out and the way back you have pretty much done it. And i remember the excitement of discovering new food. The food was different everywhere you went. And, discovering mexican food in the southwest, eating my first taco at the beach in california. Discovering aplets in washington. Just a lot of food experience. I remember two things that really struck me. That as you travel west, breakfasts got larger and larger. And the other thing which was hamburgers get more and more on them. Where i come from, with a hamburger you would just get a hamburger and then youd get into the cheeseburgers with bacon, and by the time you are in california you have this whole salad on top of your hamburger. Rick sometimes not even a bun anymore. Mark yes. So there was this, there was this sense of the regions. There wasnt much fast food. There was Howard Johnsons, which my father claims to have worked in the original Howard Johnsons. He was from quincy in south boston, where the Howard Johnsons began. He claims to a actually worked to have actually worked for howard. Rick your father did not introduce the clam strip, did he . Mark i have heard of it. What is it really . Is it squid . Rick it could be squid, it ould be pollack. Mark it has no belly. I am going to boston tomorrow. We will get into the belly iscussion. This is serious stuff in new england. Mass, ell, in ipswich, ou pay a premium at woodmans, one of these fried claims places to get the belly clams. Mark otherwise known as the clambered to go. Rick speak to, which part of the anatomy you are after. One of the things that come around here obviously we have soup and we had catfish and waffles. We still occasionally, you will see sightings i dont know what you folks have seen it, Chicken Salad with fried oysters on the same platter as a real philadelphia traditional thing, pepper hash on hot sausage maybe with a fish cake. T is so pervasive. But then they sort of like that out a little bit. Mark that is the ifference. Most of the things that are in this book probably do exist somewhere. If i picked the most obscure one and said, on callin radio, this fish does not exist anymore, five minutes and someone would call in and say, my sister makes t. But what is different is that this was the food of america, and now it is the stuff where you have to be a detective to find it. Rick it is interesting. In philadelphia, in south philadelphia, cheesemakers who make the ricotta in the basement nd sell it on the avenue, or they still bake bread over wood. You are right, unless you have a native guide, these folks are mark it is very hard for an out of towner anywhere in america to go in and hold the local food. Rick and you can buy pennsylvania dutch pies at the eady market, but the real ones meats ietrichs smoked in burkes county. You get the commercialize ones. Let me ask you this. On that theme, is there omething that we should be doing or that we are doing to of keep the flamente flame burning a little bit, to keep at least one mohican or a couple of mohicans around . Is there some sort of a revival of Artisan Foods in some places . Like a Farmers Market . Mark this idea of seasonal food and buying local, the smallscale farmers, over which 100,000 of them go out of business every year. You know, these movements are very important, but they arent going to, we are never going back to 1940. And you know, in some ways that is not a bad thing, because you know, it is great to talk about the local food, but in this part of the country, from november to april, there isnt much. And in september and october, people used to start canning food to get through the winter. So, it is not completely a bad thing that somebody is willing to fly or truck in some fresh food in the winter time. Rick i think one of the pieces i was reading in here, was it in the prairie or the homesteaders or what have you, they were all sick in the spring because they did have the greens for several months, so they had to bulk themselves up with whatever, when i say sick, colds and that feeling. Mark and right now, you will lso notice in here theres a lot of canned Foods Ingredients that we would look down on now. But they were what was available and was used. Rick i think in philadelphia and maybe, help me ken, when did george start, in the mid70s . Early 70s . One of his big claims to fame was he was using fresh herbs. That was such a concept even then. People were using dried herbs and so forth. And canned vegetables. And so i agree, the landscape wasnt exactly i mean, in the urban dining scene. Mark there was a woman his idea all of this was whose idea all of this was, katherine kellogg, who did the guidebooks, that is with the federal writers project was known for. Katherine kellogg, who is this accomplished woman who left a highpaying job because she was so excited about the federal writers project and her idea for it was guidebooks, because there were no guidebooks to america except for the 1909 one hat was written by a brit. Nd they did guidebooks for all 48 states and most major cities and some minor cities, and major literary critics gave rave reviews to these books and they were best sellers and some of them are still in print. And very readable. And this project was, you know, this was her next idea when they had completely exhausted the uidebooks. This was going to be the next thing. Part of the instructions she gave was to look for food controversies, like the fight over what the correct clam chowder is in new england, and the correct way to make a mint julep in the south, and is it originally from kentucky, or virginia, or what . And then weighing in with mississippi. And how do you just make it, do you put a sprig in the bourbon, or do you crush it . Some said it was a sin to crush