York city, when we continue. Rose funding for charlie rose is provided by the following bank of america, life better connected. And by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Glor in an historic ruling in a first for africa on september 1st Kenya Supreme Court annulled the ru89s of the august president ial election. The court ruled that the election which declared incumbent you the incumbent the winner was ruled with illegality. Last week raila odinga withdrew from the vote claiming the rerun will be worse than the previous one, earlier today a Senior Member of Kenya Electoral Commission fled to the u. S. Due to Death Threats ahead of the election. Mean whale the chairman of the commission conceded that he couldnt guarantee the election would be fair. Joining me now to talk about the constitutional crisis looming over kenya is salim loan, he is the Senior Advisor to raila odingo and former director of the United Nations news and Media Division under coffin a nan. Welcome. Great to be here. So explain to me right now how does mr. Odinga feel about a, the possibility of a new election . Is he going to, is he aing it that or no. No, he has cat gorically stated in the last few weeks that he would only participate in the election if some changes were made that were demanded by the Supreme Court when it annulled the election swrz so what would satisfy him and you . Well, im not important. It is him and the ken quan people. This election, as you said, was riddled with fraud from endtoend. So much so that the Supreme Court, which no one expected, would overturn the election. Our courts dont turn president ials elections when the president has won. They annulled it and he, all he has been saying he wants, what kenyans want is a fair election. We dont want anything more than that. If the Electoral Commission should follow the guide lines of the Supreme Court. But you talk about this moment, it electrified africa when the Supreme Court did this. Here is hope for our continent struggling for democracy. But it has been going backward what backwards in kenya,. Glor some say they have gone forward because this was the first electronic voting. This was a change for kenya. You just believe it wasnt done in the right way. Well look, it is not what i believe, the evidence of it is magazinessive. Why did a very conservative Supreme Court, raila odinga said if he lost this election again, remember, the last two elections, last previous elections were both rigged. In 2007 Mass Violence broke out and it took the personal involvement of conned leeza rice who traveled to kenya to make sure that they coshared the presidency, coshared basically the presidency with raila odinga. Because raila had won. So this is a history we have of election fraud. But this time, it was greater. Glor as a kenyan, explain to me the importance, the strategic importance of kenya to the United States and the United States to kenya. Sure. First of all, kenya, is one of the closest allies of the United States and of the west generally, without question. The largest embassy in african africa, u. S. Is in nie robi it is vital nairobi. It is vital to u. S. Interests because it is a key cog in economic and Security Framework that exists in the world at the moment. As you know in somalia we have the al shabaab terrorism and they just killed 300 people the other day. So that, both its economic potential, which is enormous. Kenya is a very outgoing, democratic open society. Democratic except at election timement and for the region as a whole, if kenya goes, so goes the region. That region has had several wars and millions of deaths, somalia, drc, ethiopia, in sudan, it is a it is a very crazeer place. Kenya is the one stable place. And that is why the u. S. Takes so much interest. And unfortunately this time around, unlike in 2007, 8 when we had violence, the u. S. Is taking a backseat in the sense that they are leaving everything to the envoys who are there in nairobi. And this is why mr. Odinga was in london last week, met ministers, addressed the et cetera. And that had an impact. On the situation. Glor so. Engagement from the u. S. Glor do you feel like are you getting that engagement . I think were getting a little more engagement since the trip to the u. K. But i think what will trigger greater engagement right now is what happened in the last 24 hours. As you said, the commissioner who runs the election himself said, forget about that lady who shall it Death Threats had to flee the country. He himself, the chairman of the Electoral Commission said i can no longer guarantee a free and fair election. My staff dont listen to me. Et cetera. And yet he is saying that this is how astonishing kenya can be, i still want to hold the election. Glor so explain to me what raila odinga wants to see specifically in order to agree to an election. Actually it is quite simple. He wants an election, which is not rigged. The hast one was rigged by the Supreme Court. Glor what has to be done. To give you a simple example it is an electronic election. Glor right. And there is a server, all the votes that are cast are copied on to forms which are scanned and placed into a server. At each polling station its forms are