And not a story that would be about do the drugs work, for example, to cure depression are ease anxiety. There were people who knew more than i and a lively debate. I was more interested in how people use these drugs to tell stories about what it means to be human. New things were available that seems to provide new insight into over like. And how did that change the way that we talked about what we were like, what humans need about what humans owe each other, the best way to take care of ourselves, what the goals of life are to be and all these other major philosophical social political questions. I started with the prozac phenomenon. And although was described a very abstract terms as being a treatment for depression in practical terms of American Culture this was the kind of illness that have been associated with white middleclass or one people who had access to doctors who are encouraged to think that supposed to be happy and i was illness. And specifically for women who have been prescribed these types of medications at twice the rate of men throughout the whole time, not just prozac. And so this is both majority of people who used it and also it became linked in these popular imaginations, the controversies about the drug were about why middleclass life in the way that a different set of drugs, socalled street drugs, they were associated, even though they use was not necessarily concentrated in central cities and racialized minorities that is where if you agree to popular debate about the drugs are what they say about our society they would be linked to those populations cant drugs like prozac and others were associated with the middleclass life, suburban, households and the kind of dramas the people talked about were also a of talking about what was going on with that particular group of people in america. Since world war ii and to try to understand both the origins of this phenomenon and what its earlier chapters it look like and what that might tell us about what we are experiencing now. And i discovered for the one thing as i said before, that it is not new, theyre have been generations of new drugs that are claims to be these technological wonders that teach us about our consciousness and ourselves, that they had been massively, widely used well before the prozac error or the modern era use of psychoactive medications, talkingmedications, talking about sedatives, stimulants, narcotics that have been very widely used since the mid19th century at least. Least. Why did so many people want to take these drugs . And this, i mean,this, i mean, i think there is a couple of different ways to add to that question. All the people who try to answer that question over time why so many how want to take tranquilizers and they go back and forth over this question, what was causing all of these problems among american housewives and you would find one set of people like doctors at this time, medical textbooks, advertisers of the drugs, there was a range between thinking it was just funny, theyre kind of annoying, board, andannoying, board, and so they went and talked to the dr. You gave him this drug to just kind of get them out of your hair. From that to a general deeply sexist belief that women were just inherently ill and every stage of their life was a new risk for them that they were vulnerable and that most of the problems came from being sick in the head, they might come in complain about a wide range of things and the dr. Would think its just females in their had troubles. When it becomes clear that tranquilizers can become addictive, women and allies who are who see mass tranquilizers use as a way to advertise the problems of women who are constrained into the home, they say addiction has got legs. People like to talk about addiction. I like to think about addiction,addiction, and stories about addicted women are especially sexy for the media. If we tell the story is here are these women who are unhappy in their roles and doctors addicted to drugs, that is a story that will get why play and happens in the 70s. Here is a panic overvalue him addiction. Not the kind of places that are usually reporting on feminist critiques of household arrangements, but they reported on the story. When prozac comes one of the reasons it is so successful is that all of the various things they say prozac can do are designed to answer one of the feminist criticisms of the tranquilizers. Tranquilizers are supposed to sedate you and make it okay. Prozac will lift you up, give you more spunk, allow spock, allow you to push back. Valium is addictive. Prozac is not addictive. Valium leaves you not doing much. Prozac will give you the energy to go and work in the office and then come home and do the things that you need to do at home. That debate about prozac looks different because there were some people who are saying, well, prozac shows that women have made all of these advances and that they are no longer being handed the sedatives whereas others were saying you know you still cant fix biases in the workplace. This was a time when after decades of depression more there was a push a lot of different corners to try to restore men talk was considered to be the proper rank traditional role an important people at work. No one comes as tranquilizer there are a lot of men. And when it gets noticed that a lot of men attract different checking a tranquilizer. There was a minor panic over it. Americans are getting soft. And then develop athey develop a whole new explanation for why men are taking the drug. One layer of skin away with the big club that is