Recycle those words but i did learn something about her a few years ago when i read the book preparation for rebook. Also recently that it does give you a window into who she is answering the larger question who is Hillary Clinton . That is something she needs to continue to voodoo leading into the general. She passed to you answer that question a little better this she has she and her aides are aware of that teeseven. Coauthor of age arce state secrets and also the book critic from the Washington Post a Nonfiction Book critic and history professor from visiting washington at the Brookings Institution is the author of several books. Eggs for being space booktv. Jeremy mccarter is next and hes the coauthor of, hamilton the revoution. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] good afternoon. Welcome to the Chicago Tribune with dustin before we get to it started out with a toothache or sponsors. We are big on social media what is your story is the u. K. Keep going all your by downloading of us in Chicago Tribune and discounts and a complete schedul schedule if you download today you get a free ebook and 5 of merchandise this will be broadcast on booktv it is a q a session of the betty has question is plea is lined up to the microphone on the right. Ike youl please silence your cellphone and turn off camera flashes. With that i would like to welcome the of coauthor of hamilton. [applause] faq for being here on this hot day. I am very happy tv the of coauthor of hamilton and see a couple of copies in the audience and that is encouraging. I am happy to be in chicago this is my home life had to go back to new york to return my want to do something with hamilton that is my a coauthor and the show bause i sure as you know, hamilton will come here. [applause] such to help me get a sense of who you are i would love to now who has seen the you to video of the white house and he has spent to new york to see the show . Heard is who has listened to the cast album . Who has heard of more than once . Once a week . Every day . Today . To us you are my people i am happy you are here. [laughter] the organizers asked us to frame these thoughts around the theme of whats your story . That sounded fun for about five seconds then there really get to be a nerving after 30 minutes because whats your story sounds like a question about your life how you talk about your life even if you have of book . Over 30 minutes . Then even more terrifying what if your whole story can be in a half an hour because what type of life are you leaving . Click your therapist youre repeating yourself. [laughter] so what i hope they dont mind that we will tweak the theme so what is our story which also feels more in keeping with the show which is hamilton. Obviously the story that brings us together. Hamilton is the rare Creative Work breaking an extraordinary number of range of of people together now that is not always the case there are plenty of great works that people admire in the austere way. Mes m people are giving hamilton hogs. Ge even more than that i have walked up the stage door plenty times over the last year right into the arms of the enormous crowd that waits to see that cast. And trust me from the sound of the shrieks. We even did a signing at the bookshop in new york a few blocks from the theater in the was an incredible afternoon. A three hour procession ofnt young people, old people, race, color, backgro und, accents trying to put into words what the show had meant to them in their lives. Ver again doubt i will not share them some were very private and powerful but i will nevert again doubt that a story can change the world. We should stipulate not everybody feels this way. For one principal or another or the simple matter ofus taste hamilton is not for them and that is okay it doesnt have to be universald to say it has an appeal thatth was diems Political Party and race and age i did ask about this with the executive producers of the cast album said this nearly universal embrace reminded him of thriller with a the most popular albums ever made. He loved that album teachers, the kids that would call him racial slurs on the playgrounds of the lease started to ask him to teach them into moonwalk butgs if anybody else to that attention. To be hyperbolic but with hamilton isnt just a pop album makes people put extra zippers on their coats but it is the founding of the united couple ol states and it is of the country of founders worked miracles defeating the british and founded a government bill unlike any that had ever existed bailout slavery to thrive you dont need me to tell the forces over the last two and injured 40 years that made plenty of people feel alienated from their country. And the most important aspect is what i have watched have been is hamilton makes people feel for the first time sometimes they have a stake in their origin of this country and they can have americanled we their story to. Y. This the story we try to tell in the book and that is what i will try to talk about today but we have to ask the question what is our story in the sense what is the story with me in my coauthor and friends . I will take a minute with that. One night in early 2007 and was a theater critic for new York Magazine went to the west side of manhattan to see of musical by people i had never heard of i did not expect to be very good i have been right team for years repeatedly about the power of hiphop as a way to tell stories someone even obnoxiously they had done at but never in the way that i thought of the potential of the kind of writing your shakespeare that most playwrights did through 200 years ago but instead was a lot of musicals how bad the record industry was