signed by all the parties. And that server contains the history of the election. We want access to independent people to that server. In the election on august 8th, the Supreme Court demanded that the Electoral Commission open that server to scrutiny. Do you know that the Electoral Commission refused the Supreme Court order . So its as simple as that. Glor the charge from Uhuru Kenyatta supporters is that are you not going to support any election that you dont win. Every side has its propaganda. And the New York Times itself, after the election on august 8th, it wrote a scathing editorial against raila odinga saying he is making a lot of fus. Glor right. But what happened they withdrew the editorial when the Supreme Court ruled. We have this astonishing situation, we have kenyans who really live in fear in terms of speaking out openly on making decisions are taking up the cry for freedom and the rule of law. And yet were not getting the support from the u. S. Or the u. K. And the other countries. Glor it is a dangerous time for kenya. Is there room for compromise anywhere here . There is always room for compromise, raila odinga has always said there is room for compromise, but there is no room for compromise in terms of not endearing to what the Supreme Court ordered. We want a fair election. We cannot have a situation where the election will be a little more fair than was last time when it was not fair at all. Glor according to the election, at least what the election saird, there was nul iified, 54 of the vote went to kenyatta. And 45 to raila odinga. Yeah. Glor have you done polling, how much support do you believe you really have . Oh, we believe we have much more support. I just want you to look at what happened before the election to show you why jubilee rigged this election. Elections are routinely rigged, 2007, pass violence, 2013, this time around the rigging went ten steps further. They killed they tortured and killed a weak before the election, the key official in charge of making it happen, right, and for protecting the vote, protecting the tallying and transmissions of the vote. He was killed. This has never happened in ken can before. So why was there this determination, and with so much other evidence too, that the rigging was going on, why this determination if there was so confident of winning the election. They were not. Because they knew that they did not have the support. Glor are you concerned that all that, you are inciting any more violence or danger by not agreeing to an election. Its a very interesting question. Because that is what some of our critics say. But the person, or the group that is inciting is the government. For example, when the Supreme Court made that historic decision, the president Uhuru Kenyatta initially said for a couple of hours, he accepted it. He didnt agree with it but he accepted it. Then he went on the war path. He began abuse the justices, saying they conducted a coup destat against him and how could four justices overrule millions of kenyans who voted for him. And then he began threat ening them. He said he would fix them when he was back in office he would fix them. Not only that, led to mobs surrounding the Supreme Court of ken quenia and the chief justice called the chief of plises for help, and the guy refused. This son the record. The chief justice asked for help for the people beseiging his court, and the chief of police said no. Glor so what is the relationship between kenyatta and odinga. Tell me about that back story. Well, look, first of all, they have been political rivals for almost a decade. Raila supported kibaki in the 2002 election. And kibaka was running against uhuru so there is that rivally. But the rivalry came to a full when kenyatta who had been charged by crimes against humanity and against his running mate, the u. S. At that time in the u. K. Took a clear position that they would not be too comfortable with those two running the kenya government, because of charges against humanity. So that was a very rough election and the two had to win it by whatever means. And they rigged it. And so there is some bad blood between the two because raila but since then they had a reasonable relationship, their opponents as politics goes. So it is not, there is no personal animosity that is the issue here. The issue is so clear, it is that the rule of law is rapidly unraveling when the chief justice says im prepared to die for my views. When this commissioner flees with Death Threats and poipts out that if this election is held there will be violence. That is what she said. She didnt just flee, she said there will will be violence if this election was held. Glor there was already violence before the election. There is nothing compared to what could happen. The violence has been held. Most of the violence, do you know that every Single Person who has been killed has been unarmed and been killed by the police . Swrz do you believe mr. Odinga is in mortal danger. Well, last night i was terrified. I havent slept last nightt because he went to visit a very close ally and friend. An important finance year for the party at his home because the home had been battered down, the doors battered down and police