always ready. But in modernbut in modern society you dont have a club, there is no jaguar. The things that make you anxious are more abstract, nuclear missiles. That will never go away. Away. Away. These men you are so strong, primitive, vital, the fact that they need to take a tranquilizer to bring them down to Something Like normal shows they are strong, not week. And soand so that in itself is an argument about what it means to be human. Itit means that they are cavemen sitting right in front brains, that is a theory about the mayans that came out of this complex interactions between the cultural pressures on men, the economic pressures on advertisers command this attempts to address this phenomenon of men taking more tranquilizers. Medical advertisingtranquilizers. Medical advertising ironically was less regulated in some ways an advertising of other goods because medical advertising was restricted to physicians,physicians, and physicians are supposed to know more than federal regulators. Was a federal regulator trying to tell somebody . You cant fool a dr. There was widely way and constraints on what you could say in a medical advertisement, even the requirement they tell the truth does not become a requirement untila requirement until 1962. It is clear and always has been that to some degree having a set ofa set of drugs that are understood as relatively safe, that make people feel good, that is just something that has been in the doctors tool bag since the late 19th century and especially for the relatively affluent white patients, giving them these types of drugs has been an enormous part of medical practice for 120 years. He have gone back and reconstructed the percentages of what is in prescriptions, late 19th century 25 of all prescriptions of morphine in it. Moved up to 30 . Codeine. Somewhere between 30 to. Codeine. Somewhere between 30 to 50 percent of prescriptions had either a sedative like barbiturate or stimulant like amphetamine, and it goes on and on like this. That part ofthat part of medical practice, we tend to discover it every few years as new. Doctors are prescribing these drugs as if it were knew, but it has been pretty consistent. A lot of these medications are almost literally the same substance in the classic example is amphetamine, which is the ingredient in the hype attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, those medications are amphetamine at the same time that there is a war against to use phentermine, they are channeling a lot of amphetamine to College Students which you can imagine 20 years we might say, wonder if that was a good idea, but at the moment it makes sense because of the different ways we think about pharmaceutical drug use. And thats where prozac comes in. And the whole slew of new drugs come out that are claimed to be content to overcome those problems to the magic of technology. A drug that have been around for very long time, hydrocodone,time, hydrocodone, but new Technology Made it so that it can release medication slowly over time which made it resistant to being abused of course, everyone knows now he just crush up the pill and snort or find ways to inject. In a lot of cases what you see is another chapter in that, oh, we invented a drug that takes addict your past problems, and this one really is magic. What is interesting about that is it claims the transformation. Thats a consumer culture promise. It is less something that in the long span of medicine has been associated with from doctor promises you. And so it made the medical enterprise fit in knew ways with the consumer culture to now make these promises. If you can cure tuberculosis with the pill maybe you can take a pill and it will make you a brighter, funnier, smarter person and it will be a cost with the weather was with cocaine. So that in some ways distinctively american desire for magic is this thing going. We are now living in the aftermath of one of those moments with the epidemic of Prescription Drug abuse. That came along with what was in some ways a really beneficial decision there is a kind of human suffering that we have been so scared of narcotics and you take teeseven to become something very different than it started out as. Now, a literarynow, a literary tour of buffalo, new york call with the help of our local cable partner. We start our trip with the collectionthat collection of letters written by African American women to the 1st lady. Please no that you are not alone. You are thoughti thought of and pray for daily by the millions you inspire. Think of your sister, your sistersister, your sister friend, your favorite cousin, your mother, me. We are the same. Well, the book is a compilation of a hundred letters that were written to Michelle Obama from africanamerican and african , caribbean women and 2,009, and the letters were written to express encouragement and support for michelle at the time. It was after the election. It had been a grueling grueling election, as you may no, very difficult for misses obama and the pres. , but also very, very exciting and that we had our 1st africanamerican president and the 1st africanamerican first lady. So we wanted women to express there feelings about this historic event, wanted them to express their encouragement we reach out to people that no one had reached out to the floor. For the most part we have got responses from and who didnt. And the conversations that we had the signs we got from people, pecan pie. It was very attractive. A place in the caribbean or whether it was some place in new york city or california. And we thought that