which is true after all these years waiting for somebody to act to do the things i saw my favorite emcees doing imagine my surprise and delight in relief when within five minutes of the start i felt like here is someone who gets it in they think about it in the ways that i do to tell a story of life of upper manhattan barrasso the facility to write to balance who loves the kraft just as much i wrote all of the set down in my review a few weeks later i was happy to find out the experience i had of how i felt is how he felt when heou read review somebody else gets my point of view of the publicist is a friend in2008 wep fixed us up and he was right we can offer after a performance we met for drinks before he was a macarthur certified genius than People Magazine gave him the sexiest man alive you could tell something was coming i would like to give you a moment by moment account of that conversationon because it is directly responsible for my standing on stage right now the fact is we killed too many brain cells that they do even reconstruct the only important one that i realized later the Opening Night of hamilton i founded email written a few days later than it made clear in the summer of 2008 he toldt me of a crazy adn he had he only started to tell a few people to do a concept album of the life of Alexander Hamilton told through hiphop objectively that is crazy this is a few days before his famous mexico vacation he clearly has started to read the book in the inspiration hit him that fast so fast he already had the title that night ben which franklin was the key and the kite. Fast forward three years time on the artistic staff in new york ancestor bring in new products the first person i proposed to my boss was live as my friend in uprising talent he told me a great idea he had but as soon as i say live in he thinks that guy that competed against me for the tony awards and one he did win party at the expense of the musical he had developeded but i convinced him to take then meeting in e milton to tell him how thrilled oscar was a hectic off completely and for life and. Us cd, the kids ask your parents. [laughter] we used to hit each other wee music. Ht or ten on and that cd were the demos of the first eight or 10 songs he had written for hamilton. En i heard tho wish i could remember that night we met for drinks irt remember precisely what happened when i heard the songs for cry was sitting in, if my apartment, the third or fourth song on that album was helpless if you havethat ela heard you know, that is the song that eliza wife sings the version you heard is pretty close to what i heard except i got him and seeing it himself in falsetto. [laughter] i knew at the end anybody who could write a pop song that was as catchy end still anybody precise storytelling power was again you can see how much territory covers if you put it on stage it will be the best musical of our generation. Not to say i expect d expected all of this the director didnt nobody did because it is insane nobody can dream you command on the cover of Rolling Stone when did that is the best piece of our i have ever seen in my life. Was handed to m that cd is important for other reasons also in context of marriage because three at years later about my wife to Opening Night at intermission and she turned to me and said this is what youve been talking about this show all these years. [laughter] the party that night is whenen lin first proposed the idea we write a book you probably think my a reaction would have been exuberant yes but incredly it was closer to i dont know it is one thing for me to see how the incredible show was developing in the work that lin was doing the writing a book was altogether different and forced me to ask the question what is our story . What is our angle . So how do you get this down on the page . Now it is funny to see the descriptions when they talk about the book to say a backstage look at the show, a companion and those are true up to a point of why people buy the book but also explicitly almostalso relat verbatim we knew it couldnts a only be some would we knew we had to get past those people say it is the show or book for people who love hamilton yes. We intended it to be the curiosity of American Culture and hiphop but at the moment that a subset is essentially the same as those who love hamilton. I found out what was in stephen doo . Is no exaggeration to say his influences on every page of this book certainly all in the lin as all composers to work today and influencees on me because of how he brilliant and that chances he takes and how rigorous as i was thinking how to do this and was thinking about his anthology in one man tried in particular that is crucial for all storytellers books or songs he said the content dictates form and he means if you figure out the story you want to tell them you figure out the form in which you need to tell it as we cannot just tell a storyy how the show got made but what it is doing in the changes affecting in theom world how is changing the lives of the people who made it and theyre coming to see it and it clicked this is the shorter version. Revo hamilton doesnt justnges w traumatize the revolution itho is the revolution it changes the way broadway sows our food is to tell the story in structure as aves of people making it in content dictates form it can have the same structure as all of the other books they can have oral history at the top or the sidebars or talked its way at the back of the book those are pieces of different stories in this case we had to come up with the new structure and a new book by found we had to tell two stories in tandem the show tracing hamiltons life and the book telling of how the