had invaded and preventing people from leave. This was against a court order. He went to that house and he was not allowed to leave. When the prospective president of a country, potential president of a country is kept gengs his will kept against his will, this is of another republic. And so i mean, were in a very bad spot. But i think the issue of whether we can have the october 26th election, raila has been proved 100 right. He has been saying from the very beginning are you not taking steps to make it free and fair. And now the chairman of the Electoral Commission himself is saying, that i cannot guarantee a free and fair election. He is saying my own staff dont listen to me. Just imagine, the chairman of the commission, because they have all been bribed or intimidated by the government. Glor do you believe this is a Tipping Point for kenya . You know, this will definitely be a Tipping Point for kenya if they proceed with the election in a situation where everybody is acknowledging that it cannot be free and fair. Glor but if they proceed on october 26th despite what you are saying, i guess that just to return to this, if raila odinga is not endorsing that in anyway, you dont believe that the potential for violence and danger is in its there regardless. Well, the most important thing is this. You cannot expect the democracy which we are, that to ask somebody please participate in an election which will be more rigged than the last onement because as you know, they have introduced new laws in the middle of this election, which will make it harder to neglect ate it by the Supreme Court. Glor what will you do if they hold the election on the 26th and kenyatta declares himself a winner. We will protest t is our right to protest. You cannot allow a dictatorship to entrench itself once again. But can i not see how the international community, which is very influential on kenya by the way, you know what happened, it was very important. The minute they came out, immediately, even before the elections result was declared, mr. Carry took a hard line, told raila to concede and move on and said some things including i was told that people on the rose would vote and yet i saw no people voting, can a former secretary of state say that, what people are alleging, that people are going to vote. It is a terrible situation. And now we have the potential of fixing it. We have the potential of being democratic, the potential of restoring rule of law. Which is rapidly unraveling. Glor so who can fix this . I tell you, who kenyans can fix it. But they need the help of the United States and the u. K there say long history of the u. S. Intervening when there is a crisis. This time, it is very low level u. S. Embassy doing it all. We need a high level engagement to ensure that the government will agree to holding a free and fair election, under the law, we need 90 days, in those 90 days, the changes can be made, the commissioner who resigned, yes, the changes can be made but as things stand now, it cannot. Glor thank you for your time. Thank you. Glor mike wallace is a distinguished professor, historian and the pulitzer prizewinning coauthor of gotham, a history of new york city to 1898. His new book, longawaited second volume in the gotham series is called greater gotham. A history of new york city from 1898 to 1919. Two decades in the making, the book traces new yorks transformation into one of the worlds greatest cities. Make wallace joins me now from chicago. Another one of the worlds great cities. Im pleased to have him on this program. Professor, so the first book covered 375 years. This one is only 20, why were these years 1898 to 1919 so important . This was a period when new york became a recognizably modern city that were familiar with now. It also moved from 1898 when it merged with brooklyn and manhattan and the outer boroughs, so called, to 1919 when it was an established megalopolis. The amount of material that was available to reckon with in doing this 20 year period was enormous because it has been a very hot subject. And its now possible to do relatively easy Research Online because so many books of when theas had been digitized. But the choice of 1919 as an end point is the point when new york becomes the def corival to london for the status of financial capitol. World. Glor were these years 1898 to 1919 in your stementation the most important generation in the citys history . Its hard to pin down importance because it is a constantly moving target, you have to go to the 1820s to the 1830s with the digging of the eerie canal which was critical because it established new york as the link between industrializing europe and still agricultural hinterland of north america. Once that route was connect, capitol flowed in, labor low flowed in, ideas flowed in, theater flowed in, commodities flowed in and on the other way, cotton, wheat and so forth tallied across the atlantic. Once that link was established, it would run differently in different periods but the establishment of the link was probably the most important period. So professor, talk to me about 1898. This is when all the boroughs came together. Correct. I think to understand what happened at the political