was quite extraordinary. Heartfelt letters that would say to the 1st lady we had an advantage. Many people didnt know about it and we dug into the history of buffalo and other places and developed a major regional webbased historical document we utilize up 1st. We were at an advantage. People were in europe saying i called, some ethiopian, is this true. So we really had quite a fantastic time. Because of the significance, again, the historic significance of having the 1st africanamerican woman and the 1st africanamerican man become president. And based on that we wanted to really document what africanamerican women felt, given during the campaign michelle was attacked a number of times. One ofone of the things that set us off was the cover of the new yorker magazine. She was, you know, just in an afro and had a weapon on her and looked very militant , hostile, angry, many of the stereotypes that are used to characterize africanamerican women. And at the same time there was a wonderful woman whose name escapes me now to put together a Major International group of black women who were expatriates and they lived all over europe and it was a daily process of speaking with her , talking with her, and there was a lot of going back and forth we knew was that these women, no matter where they live, they were rooting for Michelle Obama and do it and supported us. So it was a daily conversation. We are are ourselves as individuals and understanding what peoples concerns were, no matter where they were, from the president s hometown or someplace in malawi command really was quite extraordinary to see that and to know how important it was with these women and the choice to decide whether someone would be in or not had a lot to do with how was written, you know, it really gave a different flavor somewhere so powerful that it left us speechless. It was a letter like that from a faculty member at rochester, new york who wrote this poem, historic palm which just reduced us to tears, and that was a letter, the publisher did not believe us. But then they said, well, do you have any at all that you can share . You know, we have 100 that we can share. They could not believe it. He had to take a look at this one take a look at this one letter here. And the response was wild. And not only was it a wide range, when you looked beneath the surface, we were able to discover the kind of cultural capitol that we have available to us that we do not think about and it is a cultural capitol that is the ordinary man on the street that no one talks about. In the certainly belonging to the association for the city of africanamerican life and history and a lot of other allblack associations and what have you in the ivy league or academic level, that is one thing, but this was different, the ordinary person who really struck a notea note with us. You know, the whole issue of racial solidarity, the whole issue of, you know, the non resolution of issues of repatriation or reconciliation in the south. We both of letters as well. Again, you know, my letter is based upon an issue of family history, association with my father who was a photographer, a biracial man born in 1910. I speak a bit about that. I would just like to read a little bit about this time because it is about the time of my dads birthday. What i think ofi think of my father on this day the 90th anniversary of his birth i am Certain Church functions and organizational programs and has contributed to the creation of a visual historic montage of western new yorks africanamerican community. I know that he would be looking at the images of you , barack melia, and sasha and composing in his minds eye is toward picture that he was going to stop if he had the opportunity. So we got in touch with her. So when the pres. Gives his 1st speech before the congress who is on the 2nd row, ms. Miss mary. You know, we never got anywhere close. The president greets her, how are you. Any michelle decided. So why didnt we get that close . They said send me the book. Finally got down to the line. The 1st lady can promote this. Im quite disappointed that we were not able to get any knowledge the unique nature of this volume of letters and the early timing this coming out on a very heels of the election it was very disappointing. I dont know why we would not have received some attention from the white house. Somebody decided that it was just commit you to have recognized as showing too much appreciation for the work of africanamerican women and at just wasnt going to go over too well. It appears that we were. Whatwere. What would you like for people to take away after reading your book . I would like for people to look at this letter, and extraordinary document, a document that represents a period of extreme historic importance and response i africanamerican women to that historic event. Not only signaling support and encouragement for the 1st lady but also signals for africanamerican women an issue that we are still dealing with to this day, how we are seeing the image of africanamerican women, how we are portrayed and how we respond to that portrayal was stereotypes that are still out there in the media , you know, an individuals minds, etc. You are watching book tv on cspan2. The name of the book is against the grain. The correct spelling of my last name. That led me to this neighborhood where my family lived for about a hundred years. And i thought that my family and friends would be interested in kind of learning about what life was like in the community. They have roots in the 1st word and thousands more before he is the love the history. At the peak of 70 irish. 