it. You dont crush it but you when but you pinch it with your fingertips. You know, all of these discussions, but i have course wanted to try a recipe. I thought why not make four different kinds and drink them. Rick perfect, wasnt it . Mark and i couldnt get much of a flavor out of not crushing it, putting a sprig of mint and but then i thought, they probably had a very man that was picking them fresh from the garden when they put it in a glass. Rick or what about ontroversies like for a while, in North Carolina and you can give people in their fisticuffs over proper barbecue sauce, whether it has tomato in it, or vinegar based. Mark barbque is worth fighting over wherever you go. Rick and dying for it, as far as im concerned. That is a nice opportunity. I would love you to read another, this is from the section, the far west. It happens to be a woman, whose name i forget now. Mark claire born. Claire born churchill. One of the interesting things about doing this project is that they werent all nelson algorans. You had all of these names, and who were these people . A lot of them were people who were known writers in that day that they have forgotten about. She was one of them. She lived in oregon and she researched indian history, she wrote historical novels about sacajawea, various novels about indian life in oregon. But she seemed to have been very serious about mashed potatoes. Rick she got really wound up. I mean, part of the whole deal of the book is the, not amateurism in a bad way, but real life, real people, real folks caring passionately about their food and what they think their food and what they think is the proper way to prepare the ood and so forth. Mark by the way, the rant is little zigzag things. They just dont do it. And i remember my pennsylvania dutch forbearers talkedabout sufficiency. And they had a little jingle, which after a few mint juleps i could recite to you, but can you speak to that . Mark yeah, you know this is a country, a culture that has always been fascinated by marketing. And has always tried to market things well. And you know, in our time all of these incredible tools have been created for marketing, the communication, television and the internet. Rick food columns. Mark food columns, exactly. And we now market without reasoning. Because originally marketing was about selling products. Now we just market everything. Just to market it. It is what you do. If you have an idea, you go out there and sell it. And the tools for doing this are so efficient that you dont like getting all of america to eat these burned seadrums from the gulf of mexico, until it was wiped out. Whereas, in the time of america eats, you know, nobody would have done that. This was new orleans, it was Southern Food, if you lived in the gulf of mexico. And if you lived in boston or indianapolis or california or something, you are not going to be sitting around eating gulf of mexico food. Rick and they probably may be did not even have the technological capacity to do it. I heard somewhere, it was iceberg lettuce, it was the transcontinental trains that made iceberg lettuce available to the east coast. They said, they would keep the crushed ice on the top of the cars to keep it cool. Mark there was a famous scene from steinbecks novel where he was experimenting and lost all of his money because the ice melted. All of the lettuce wilted. Rick well, lets see. That is sad. David kessler, the former fda commissioner, has just come out with a book called the end of overeating. He is probably on a tour, just like you. Maybe he is in baltimore, seattle or San Francisco or what have you. But he has talked about, on this theme of people not being able to stop themselves, how the applebees and chilis, how these companies have gotten so sophisticated at combining salt, sugar and fat formulas, that they actually have almost hit certain Brain Centers as effectively as big tobacco used nicotine. So if you find yourself in one of those places and actually order, youll find yourself often eating even beyond your hunger, not to satiate yourself, but to keep going. Mark that is all we really want, in fact, the salt and sugar. Rick if you could mushrooms in butter and garlic, forget the mushrooms. Dont you feel like there has been a little bit of a revolt against the supersize thing . Maybe we will save ourselves a little bit. Mark and there has been a revolt against the agro industry, which has been a huge failure, because what every industry promised was that for whenever you might lose by industrializing agriculture, what you would gain is that you would eliminate starvation. And that never happened, so there really isnt the justification for the agro industry. People want to save the culture of farming, but they also want to eat products that nature had a hand in. Rick you know, coincidentally i appened to be talking to maria rodell, i guess the chairman of the company, they started gardening and so forth in the 1940s, in 42 think the first one came out. One came out. But her new thing, or one of the things she is pushing now is that, i am not saying i necessarily buy all of this, but she said that their test plots at the at the Rodale Institute that actually, against conventional soil, organic soils not only absorb more carbon from the atmosphere, but they sequester it or lock it in for longer periods of time so she sees these farming techniques, these natural farming techniques as actually anticlimate change, buffers against climate change, not just to feed people but to actually have a secondary thing. Stephanie, how are we doing on time . Say what . [indiscernible] rick can i, i have one little thing i want to run by this phenomenal journalist, author. Reckon tour one little. I lost it now. Hang on. I