us show got made. So here i turn to someone i dont refer to often but it was . . . That he explains you understand better because of the chapter proceeded i that that is a useful structure if it can be chronological begin 2009 when lin had the of the number at the white house and end with the Opening Night on broadway six years later when i can already tell this point lin t would just have finished the last numbers of the show so the trick how to space out the impact while hamilton and the others go through their adventures the finalralist influence and what god is rolling surf was that federalist papers they give us the idea for the titlesfor to in a show you how you drive a point home to make an argument for the constitution the show did not need me to argue on its behalf of there is ever show that did not need someone to throw dice adjectives added it was hamilton but i want to make the argument House Stories can change the world and what gave me permission was Henry Cabot Lodge edited the first collection in datapoint the dominant purpose not creating the national they gore the hero the revolutionary war a National Sentiment than do people to think about themselves and the new way and as a union in drive that point home while he could the thinking in into feeling that is our specialty is you can get people to feel different that is why we are in business so i think of his life the what is happening around lin show the way people were reacting so strongly. That the board not to revolutions but to aspects of the same revolution with those grandiose claims made with the legacy of theis momentt founding father you to make a lot of arguments of this moment to that moment but one of a the rapper busta rymes came to see the show when you can send it busta rymes onstage dressed as king george the third you have stretched the limits of the possible. H [laughter] that is a story that we would tell calling that hamilton how do we do it . We had to work really fast the least as fast as the people that lin collaborated with to make a show. It is worth saying were to warn you that the directorwh and choreographer those core for artists that made the issue if you see them kaftan eight heavily in advance because they think fast and is talk fast and moved. pretty fast secretive metabolism of those said made the show is light speed and that is essential to whyhe it works there are 32 chapters in the book i had seven weeks to draft them i do not recommend this as a way to make books there was a head start of me being i around a lot to see what was happening but i was there as the artistic staff but lin could not have had much longer to write those invitations while performing seven times a week and denounced to everyone was writing the music for the cantinas scenes for the new star wars for gore would send him digital files with sticky notes attached i remember there is a variation trying to figure out why he made the choices that he made in he surpriseddi me again by digging into his past life cover showing the fee is in the show that were more autobiographical than i expected he was my first reader and i was his with countries contributing to the book. A and that was the goal. E. Even then we had to step up the pace you concede the actual pages in the way to find those pages was beforeis he went on stage one night but the big stack and i had the same feeling to see things more quickly so finally i started the drop box order i dont even let my editors see that but that is the only way we could get it done if not in the sameelp fr wavelength we could not have trusted each other and not finished it. But we didnt want help from other writers. Content dictates form. The mostf and with those to come together to have the most different kinds of content essays or profiles to fit them into the smallest number of pieces unless they are primary sources emails schaede your cut the lyrics. Tha content dictates farm but there is something that we take from the spirit of the show himself. Color, and what and then to make the actors those of color. But there will not be a we get the audience. The book like the show is 1 millimeter away from the action in. Bid to be an eye witness to something incredible was not a stretch to create those conditions allow those collaborators to thrive. To give them to what they need he kept everybody cool the they could take chintzes and i would believe this it was a hurricane and tommy created the i. It was so crazed the actors were not sure there would w get through it. Exploitative b afterwards they ralliedut together. At the actors this sounds explicative but why it was important that crying was as important to was that happened on a certain date did a certain beater and received in a certain way. The reason why hamilton is a historical drama that feels the media as if it is happening to the people we know because when they talked up the story theyd never just put fax and a timeline to revoke that the emotional reality of the 70s the and 80s and 90s. As they traded for the national bank. And then if dramatizes the up pressure he doesnt write about politics and all. So it is said justin the book that he found the after you want to show how it felt. There are personal achievements is sickness as they try to reach tel in the to book so we are right team for free is now with the better sense for also for people who would look back comments with the employer and collaborators in how that felts and most of all what it cost. Ore us and in tulsa to a understated in this moment the story started for us and will continue after us. There are a couple moments of was very privileged toen watch the show have been when i had a feeling i can only liken