level, you have to understand what is happening at the economic level. The country as usual and the city were going through a boombust cycle, boom bust war, boom bust war, this happened over and over again, it continues to happen. This book starts when the city is coming out of the Great Depression as it was called of the 1890s. And it was at this moment that people on the order of jp more begun and John D Rockefeller decided that the Free Enterprise capitalism model was for the birds. If you had competition between firms they would cut prices and lower profits. If you lowered profits, you had to scrimp on labor. If you scrimped on labor, then unions would form, if you repressed the unions and there was a lot of repression in the 1890s then you developed socialist resistance to capitalism. This was madness as far as morgan and rockefeller was concerned. Theirlusion was solution was to engineer the first great merger move nment american history. And thousands of small competing companies vanished into hundreds of gigantic kormingses on the order of u. S. Steel. This was they felt not being robber barons although they did very well out of this process. But it was a progressive move. It was going to illuminate ruinous competition and allow for longterm planning smoothing out the Business Cycle and even cutting labor if for more of a share. So the idea that mergers, the koition was good, the con sol daition was good, the model that they a applied to the political sphere, they thought the notion of mork, manhattan, and brooklyn, and all the little provision all the little political injures dictions was nuts. They should be looking after common problems, solving problems collectively, taking care of the port which was not in great shape, expanding connections to the europe, so they engineered the same kind of colossal merger in the political schfear she had in the economic schfear sphere. When you say greater gottal what does that mean. I know it sounds a bit chawf nis particular and maybe it is a little bit, but in reality t is just that when the merger occurred, people referred to it as Greater New York. They didnt it didnt occur to anybody to call it greater brooklyn or greater queens but Greater New York was a term that had semiofficial status for some time. Then it faded away. Glor what was it about this period, the first couple of decades of the 1900s that surprised you the most, and you think might surprise those who read this . Well, theres two dimensions to this period. One of them is the effort to make koition real. It was on paper, yes. But was it a reality. And this involved a colossal amount of work. Digging the subway systems, digging the hudson river tunnel so you could connect to and build new penn station facilities. Skyscraper are erupting out of bed rock. There is an enormous amount being done. And thats relatively easy to nar rate. And wasnt terribly surprising. What was more interesting in a sense was the social struggles. I mean you could get the idea that new york after all of this reconstruction worked. And from the presentation of the efficiency, profit ability, the private profit ability, that was clearly the case. The question was, how about issues of social justice. How about issues of daily life. How does this affect ordinary citizens in the city. And and that lead on examination to a sense that this was a breakthrough period in several respects. If you looked at issues of race, if you looked at issues of gender. If you looked at issues of class, if you looked at issues of relations with the rest of the world, particularly europe there were dramatic transformations, either accomplished in some senses or purely set in motion. And by all the big episodes in each of those was relatively clear in advance, the preliminary overview research. Each one of them came up with interesting or heroic or dramatic stories. So you can pick any one. But given where we are at today, i mean all of those are sort of coequal. But you look at ethnicity, for instance, it has long been a state of affairs that immigrants when they arrived in new york, an inn enormous numbers established enclaves, there was an irish enclave there was a german enclave, et cetera. These were areas that were big enough to sustain nationalsive language populations. They had newspapers. They had their own language, their own food, their own music, et cetera. Now this was long considered dubious value, divisive t was hard to imagine the city coming together around this. What happens in this period that i hadnt quite grappled with was a revaluation of diversity. What we would now call multinaturallor ml cultural. They didnt use those words, they used the word cosmopolitan and you began to have guide books, for instance, saying you must go and visits jewish corridor or the italian corridor. And in fact arguing that new york was more cosmopolitan than the nation rome had been. This was an advantage. But some people took it even farther. John dewy the philosopher, one of his students, argued that what had emerged without being planned on the american strand was a new kind of social ecology where people from vastly differing backgrounds who had not own lived next to one another, by more or less