just wanted to note that the inquirer, the Philadelphia Inquirer has not been mute on these subjects. In america eats, theres a wonderful report by a fellow amed Stetson Kennedy called obviously the shellfish. Conch, mark kant. Rick but it is also a name for People Living in key west. Mark people from the bahamas. From key west. Rick very bottom feeding fish. I have someone here in my folder a wonderful account from our own paper of how the fattish american taste for conch of the caribbean once caused havoc, leaving the islander short on a staple. And the shells and allow me to quote from the Philadelphia Inquirer, if you would permit me. You say conch . Mark in florida you say conch. Rick i am going to do the loridians thing. How does the conch escape this assault . Heres what our report said in the inquirer. How could the queen conch escape its fate . It travels about 1 mile a week by throwing its 5pound shell over its foot. Excellent eyes help only to see the onslaught of enemies. Its thick protective shell is easily sliced in the mouth of a stingray, shattered by the single crunch by the jaws of a sea turtle or chipped away while held fast in the feet of a spiny lobster that munches it like an ear of corn. The octopus simply spit it out. That was written for the inquirer back in 1987, by a freelancer by the name of Mark Kurlansky. [laughter] so it was clear, 20 years ago, the man was wasted on newsprint. Anyway, if the audience would like to ask some questions, that is a little sample. Mark wrote frequently for the food pages, the travel pages, the book review, the wonderful waverly book review that you did from maybe the early into the late 1980s, and also from europe, from paris and so forth. So, we like to think of that as our golden age. Mark yeah. Rick anyway, i just proud that i dug that out. [laughter] rick we are going to, i think people need to come up to the microphones if they want to ask a question. And if they dont, i will just rattle on. Come up if you would like to ask mark a little bit about the book. Dont be shy. Please come up now, if you would like. [laughter] how much would you say regional eating, maybe back then or maybe even now, was really about cheap eating and trying to survive on what you could fford . Mark eating at this period in time in the late 30s, 1940 was very much about that. Nd there are a number of recipes in here which are the kind of thing that actually we are starting to see now, where people are publishing recipes, showing how to make things inexpensively. Coming up with dishes that are inexpensive to make. Here is a recipe for a chowder with just potatoes in it, and theres something called the depression cake that does not have any eggs. But, regionalism, just limiting your diet to regional food, was more than just about hard economic times. It was about less transportation and less communication and you know, people really were rooted in the region and in their county in a way we arent today. You know, people did not move around as much, and they stayed with families. Families cooked. I live in new york city and i sometimes feel like i am the last person there who still ctually cooks. Rick whitman also cooks. [laughter] mark come on up. Anyone else has a question. Of not im going to hog the mic. Be thinking of coming up, but i mention that my little introduction, and i forgot to follow up on it, about the rich with and humor that is threaded through the book. And one, youve got a glossary. F new york lot of horse around in new ork. This is a list of slang from hash houses. The one that always sticks in my mind because it is disturbing is that the slang for a woman was a blimp. Mark but there were other names n the foxy side. Is this cspan or something that is filming us . Butter was axle grease. Soup was belly wash. Eggs were berries. With cream was a blonde. Ketchup was a bottle of red. [laughter] mark theres a nice one for jello. Yeah, nervous pudding. [laughter] rick i like that. That is not really shorthand. That is more like longhand. Mark a lot of them are. Longer than the original. It is about subcultures trying to create their own dialect. Rick i think it is great. Mark a cook was a greaser. Porkchops were hebrew enemies. [laughter] rick there was a cafeteria down at second and market, when i first moved here. I think it is not stephen stars continental. Does anybody remember the name of it . [indiscernible] rick they would go in there and all the guys had a routine. They would say, try it. T was a jewish deli, a cafeteria, heavily jewish oriented. But the guys, they had a whole prattle, try our tongue. It is so good, it speaks for itself. It is so fresh. Our porkchops are kosher here. Heres a gentleman who wants to get a word in. Rick has written about a gentleman i know who is a gatherer. Did you run across much in the research and in the writers project of folks who gathered . And how it was used . Rick by that he means people who would forage in the wild for berries and all that kind of thing. Mark a lot, particularly in the west. There was one thing that just struck me as a very nice little piece from oklahoma about going out when the first wild onions came in and gathering them and mixing them with eggs. There was a lot of stuff like that. Ick that is so fascinating, because that is like the whole panish tradition, where they get the scallions and they grill them with that sauce, whatever, the red pepper and ground almonds. That is a big thing i think all over most of spain. Southern spain. Mark is a lifelong fanatic about the basque region and has written extensively about the basque region. And of course, the red cod is about the basque. Mark within the range of the basque world, i think i would be a moderate. Rick i do not mean