70 percent irish. There were enough germans, polls, italians, and hungarians to make life interesting. 1830s you have people settling in the area right after the opening of the erie canal. 1842, he invents a Steam PoweredGrain Elevator and you have more and more of them that open up into this area. As millions of irish are emigrating and coming to the us, many are settling in buffalo and getting unskilled jobs along the waterfront, skipping grain in the halls of ships, working in the elevators, milling flour on railroads, building ships, so there were numerous jobs. The 1st word history is rich, as i mentioned. You have the Grain Elevator in 1842 which revolutionized that shipment of grain. Then just two years later in 1844 parts of the neighborhood were devastated by what is called the linksys which is basically a lake title wave that came and had the unsuspecting residents of this committee. Seventyeight people unfortunately were drowned. It was not the last devastating dash dash natural event to happen to this neighborhood, but in terms of death it was tht whenever. It would take maybe one relative to find out about these plentiful jobs along the waterfront working in the Grain Elevators were in the mills and word would go back to ireland. You want to come to buffalo. You are not going to become rich but you would have steady employment. They came to the neighborhood called the 1st word. It has its name because when buffalo 1st was created in 1832 is a city it was decided in the five political wards. In this area has always been the 1st word. This was important irish immigrants because where they came from and not have a lot of control over their lives. Now by controlling award they had a say in their City Government and also most importantly were able to bring Civil Service jobs back to the community. This community was a very, very tightknit community, one of the reasons they use the term against the grain, and independent spirit, they take care of themselves. Because they were cut off from the rest of the city, physical geography issues such as canals, railroads, Grain Elevators, this Committee Really was insular, and, i mean, that any good way as they looked out for one another. People stayed here for generations, some as many as five generations in the same house because it was just aa great place to live. You can imagine how it must have been living with these homes right up against this industrial bustling area railroad tracks, steamships coming in at all hours of the night, the noises, the smells. It was a vibrant place. Many people chosemany people chose to stay because they love the action. Other people moved to south buffalo, but many people stayed here. And sohere. And so i think one of the most colorful characters to come out of this neighborhood was a guy named william j singh the connors who dropped out of school at 13, classic american rags to riches stories. From that it became a very wealthy man. Unfortunately he did in 1899 the wages of the workers, people that he lived with, with, grew up with, cut the wages in half, they went on strike. Thanks to efforts in the local Catholic Church and politicians, he had to get out of that business, but he went on to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful buffalo audience. Other interesting historical events from this neighborhood would include this neighborhoods involvementneighborhoods involvement in 1866 in what was called the fenian raid. Basically civil war veterans, almost all irish decided that they would cross the niagara river, go into canada, and had a multi pronged plan to hold canada for ransom in exchange for irelands freedom. So there were many leaders as well as the participants that actually came from this neighborhood. It is reported that john from guns and munitions were escorted to have stored in the basement. Theevent that has to do with international events. That really help move the labor movement. And then the strike that involved cindy connors. Ultimately forced him out of the shipment. Probably the most important with the general william wild bill donovan. He settled here in the 1st word, came from the southwest. He has High School Tuition paid for. End of the outbreak of world war ii president Franklin Delano roosevelt tapped him on the shoulder to organize these disparate security spy agencies considered the father of american intelligence, his portrait hangs 1st at langley on the wall. The only american to have the highest medals that you can receive they had to be unloaded here. You had no reason to stop in buffalo. There were no more additional. That Grain Elevator started to close up. Shipbuilding which had been one of the Largest Industries in the 1st ward closed up going all the way back to the 1830s. Almost overnight yet thousands of jobs and dried up and it was less a reason to live in this neighborhood the opening of the st. Lawrence seaway really devastated this neighborhood. The ethnicity is much more mixed. It is a very, very mixed amount of american neighborhoods. One of the longest enduring workingclass irish communitys knowledge north america. People came here in the 1830s. Some of them ever left. Multiple generationsmultiple generations the state in this community because it was a tightknit committee, geographically isolated from other parts of the city. Welcome you to the mark twain room. A little known fact, we like to share with people. Overlooked his time buffalo. We feel it is a pivotal time for him. He just completed writing innocents abroad and shortly