get along or even better than that, out of the clash and the connections between these great enclaves, came new possibilities that hadnt been dreamed of before. So these people, argued that any attempt to suppress difference, any attempt to impose as there were americanizeers especially in the runup to the first world war, were arguing for suppressing this. And making everybody american. Making everybody melt down and be basically anglo protestants which are the people who were behind this movement. And some went so far in this period to develop the you againic theory that the inferior peoples, jews, italians, blacks were sold by biology, not by culture. And that there the answer was to well in some cases, destroy, fert i willization possibilities so they wouldnt be produced or to come up with an immigration system that limited the wrong kind of people from coming. How much of your work is research versus the wrielg . When we worked on the first volume, the rules of the game said wait only for secondary sources because if we started doing research, it meant trips to its library, it meant digging in microfilm readers, it meant time. Any one of those areas, were already being mined by people doing the reseb so what we did was wait for the research be done and incorporate it in the larger narrative. What changed since that first go around was the internet. I used to spend hours, days, months, years, decades truth be told in the allen room, the newer public librarys gift to writers perched on the edge of this vast treasure troaf of new york, then they digitized everything in sight, particularly old obscure things that were not protected by copy write on the grounds of age on which not that many people were interested in. But i was devoted to. This meant a whole new range of temptations which were extremely hard to avoid. For instance, there was one of the great inventions of this period was by irving t bush. He invented something called Bush Terminal which had factories and docks and rail lines all combined, so that you didnt have to schlep things from one side of the city to the other. They were all assembled in the same place. And i wondered what it was that bush was think being when he was working on. This i knew it was all the biographies he had written. In the old days, i would have fudged because it would have been a trip to the library, would have been a days worth of reading, et cetera, et cetera. Now i go click, and the autobiography is on my screen. And so is the New York Times digitized index. I mean to an amazing degree there can be differences of opinion about something as simple of when a building opened. And while any newspaper has a frame of reference and an idea logical perspectives, in fact they sent a reporter there on the day that it opened so even whatever you thought of the building, we know when it happened or i knew in this case when it happened. So thats something that slowed up the process. But i think it gave an added depth. Because you see things when are you reading the newspapers or reading a magazine. You see unanticipated bits of color or interesting characters. It gives a solidity to the. So the research is easier for you now but its still, i mean you can tell in the firs book and this one, its very important to you to craft a story that moves and that is, even though both books are more than a thousand pages, its very important for you to craft something that is engaging. Yes. This too has a long pedestrian i gree, i got interested in the way history is werented to popular audiences. The first one was on disney wold because i argued there was a whole set of historical narrative assumptions that were embedded in the exhibits. Then i did one on Colonial Williamsburg which presented it self since the 1930s as the place where jefferson trod the earth. But now with africanamericans saying well, how about the 50 of the population that were black slaves, why arent they visible in Colonial Williamsburg which worked in the way stories were told. So i have done, i worked with museums a lot. Did a film with ricker burns, 14 hours in which i blat erred intermiably, and all in engaged in the process of making history available to general audiences. And how could i not do the same thing in my own writing. So i mean the People History is written by there academic historical, political histor yags, this is perfectly understandable and reasonable. You develop a collective sensibility that trades information that criticizes and develops. Its a useful organization. But real life doesnt happen like that. Real life happens all at once. Now the people who do this best are the novelists. I lived with a novelist, my wife is one of mexicos fore most writers. And i appreciate the way she and others are able to encapsulate an era in all its dimensions simultaneously through the people, in particular, that are the actors, the carriers of the Larger Forces that are in play. So partly because i was heartened by the reception of gotham, and clearly people like the stories, they didnt mind the length, as much as i thought they would. So i gambled in this volume on more of the same thing. But always relentlessly keeping in mind that this has to be accessible it