that you are a member or something, but you have long been mark i have spent a lot of time there and this one of the most beautiful places in the world with some of the best food and a very rich, ancient culture. Rick and you know in philadelphia now, we have the basque influence restaurant. Mark one thing i have noticed and discovered, because basques have really been very supportive of me, there are basques everywhere in the world, because everywhere i go probably there is a basque person. They may come up and say hello later. Couple of months ago i was in perth, australia and there was the basque family that came up. Rick amazing. Am sorry, go right ahead. What kind of food was served in bus stations. Bus stations used to have cafeterias, and on trains . Was it regional or was it not egional . Mark well, trains have a kind of an interesting history, at least in the eastern united states. They tended to be staffed with africanamericans, who were either from the south or had roots in the south. And that was a huge influence on train food, which is another thing i remember from when i was a child. We once took a train to florida and it was Southern Food all the way down. Rick starting in the north. Mark starting in manhattan. Rick that is great. The train werent there trains out west . I have a foggy memory. Didnt they have a chain of places called the harvey houses . There were harvey girls who were the waitresses . Mark a forerunner of the chain restaurants. Rick and they were supposedly fairly good, hearty, for square fair, werent they . Mark yes, they were supposed to be home cooking. And the automats were supposed to be home cooking. There is a piece in here about the automats. The writer says that the children loved them. I like that because when i was a kid i loved them. I was always trying to get my parents to take us to the automat. We have the sole postal boxes with windows. Rick you put in the coin and you get your lemon meringue pie and then you close the door and you hang out and wait, and if you wait long enough another hand will appear and he will get another pie. Just by raising your hands come out of curiosity, how many have encountered an automat . Mark it is a philadelphia company. It was actually started here in 902. Are you waiting for a question . Mark please. As a child growing up in the 1940s on a farm in iowa, i remember my mother and my grandmother spending days preserving food, and i think that is how many people survived those years. And i even got to stay home from school, and my grandmother came out from town when the butchering, when it was butchering day. And that took a whole day. Mark and it wasnt a lot of this about getting through the winter . Very much so. Was anybody writing about that . Mark there is some, there is some mention of, there are some recipes for preserved foods, yeah. Rick you are right, absolutely. In the day, fruits, pickles, cucumbers. Mark all kinds of vegetables. Sauerkraut. Mark just the vegetables. That is right. Rick green beans. A chicken in fat. A chicken preserved in chicken fat preserved in jars. Yes. Mark i come from a jewish household where absolutely everything, including me, was preserved in chicken fat. [laughter] there are some recipes for preserved foods and putting up foods. Ick in the day, fruits, pickles, cucumbers, sauerkraut. Just the vegetables. And a chicken preserved in chicken fat in jars. Mark i come from a jewish household where everything, including meat was preserved in chicken fat. [laughter] rick you call it smultz. In june, if you are in iowa you eat rhubarb custard high, pie, crust made withnew potatoes with peas in a lard, cream sauce, wonderful. Fresh lettuce from the garden. We survived on my mothers garden. Mark you can still get rhubarb custard pie and not have any actual financial connection. They slaughter hogs in the back, then i could not talk into it talked to anyone because they were slaughtering the hogs. They learn this harvest a lard from the hogs, a particularly elegant kine, and they make their pies, apple dumpling, including rhubarb custard pie with the wonderful lard. And my mother plate bread, sometimes twice a week depending on how many were in the household. Her favorite snack was a slice of homemade bread spread with chicken fat. Mark you know where pickling is incredibly prolific if you go to the russian we had a lot of those russian jews in philadelphia, they had pickled counters with a pickle that everything that moves [laughter] moves. [laughter] mark there were barrels and barrels of this stuff that go 30 feet. Rick my grandfather had a basement that pickled everything. I was very perplexed by it as a child. Dont they ever want to eat anything fresh . [laughter] rick it reminds me of that calvin line. He said his whole life growing up, all he ever had for dinner was leftovers. He never saw the original meal. [laughter] you mentioned the conflict over the proper making a mint juleps. Were there any other noteworthy stories that you had in your book about american raditions . Of making and imbibing on beer, wine and alcohol . In particular, ill effects on those traditions that would have failed noble experiment . Mark you have to remember that these manuscripts were written in not that long after depression was repealed. There is a kind of a mystique to alcohol. We could talk about it now, it is legal. There are a lot of alcohol recipes in the book. It is very notable in all of the regions. Not much discussion of negative results. I cannot find it right now, but there is a fun little piece in here about, they called it i dont know, prairie stew or Something Like that. Water, whiskey, allspice, sugar, cinnamon and the oldest girl in the family had to make it. Anyways it was called something ike kansas stew . Mark you are thinking of the seltzer. Ick no. The author, not mark, but the author says that is where the ord stude came interest. From. It came from that concoction called a stew. Mark there is a recipe in here from oregon called blue uin. Blue ruin. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, please. Step right up. Not a question, but i have to tell my story. I heard you this morning. In 1956, 3 scholars from the soviet union came to philadelphia for a professional conference. My husband and i took them around and show them wonderful sights of philadelphia. We took them to a supermarket that blew them away. The three gentlemen must have made 10 trips, round and round, down the line, it was the most fabulous thing they had ever een. They were not childish, but they had the glee. All they ate was desserts. But it was one of those wonderful moments because it was still pretty bad in 1956 in the oviet union. Mark it is philadelphia based. New york is known for new york is known for verything. I was in new york and it is very young. I think it was 9, 10 or 11 and it was the first time i ncountered hunger. There was a fellow that was hovering until people were finished with their meals and some of them left things. One had left a blueberry muffin on their plate. He took it and then he would wait for someone else. He was scrounging for food. It is funny to encounter hunger in a Place Associated with such bounty, or what have you. Rick let me ask you one final question. Is this it for you . Ave you exhausted your authorial juices or do you happen a have another book coming out soon as well . Mark actually have another book that came out this week. [laughter] mark i have a but they came out this week which is translation of a novel called the belly of paris. Which is an absolutely wonderful novel, the story of a man who accidentally gets arrested in a riot and is taken for a political subversive and sent to devil island and miraculously escapes. In the beginning of the book he makes his way back to paris and he is think from hunger. He finally collapses in the middle of the road and somebody shouts, get out of the way. They drag him to the side of the road. All of these huge wagons full of food pass by. Somebody gives him a ride and he is starving in this wagon full of food and struggling because he is an honest man struggling not to bite into a carrot or something. He ends up living there with his brother and sisterinlaw who have a home. It is this wonderful novel about it is this wonderful novel about social injustice, but with a food setting. And wonderful descriptions of 19thcentury french foods. Rick the name of that was what . Mark the belly of paris. I want to thank mark and rick for doing a wonderful job. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] you are watching American History tv. 48 hours of programming on American History every weekend on cspan 3. Cspan us on twitter history for information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. This weekend for book tv live at the texas book festival. Coverage begin saturday at 11 a. M. And includes code girl, thursday night lights, kevin young, the author or bunk, ice, and the life and times of michael a. The shadows, undercover in the world of human smuggling, and life in code, a personal history of technology. Our live coverage starts at 3 p. M. Eastern on sunday with Carol Anderson and her book w hite rage. The battle for, horse racing dynasty. Authors ofvin exposing, rape festival Live Saturday on book tv. This weekend on american meadry tv, Walter Russell discusses nationalism and u. S. Foreignpolicy focusing on what he calls jacksonian populist nationalist. He explains how populist residence roosevelt, truman and reagan gained their political support. The Marshall Plan, probably the most brilliant american policy stroke since the Louisiana Purchase comes about not by convincing the American People of the glories of foreign hamiltonian and will solely in wisdom, but by scaring people about the very real threat of a communist take over. Today, by the way, we have a lot of intellectuals and Foreign Policy activists who would let the Marshall Plan go before they would indulge in those kinds of scare tactics. But the truth is, if you want to in american big politics, in american foreignpolicy, you cannot do it without jacksonian. And in american politics, jacksonians will onlyt for jacksonian reasons. If your ideas, ill persuade them all not to be jacksonian but i will turn them into wilsonians and hamiltonian, if truman had tried that, by the time he realized it would never work, stalin would have been in paris. Youre serious about american foreignpolicy, you have to be serious about understanding jacksonians and working with jacksonians and that means working within a framework that they understand, recognize and can support. At 7tch the entire program p. M. And 11 p. M. Eastern time sunday. American history tv, only on cspan 3. Where history unfolds daily. Cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Television Company and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. Historian Gary Gallagher talks allen guelzo. He emphasizes the importance of religion in everyday life during the civil war era. For Civil War History hosted this event. It is about 90 minutes. Allen is the third professor of the civil war at Gettysburg College where he also serves as College Civil war studies. He did his gradual work at the university of pennsylvania where he focused on the history of religion. He holds a master of divinity. His roster of publications is so long that i am not going to try to read all of it to you. You can get a full accounting on his website of his biography and his doings