engaged to Olivia Langdon he decided upon the engagement that some sort of career that could sustain olivia and eventually family. Call interests in buffalo. The young couple and then family. Said about gathering the money to pay back Jarvis Langdon that he had borrowed for the one 3rd interest. By the time their wedding rolled around in february of 1870 well, little did he know that olivia and her parents were conspiring. They purchased a quite lovely mansion in buffalo on delaware and they actually made several trips to new york together all the furnishings for this household that would be their honeymoon spot in the place they would take up residence. When they pulled up in front of the mansion there were dumbfounded. This was not any monist boarding house by any means, and anyone who lived in such a house would not be renting rooms when they arrived at the front steps. They were there to greet them and welcome them into their new home. They started out on lovely footing and started their life together. The happiness unfortunately did not last long. Langdon was suffering a terrible indigestion problem, and it turned out to be a stomach cancer, and he actually passed away. Olivia was with child and her health was not terrific. Her friend came to stay with her on her way out to further points where she was fulfilling a teaching position. She actually contracted typhoid fever and passed away very unfortunately in the young couples bed. They suffered, you know, tremendous tragedies in a very short timeframe from their marriage. As i said, olivia was with child and became sickly and they carried her out on a mattress and back when they finally disembarked from buffalo. That you could say in a lot of ways that it was a tragic time for the couple, but it was also a very important time for mark twain. He upon departure had pretty much decided that his career would be as an author, not so much a newspaper man. The proceeds from innocent abroad have started to roll in while the couples year, and he was beginning to move on to other writing ventures. It was a very important time. Are there things we have on display in this room, the ultimate zero mosh to adventures of Huckleberry Finn and mark twains time here in buffalo. We have the wonderful barry moser would for his edition of adventures of Huckleberry Finn. We have a couple of the games that mark twain designed. One of them is his memory builder. Although healthough he was quite the marketer and he could pretty much sell anything, he did try to sell this game. It was a memory builder game that works by grids and pens and was designed to help teaches children how to remember dates in history. Althoughalthough he tried to market it, it failed because it was so complicated that it was likened to as much fun as preparing ones income tax return. It did not really take off. Another boardgame which was more successful was his game of the adventures of tom sawyer and huck fin, just a simpler, typical boardgame. So as i said, he was a marketer, often used in marketing. So there are examples of these cigar bands that have his name associated with them, the cigar box as well. In just a variety of wonderful collective works around the room. We have an example of when i copy of an illustration the manuscript was using publications that is owed to the fact that a young lawyer and member of the young Mens Association was a manuscript collector his own right he bought many of his manuscripts and donated them to the library. He actually wrote to mark twain a library letterhead, and he said, if you will and trust your manuscript to the library, we will keep in perpetuity and it will be here for the public to enjoy. This was in 1885 and he sent along a 1st packet of manuscript and it was only a small portion of the manuscript at this point in time, and later along the way a 2nd installment came in. Were up to about 665 or so, and that was only the 2nd half of the manuscript in a couple of the front pages at that point in time. Hetime. He expressed in the letter that possibly the other half of the manuscript had been destroyed at the printers, a plausible idea. For years and years it was understood or assumed that they 1st half of the manuscript was not to be had. And strangely enough it turned out in a trunk in Hollywood California many years later. In the early 1990s as it turns out the grandchildren of james frazer clock went to auction the half of the manuscript that they discovered supposedly in their attic. The folks at berkeley contacted this library knowing fully well that we owned the other half of the manuscript and that it was intended to belong to this library. Needless to say, members, lawyers, about 17 months or so of litigation until settlement was arrived at in the manuscript was seems to rightfully belong to the library. That is when this from came to be and with the library did was they transform the former smoking lounge into this nicely appointed room that was a tribute to mark twain for his having lived in buffalo but probably more importantly that the library owns the adventures of Huckleberry Finn manuscript command we show it here. We have these on display in the case at all times. Wewe rotate these on a threemonth basis. The reason for that is even though the conditions are archival and protective as they can be, any exposure to light can fade paper and ink over time, so we rotate. We have a special treat for you. This is just attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted. Fully prosecuted. Persons attempting to find the plot and it will be shot so i think it clearly