it to vertigo itt is hard to write about this without sounding like you are high. I have tried to do it trust me we were knowing that the president would come to the show technically after river supposed to be dead but if the president is coming you crack open the of laptop to add the epilogue to see him walk onstage after the showngtou in steel and where he sawin the farewell address then to see obama look back on his own administration to see past and present sugar next to each other in that distance to collapse of theve biggest moment happened after the book went to press and was very lucky to go to the white house with the Hamilton Company to perform for the president and Vice President in in an incredible array of dignitaries and i can only thank the theater gods i did not have to write about that on a book deadline because i was on a Rocky Mountain high [laughter] one that they did try to write about the to understand what is special about the show this is the song that Chris Jackson sings of farewell address if you see Chris Jackson the africanamerican man from Illinois City and best song in front of him is president obama and behind them is the Gilbert Stuart portrait of c George Washington the first president who owned a blackmun then all of the senate felt all of history was condensed i did not even have to turn my head. But what was most excitingnts fm was space the people never sitting right below him there was 100 students whoo is of the reactions they were feeling when an earlier performances the place where they intersect those kids and see a to side as George Washington that meant something in the memoranda we use something now in 2016 with spoke to the actors said the most powerful were the authors and they were very candid have otherwise might be different when they were of the age they had seen a black implying georgewerg washington if they felt they were living a story they had nothing to do with this is the last generation who will not have the chance to have that experience because of the show with and has three imagine the past but we do in 20 years it will be a much different country than it is today in the racial makeup is changing in the expectations will change but this is a chapter in one a story that hamilton like the Obama Presidency is a configuration of what is to come. The book was published april 12th the best reaction to have gotten has been along the lines of i had no idea it was the hard people didnt know how much effort went in to make this thing that looks prettythats n. Effortless it seemed a natural but that is not true and once you step back you realize there is a lesson think mr. Rabin tallying today and how many key Little Things that happened just at the right time for lin in die to meet him in to write the book together it is perfect in inevitableid beeo tommy told me something a few days before Opening Night i wish i could use in the book but he said he was looking back at the whole is fl. Process if lin really shaped that performance whatit wouldve happened flawless it could have gone sideways to didnt the way for us to conspire to make it a miracle if the book was not inevitable then what does that imply of this subject . It seems like that is not inevitable either. Nials haye evc americans had to win the war find a government with no real precedent in to make them both stick it makes me want to stop taking that america did experiment for granted it failed in a moment and still might we need to feel how lucky we are maybe were all part of the american story when a the last things that we added to the book was my favorite page the dedication page it is two lines in the best collaboration wide rededicate our book to this children he said perfect who will come of age with our young nation. So two americans e that is to fathers expressing their hopes for the young son and daughter but also the same type of hope for the country. So before research taking questions ever like to read a chapter this is one that touches on some of these things it is chapter 14 per probation read along that would be creepy. [laughter] if you and set insist to keep me honest. [laughter] about the american experiment said chapter that sets up the song of the final battle of the revolutionary war the title of the chapter is that fashion revolution in a day of first looking up at the 150 people who packed the theater of the project. Created for and by a kids to offer spaces to shows like hamilton the first time we had ever done the first and second act backtoback your the first audience in the history of the world to have seen that. Producer, the title was another firstti the producer persuaded the next tape off and choke it might be the most important contribution made to the show. Hamilton sounds like a nell ne blockbuster but he had been adding in changing things through the night before things that not even he has heard out loud petechia to help itself finishing at 1030 whose doctors arehe learning that at 11 the now stop doing my homework off the bus i am 33. [laughter] it is experimenting ways to move people and furniture around the stage five weeks was a long time but not nearly long enough to figure out how to stage the show. Tommy was feeling stressed out reminding him that nobody was forcing them to do anything. They decided to stage act one and then fall back on the music stations for act number two but the real revelation is what they wore looking back those costumes choices seemed obvious in 20 years on broadway he designed costumes the when he heard the dead know he knew he had to combineuestion w. Sensibilities but how . The challenges to figure out where they meet he looked at a lot of street fashion in steadied