has to be enjoyed. The best word that anybody ever says about anything i write is i really enjoyed reading that. Not that they learned something that they enjoyed it first. Precisely. Its absolutely right. If you are reading something because you think its good for you or somebody recommended it, but its really torturous to get through, how can you enjoy it. But if something is clear enough so that it explains something, maybe something you half wondered about or it empowers you, it gives you a sense of, you can understand better how things actually work, if you done know that, if you were to float on the surface of things, if you think that today can be the first day of the rest of your life, on one hand it is an admirable degrea of optimism americans are prone to. But if you dont understand that the present is constantly con stituated by not a word i dont think, by there river of events flowing from the past, into the present and on into the future f you dont understand that, if you think its just the way its always been, then you are a float on the surface of things and are vulnerable to all kinds of cons. So history is empowering. So if it is empowering and explanatory and written halfway decently, what is not to like . You say you engage in radical history, what do you mean when you say that . Well, radical is a fuzzy word. Prance not as fudzy as liberal or conservative. These terms have mu taited and reversed diametrically opposed meanings so one has to be cautious here. Radical means getting to the root of things. And to some degree when we embarked on this proswrect it was easier to see that a history that left out blacks, women, immigrants, the working class and Foreign Affairs was doing something wrong. And this was the mainstream proposition. So we were the radical upstarts, but determined to be, and for the most part we were highly professional in fact, many people out of this cohort of mine have gone on to become the president s of historical organizations and prizewinning, et cetera, et cetera. So to the degree that we overturned the Old Established narrative and constructed a new one which is endlessly still evolving, radicals seem like a word that would describe the process. So where was, where was new york city in 1919 . Well, noark city in 1919 was a battleground. This was a long complex story. There was a struggle in the country about whether or not once war broke out in 1914 whether the u. S. Should get involved. And overwhelmingly the country said no. Which is one reason that wilson in fact held back from and he had his own reservations about it too. And in new york things were i would say a most ferocious in terms of differences of opinion. Because they duplicated the lines of internal division that had put different groups at loggerhead one with the other. So the anglo protestants who were virtually coterminus with the industrial and financial elite desperately wanted to get into the war and on the side of england and did everything they could including making lones, loan, setting up equipment to send across the atlantic. The german americans in new york were obviously not interested if going to war with germany, the irish loathed the British Empire and were in no way interested in lining up with them. The jews were not happy about one of the allies, czarist russian a so that adds up alone to the majority of the population who are devoutly opposed to getting too the war. As events played out and the war came closer and clogser to home to home, we went to war, beyond us here but i think i tried to lay out the nature of the process in the book. This did two things. One it put the state of the service for those who were interested in proallied stuff and defined now diversity itself as being desent no, treason, yes. And using the state to suppress imgrapt groups that had thought was were on the wrong side. Then the war, that was they made overtures to the womens movement. They involved the Progressive Movement that was looking for regulation of wages and hours they made approaches to the labor movement. You make deals in order to get the war done. Then the war is done. And the government steps back. And says in essence okay, capital, okay labor, okay, you know, antifeminist, okay profeminist. Let the games begin. And so there are struggles. There are hundreds of strikes in new york city, overwhelmingly just for better wages, better working conditions, union recognition. But the opponents and the capitalist world said oh my god, this is the beginning of the bolshevik revolution which is just one item in the mix of this 1918, 1919 moment. So there are a series of struggles, heightened by inept anarchists who were setting offer or trying to set off little bombs which then gave the official attorney general of the day an excuse to suppress di sent dissent. So it was a wild and woolly period. At the same time, on a different level of calculus t was momentous to the city in another way. That way it was what happened to the financing of the war. At the beginning of the war, 1914, the United States and new york city, most of all, was an industrial superpower. New york was the biggest manufacturing city in the country. And but it was a third world