demonstrates the twain type of humor that we have all come to know and love. So many School Groups come through this room to learn about mark twain, his time in buffalo and see the manuscripts. Many in this classes. Hence when they do they think they are delighted to see handwriting on paper which is not quite the practice, most writing taking place on computer, to see the handwriting process on paper and to see his cross out and were changes, i think it is encouraging and a lot of ways for young writers to see this. You can see that he did not have every word exactly arranged in his mind before you put it to paper. He went back and edited and changed. Some of the kids referred to it as a sloppy copy, which it is in a way. And this is part of book history, a part of the literary process. So this room tells the story. There are some scholars who will occasionally contact us to study the manuscripts, and when they do we do provide for them a 1st option, a digitized copy which can be viewed in that room. If there is a specific reason, the study is a paper or the study of the inks, this colonies to look at the original manuscript, we are more than happy to provide that in a secure situation. The leaves that were once bound from the 1st installment have been for digitization purchases under over 1300 in the entire manuscript. So it is not something that sees the light of day as a whole very often. So with this room is the place to come and see representative leave and understand the context of the manuscript and the fact that mark twain did live here in buffalo despite the fact that many planner. Skip over that. Your watching book tv on cspan2. This weekend we are in buffalo, newbuffalo, new york with the help of our local time warner partner. Next we learned about aa Landscape Architect who designed buffalos parkside neighborhood as well as new york citys central park. Parkside is a neighborhood which was designed by Frederick Olmsted and acts as a buffer between Delaware Park and the hustle and bustle of buffalo. When olmsted came to buffalo to design this park buffalo needed park space because it was filled with factories and tanneries and all sorts of age to have industries and smelly things that people wanted to come to a part to get away from. Olmsted thought im going to build this park but dont want all this nasty stuff right on the edge, so he designed this neighborhood to go around the outside of the park to give it a buffer, a residential area that would separate the park from the factories in some of the more unsightly things that people dont want to be reminded of in the park. It is the buffer between Delaware Park and the hustle and bustle of the rest of what is going on in the history of the city. This was all one guys backyard, a very wealthy newspaper publisher who lived up on main street in the hustle and bustle. He sold his land, his backyard, his farm to the city in order that they had a place to build this beautiful park. That was in the 1870s. During the war of 18121812 this was an encampment for hundreds of union soldiers. Everyone knows what a buffalo winter is like. Guys from virginia and maryland who are here and white linen uniforms trying to spend the winter in this meadow, and it did not go so well for them. 300 of them died and are buried in the middle of what is now the Delaware Park golf course. One of the things that is unique is that it was each lot was developed individually. So you had your own architect, your own builder. Each house has its own sort of unique style and feel, and this was during a time in the 1880s 1920s, all sorts of incredible different forms of architecture that were just coming online. There is a clean and house next to an arts and crafts house next to an american foursquare to somebody who does not no architecture they look like need old houses, but the fact that they are different and unique all next one another built differently gives the neighbor at a different feel and many other parts of buffalo in particular where it would have been one builder or designer who build out an entire section. A lot of the house is big and beautiful and old and has the same look. And in that people know if you are a fan of architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright, guy who brought in right to design a whole number of buildings. There are actually four Frank Lloyd Wright structures within parkside, and they all had to do with the soap company. Martin was an executive of the soap Company Command he had him design his house and also had him design to outbuildings on his property Walter Davidson was another executive who had right design house for him further away in the neighborhood. Wright also designed the summer home a few miles south of here and designed the Larkin Soap Company manufacturing headquarters which as many peopleis many people in buffalo will talk about was horrifically and terribly condemned during the 1950s as one of the set pieces of buffalo architecture. People are amazed by the architecture. Sadly one of the things that would be most celebrated was torn down in the 1950s. Tiny little stories that you have to be from buffalo or parkside to appreciate. A great moment in American History that is lost in the history books and not even written much about in buffalo. Hohum when harry truman came here for a big democratic dinner one day in 1945 and went to church and parkside. He took the Church Bulletin up to the best from it and said, you asked me for my autograph yesterday. I want to ask you for yours today so i can prove my wife that i went to church