the work of fashion icons everybody has dripped on the 18thcentury at one time or another. Nt his wellstocked tool kit and research to locate the right point of intersection. Ledt they had collaborated on productions before this based on mutual trust thatys they were not sure what to do without deal the way to figure this out was to try it. They do what the cast lookedpp t like he is the workshop to experiment with authentic designs. Period from the neck down modern from the neck up i didnt want chris to be in a powdered wig. They did not constitute first you put black and Latino Actors and period costumes more than half a century ago in painting contemporary blackmun, the portrait but still it made the show seemed double and triple audacious the biggest trouble came at the end of act one when they came onstage wearing blue coats with brass buttons is unmistakably the uniform of the Continental Army of washington when hundred 50 audience members watching black and Latino Actors who heads the their feet freedom infringed win freedom for us all people were weeping at intermission and screamed at the crowd you could hear emotions of euphoria inrom disbelief and in desperation and that gasps of those who wanted to invest in the show there were four presentations that be in 600 people told their friends that they had seen him by monday the most talkedabout not quite show in new york experimental of putting actors and period costumes to doctors in parchment town close this this though humbling i really didntmb want to get in the way of that. Oh yeah i of a part of this line and would bring to thiseare production as to being an afterthought. When that battle of yorktown ended that day the blackened latino cast wearing costume selected by africanamerican designers to climb on top of box is in shares to spend the 60 months trying to capture how exhilarate being succeedement felt. [applause]ew questions a but. That it was wonderful. I will ask a few questions please start getting into the microphones in think of your own. This in isfahan important cultural movements the play revolutionize the revolution raising peter and the book that is beautiful but jeremy how did that revolutionize you . Good question. I guess good question. Aicher said tore the and it does make me think with more concern in to more ability with the United States oftoo america by the inca chapter that i really wanted to read but it was way too long was that makes the point you can look at the founders and how you needed them in exactly the right positions for the dreaded states to form the way that was just like the guys who made the show had to be exactly at the rightth place at the right time. Be looking at how contingent these beings are it makes you treasurer what you have got because you know, how tenuous that can be so as i watched my friends go through this insanity. Alien to the all had very different lives in very different careers. Then it changes your life an watchi lot the big spotlight will swing around one after the other so in the book came now to the adoration in the book has the spotlight and i had no idea what that felton tht like watching them and never could have guessed that intensity you just cannot understand that fatalities is you down 463. [laughter] i have of question now was text did to me by a seventh grader i dont know she is in the audience could your words the eloquently as put about Politics Today or this somethings been out that makes the book so beautiful . The stakes were higher it was a question of life and death if the revolutionda would work the stakes are still high today so it will lead be trickier to find that subject. The fundamentals in getting all the collaborators to tell a story but just for me who writes and puts projects together just watching artistic form but the idea that the concept of principal and how that works in practice if you get that right then you can find subjects anywhere. I was talking earlier to a third grade teacher in the audience she says there are some explicit lyrics but she is thinking how to bring back into her classroom. Swear. Thoughts . This is a pointed teacher whole generation of children of kids how to swear so now we have learned instinctively we will sail allah law blob blob lhasa she cannot hear what theyre saying. I dont know exactly what level of falmouth eloquences right for what age but i will say that producer oft the show has made an admirable commitment to make sure students get to see it funding came from the Rockefeller Foundation in new york with a program with t the syllabus assembled from the American History is to to to make sure that 20,000 Highschool Students per year can see the show with the schools they would then see broadway shows otherwise. To meet, when a revolution on the cover of the book, if anyone is skeptical, i would have been skeptical of the claim that that is my defense and though the experience they are having i have talked to the teachers i have seen it the world will be a different place what comes out of their brain as a consequence of seeing this show. Digest want to say to fan. T arriving huge Hamilton Fish and if a manager to read data into a broadway fame and. But what i find most amazingamen in the characters it is the right people at the right place at the right time if you can imagine the American Revolution without washington but would is also foundi amazing this diverse cast tells the story of the Founding Fathers every dayay we hear about diversity q problems we still have the 21st century. My question is do you think hamilton could have been this successful on broadway if they came not 15 years ago . With a cast that it has now . I dont know. Imagine a world. It is a great question and allow entry answer it to quickly. 