country in terms of finances. The accounting was roughly, we owed european investors 4 billion. And this was back when a billion was a billion. And then the eng lesh and the french borrow money and sell off their stocks and drain their gold supplies. And at the end of the war, new york is and the country in general is a creditor operation roughly 4 billion now. The complete tide has been shifted. And this puts new york city in a position to do an end run around the British Empire or the other european empires to provide capital to latin america to provide loans and business guidance in asia and in africa, to contest the european domination of the global economy. Which it sets out to do immediately. This is all talked about a great deal. Is this it . We have been waiting for two decades at least since the beginning of 98y for new york to enter the list to challenge london for supreme see and this could be the moment it was almost the moment, britain still had the empire, britain still had the navy, its not really until 1945 at the end of the second war that the supremacy of the city is unchallenged and with the rival of the u. N. Is becomes symbolically the capitol of the world. How much has the essential character of new york changed . Is it, do you think its dramically different now than its with a hundred years ago . Well, i like quoting, although my memory isnt good enough to quote for you exactly, but ilike quoting, there was a book that was done called the psychology of urban america or Something Like that. Was looking at characteristic, characteristics of culture and life in different cities. And quoted a new york subway writer who when asked why they could put up with being krammed like sardines, his metaphor into the new subway cars. And the guy said because were saving self inminutes on the trip in 137th street down to the tannery. And he said this is what new yorkers are all about. They would be perfectly willing to be krammed into a tube like a bunch of papers and mail and shot through a tunnel if they would carve off, you know, ten minutes from passage from one part of town to the other. This relentless focus on speed and on circulation is utterly recognizable to this day. And there are other things about that. While somebody said that if you are comparing the photoagain rattive culture, that the previous period was an area of gas like and this area is the remember era of electric bones, this is the period when time square emerges and the flow had been a dim, dank, dangerous part of time. Now is brilliantly flood light and with the great electric signs going up courtesy of oscar greud and company, connee island, has a million light bubls in it, regardless of how many miles out to to see. So speed, intensity, competitiveness ambition the new york of this periods, unlike the previous volume is distinctly recognizable. Who do you read who do you learn from . Im working on the book, whatever i need to be reading for that. I read on a need to read basis so it could be an article, it could be a dissertation t could be a new scholarly book. 24r is an endless torrent of things coming out it is impossible to keep up with it, but have i to try and in all the areas that im trying to cover which is many. And as i say when telled off the straight and narrow actually archival documents, newspapers, magazines, not letters. I hold the line at private correspondent except maybe teddy roosevelt. When im not doing that i read detective stories, mystery stories, usually ones with a strong sense of place. And i dont have time to keep up with the literary world. If im in a period i read Edith Wharton because she is a brilliant illuminator and a radical one, of the culture and lives of the various classes in the city. But there arent enough hours in the day. Indeed. You mentioned teddy rootion velt. Obviously a monumental figure in the history of new york, where does he rank in terms of the importance of characters in this time period . Well, roosevelt is all over everything. The thing is that he is all over it in an allover different kind of way. I mean the image that has long outlived its cell by day of teddy as a trust bust certificate not without some degree of merit. He did believe, however, that the new corporate world was in general a good thing for all the reasons that morgan promoted. But that they the accumulation of power that he had had, particularly the power they had to alter campaign elections, i mean, rockefeller and morgan alone defeated William Jennings bryant by contributing more money just between the two of them than the rest of the small depositedders from around the country. And yet when it came time to get reelected in 19d 04, he went to wall street. And he promised that he was going to be respectful of the corporate privilege and the Corporate Structure unless they did something bad. And that was going to be up to him to decide. And afterwards he basically used the rockefeller operations as a whipping boy. And he could deal with por began because por began was prepared to recognize and deal with him. On the other hand something that is only a new york story, teddy was an aristocrat. He and his family goes way way back. And many different strengths