10 years ago was 2006. There they are great songs and the fact this channels all of power in but we love about relieve great pop music telling a story with this type of precision will work any time would have been a huge phenomenon . I dont know how important was is Michelle Obama became to see it in that she freaked out. And barack obama was the president . Fact it is so coincidence with the above the in administration is hard forte me to imagine otherwise. Se toge. In terms of intersecting with the news there is at least one moment as it happens the company went back into rehearsal before they reopen on broadway than eight before they reassembled was the shooting in charleston when the shooter killed nine worshipers at the church in to it was very difficult to stay in their choosing this new song that lin had just written about washingtons hopes where everybody would be safe knowing that these nine people were just killed in the safest sanctuary that we have. Hat begins the tony keeps talking about this because he writes these how does that m prophetic there is no underground in louisiana there is only under water then katrina happened is the answer is if youre right about the world we live in government or politics or society in a disciplined way and then your much likelier to have the things that intersect with the news and that is the case here. Lin could have pulled a lot of punches. Were you doing for the tonys . Day macau will be at the hamilton tony party. [applause] i will be watching the screen crossing my fingers. Anybody else . What about the historians . Have you had any one that has crippled with a take on aaron burr or any others . There is an interesting than alm of the great villains of history linhe talks more kindly of aaronon burr of anyone i am aware of certainly about him than the book that was written that inspired lin to write the show. D turnow to help lin said when he first asked to help him as a consultant he said at a what historians to like it but take it seriously. If you are a historian then you pull and push and challenge him look where the argument is weak or strong fitted into context of the conversation there are historians to wish lin had is a gn pain is different or fault him but to me the fact there is a genuine historical dialogue about a Broadway Musical is one of a sciencefiction things about this whole experience. And it does absolutely transcend time when you are watching or listening great questions. What theyd hamilton so popular even though it shares a lot of similarities . It is the same team theyve produced and coauthor both of the samean same choreographer musical directors and actors so whating happened . One of paying for scheerer is he matured as an artist partly they all did they had won under their belts, they could deepen and what they could do and what they dididgenq collectively it is my pet theory that neither see it as crucial as i do but another thing that happened with highest in in hamilton but lin did two shows in appeared in a production through the encore series and is doing well there exxon stage in the Spanish Language translation of the sharks lyrics for a revivalai on broadway he is adjustingth your studying he puts in his brain to do something with them to me there is the sense that he is that pro hiphop figure of broadway if you listen to theould kill to precision in the density of what he does with the lyrics they would kill to write a krism song like chrysanthemum tea from pacific overtures that is a wonderful playful clever string of crimes so partly bad hand that happens on stage but offstage . Sometimes lightning strikes it just happens everything lined up exactly right and did it almost never but this time it did. Your talk was very interesting. My comment is i am old enough to remember when hair opened on broadway in i remember thinking this is my music and this is my people is the same way i felt about hamilton this will be so important it is their show and their music. But my question is exactly how much time did you spend with the show with self restarted rights in the book written frin the theater . Some of the episodes ine rens the book are written from my direct observation like toout hw call back for her audition with everyone in the room was freaking about how great she was a watch that happen. Now i cant remember what i wrote i was in a script to meetings and design meetingshe t chapter 16 about tech week how that was so complicated that was in the room watching them to deal with the fact they didnt have enough time to do with their wanted to do once i space write the book then i started to show up as much as i could get back to new york because i knew any moment something important might happen but i wanted to preserve and sure enough there were great moments like cheering showstopper broadwayfirst time in the theater is the way you always imagined it but is very funny and profane reaction in he was sitting right there when it have tak. It is like if i knew in 2011 a wouldbe righty a buckeye would be taking better notes. [laughter]. Ndkaren greenberg where the Strong Female characters are not only the wives of the prominent men in history but are the people making history themselves. The next film is a disney film with a female protagonist. So absolutely. In terms of our collaboration, i dont know if i will work with him again. He has that and i am working on a book i am trying to finish now and one of the protagonist it is a book about young people in world war one and alice paul is one of the people i wrote about and she helped get the Susan B Anthony amindment across the finish line. Love her