and different types of money lead to him. He was a polished figure. When he was at harvard he said im the fourth highest gentleman of the studented aboutee. And he said you know, in private correspondents, he said these big rich people are really boring. All they think about is money. Andnd its true t is an extremely cultivated and wildly read person i would rather read as an explorer of the north pole or a photographer or novelist or Something Like that. So teddy was an extremely complicated character. And i tried to demonstrate the way his differences come out of his varying experience in the new york city scene. So were up to 1919. Whats next . You put it tactfully. Other people say new, took you what, since 1999, nearly 20 years to write this. And it was only 20 years. What does this mean . Well, it is not quite as bad as it looks. Although its problematic. When gotham is done and i was working on the next volume, the original intention was to go all the way down to the end of the Second World War, 1935, with the capital of the world businesses. The conclusion of the u. N. Comes to town. And i worked and i worked and i worked and i worked and i worked and it became clear when we had a sitdown with the University Press people that the page count was looming in the vicinity of 3,000 odd pages. This clearly exceeded the limits of bien are technology and reader patience and Everything Else so we did a two for one stock split. What that means is that a lot of what will be volume three has already been written. In fact, i jumped first to the end and i did a lot of work on the Second World War period. Because it sin tinsically fascinating but also because it had never actually been done. There were hundreds, thousands of articles, dissertations, et cetera, et cetera, written on pieces of it but nothing that gathered together, and what i try to do is sin they size things, nothing that grappled with the war if self as a phenomenon. So that is all done in fact, its too long. So i mean the short answer is there will be a volume three. Assuming this depending on sufficient longevity, there could be more. But it wont take 20 years to get the next one out. Well, i disn realize, that is fascinating. So volume 3 is coming soon. At one point shying away from the implications of everything, the press was calling the two books volume two part one and volume two part two. I said no, no, this wont do. We have to face up to reality here. So it is greater greater gotham next . You mean for a title . You are getting ahead of me here. But if, in odd moments of dalaiing with possibilities t doesnt work, its too long but i was thinking gotham, boom, bust, war. It is the same cycle that actually runs through this one and all the previous ones. The ups and downs, the roller coaster itself, is to some degree a structural art i fis art fis, or reality, and this one was the boom coming out of the 90s until the panic of 1907 which lead to an up and down recession to the next seven years, homelessness, unemployment, mill tansee, depression, et cetera, until the orders from 1914 on revived the economy and sent it into hyperdrive. So thats a possibility but hopefully i will think of something shorter. Glor and the story of new york never, its endlessly fascinating for snu. Endlessly fascinating. How could it not be. Think of all of the varieties of arenas into wish i can stick my nose, one minute im in the theater, next minute im in novel land. Next minute im in a pick et land. Next minute im in a banking office, next minute, blah blah blah. And entering into areas about which i know very little some of i get to be what generalists and sin they sizers do, or get to be is i know a little bit about lots of things. But not terribly much about anything in particular. Glor the book is greater gotham, a history of new york city from 1898 to 1919. Just as engrossing as the first book was. Mike wallace joining us from chicago. Professor, thank you so much. Thank you for having me on. Glor we leave you tonight with a look at charlies interview with zack brown which will air later this week. Sometimes the ideas will hit like just in passion, you know, you will see something, you will hear somebody Say Something and it will kind of ring a bell. You will hear something that you know that are you going to believe in for a long time. He was a giant. When i was just a kid. I was always trying. To do everything he did. I can still remember. Hearing lessons he taught me. Learning how to be. Like my old man. He was a lyon. We werent father he pride but i was defiant. When he made me walk the line. He knew how to lift me up. And when to let me fall. Looking back, he always had a plan. My old man. For more about there program and earlier episodes visit us yn lane at pbs. Org and charlie rose. Com. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Youre watching pbs. The following kqed production was produced in high definition. Calories, calories, calories wow, it rocked my world it just kind of reminded me of boot camp. I dont know what you had, but what i had was great. It almost felt like Country Club Food to me. Dont touch. Its hot i gotta tell you, you people are getting me all excited with all these d