Transcripts For CSPAN2 The Millionaire And The Bard 20161211

I do not [inaudible] ill start over. Well could, thanks for coming today. My name is Susan Baraboo and i work for the madison libraries, and the special Collections Library at. Welcome to the wisconsin book festival. I would like to introduce today our author, andrew mays who will be talking about her book with the fantastic cover, the millionaire and a bar. The camera folger has been possessed by a lifelong obsession with shakespeare andss his time. Andrea spent much of her manhattan girl had holed up in the Public Library listening to the final recordings. A performances by the borough shakespeare company, a graduate of stuyvesant high school, she was not only a protege of frank court, but also his own mentor, the publicschool teacher believed delbert. Andrea has degrees in economics from the State University of new york at it and said in ucla. And teaches economics at cal State University at long beach. She was a president ial appointee to the u. S. National trade commission where she served as an economist to the chairman. She divides her time between california and washington. The millionaire and the bard is her first book. It is an excellent read about an extraordinary book about Henry Clay Folger and his wife pamela folger. Fans of shakespeare and passionate excess collectors. They are the founders of the Folger Shakespeare library in washington d. C. And that ista their gift to the United States, the people of the United States. I will not say much more, but i will let andrea mayes told this story. Thank you. [applause] hi, welcome, everybody. Thank you for coming out. Ill talk a little bit about the boat, how i came to write it, what it is about and why the timing of this book wasand im incredibly fortunate. Im also going to give you antan assignment, some thing to do starting november 3rd. Kerry is going to be a copy ofnt the first folio that you can visit at the university of wisconsin. So ill get to that at the end of my story. First i want to talk a little bit about how i came to write this book. How did the idea come to me, what spurred me to do this . My obsession with shakespearebe began as a lot of the sessions i think to as a result of an excellent teacher who introduced me to the plays of shakespeares guardian in middleschool and then working my way through high school i had excellent teachers for elizabethan and jacobean literature and i was bitten by the bug and was off and running. Ive been reading the plays from his seat in play is being since then. When it came time to read a boot a month someone recommended to me that i do write about something i knew a little sub in about so that i was not going to be starting from ground zero and perhaps spending a great deal of time is something i didnt enjoy it. And so, my sister said how aboul shakes here come as something related to shakespeare wasnt quite sure exactly what subject. To write about his thousands of books have been about shakespeare. What did i do that with a little bit different . Heres how it happened. A separate shakes. Le bit d in high school and then we use the folger editions of thes in h shakespeare plays in high school. If you have not used a folger editions come with their paperback books and on one side of the page is a tax and on the facing page or definitions. Its very helpful. You dont have to go to the bottom of the back of the book. That was my first exposure to folger said the director. Later at ucla in law school i came across Henry Clay Folger as a defendant in the same as Standard Oil Case from 1911 and i wonder if thats any relation with the weather to the folgerm. Edition. And then i moved to washingtonoh d. C. In the mid1980s and walked by the Library Every day on my way to work. At some point i went into the folger for one of their tours and asked where the money had come from the built thisthe collection and the distant dad, mr. Folger worked for an oil company. Tle mo i thought this was Something Worthy of a little more research, a little investigation and that was how i started weaving the two stories together. I grew up in new york city surrounded by the trappings of the gilded age. So the carnegie mansion was across the street from them church. The first mention was across the street from the bus stop that i got off the middleschool. Our science trips for up to the rockefeller preserve and so on. I have been surrounded by the gilded age since i can remember. And all of that comes out in the book. So really what the millionaire and the barnard is about two separate stories, too. That time, elizabethan and abundant mostly in new york during the gilded age and how we move from one story to the other disconnect did through a book and that is the book that i read about, shakespeares first folio. We digress for a minute, talk for a moment about who shakespeare was. You may be aware that this is the 400th anniversary of shakespeares death this year. So many events are going on around the United States and elsewhere to celebrate or commemorate this event,om including the exhibit at the university of wisconsin madison which ill talk a little bit about. Kespea so we are celebrating 400 years later the great work of men left behind. When he died, it was by no means sure that he would become the secular god of englishlanguage literature. He had contemporaries who were extremely talented. It was not he was the only playwright of the era, that whe he died, only half of this place had been published. None of those have beenbe published with his permission. Let me explain a little bit why that would instead. At the time there was no copyright law. The copy via. , the act of queen and did not come into existence until senate tivo nine in england and therefore the author had not Property Rights in their own place. Playhe they would sell the place out right and then the Theater Companies didnt want to publish because anyone who got a hold o a copy if you were to perform a play perform the plann competition with them. So how did half of the plays get out into get published. The answer is pirates. Not our parent, but the printers would for example high yourur player from that company to recreate the play as they knew it. And they would say, you know, come on and have a seat. And then they would write down as fast as they could whatever they came up with. Sometimes its an interesting and not so great a size. Another thing they would do is send a stenographer into the audience would play was being performed and have them right out as quickly as they could whatever is going on in the play, again sometimes with mixed results. Half of the plays includingml hamlet for already published ina paperback version. If you check a very large piece of paper, folded it once, folded in quarters again, that would be the size of a paper paperback book. The other half of the plays we know about because there would virus at the time who attended plays, wrote about them, but we would not have had copies of them. Had a book not publish the shakespeares friends seven years after shakespeares death. So 1616 16 shakespeare dies when it goes into the ground, half the plays are in danger of evaporating. Two of his friends, fellow actors in the Globe Theatre company decided to collect shakespeares plays, edit them and publish them as a memorial to their d. C. Spread. They made a couple of interesting decisions. One was they were going to publish this allinone volume. In order to do that, they would have to do it in an extremely large format. About 13 inches at eight inchesr is the format. If you have a large piece ofof paper and fold it only went, to be a folio size and extraordinary to publish plays and not format. In part this works that size had been reserved pretty much for serious work of religious or political import and, not for something as ephemeral as plays. You might be aware of the history of jeter during elizabeth and james brain that the puritans had a great deal of power and parliament including one of elizabeths advisers, the puritans were against theater because it was an offense to god tend to be something that you werent. So much of that time that only men and boys around the stage, not women. Not only were they pretending to be something they were, but always pretending to be women. This is more than the puritans could handle. These two men, john having an henry kondo, two great Unsung Heroes of englishlanguage literature whose names almost no one does you do now, collected the sources that would have been available including these paperback versions of the plays. Whatever manuscripts theyad mightve had available to them as members of the theater can do because they wouldve owned the manuscript outright. And they came with some thing that no other publisher couldkne have had enough is the knowledge of how the play had been performed because they were active in those plays thatpeare shakespeare or under his direction. So when it came to taking a version of hamlet and reading a soliloquy, they might say no thats not how we did it. This is how it went. Thats not how it performed better. They essentially became the first editors of shakes years and left us with versions of the play that we know today. So the sources that they might have assembled no longer exist then theres no diary from having telling us what it is they did, but researchers surmised the sources of mightve been available to them. What are some of the plays that would have been lost . You might be familiar with some of them. How many of you brad that back in high school . Thank yo [inaudible] go rosalind, no tempest, no full fathom five and his bones are coral made. Those are pearls that were his eyes. Nothing of him that change but this effort be changed into something rich and strange. All of that wouldve disappeared had this this book not been published. So it into the cleopatra, and long list of 18 plays that would have disappeared on the books that been published. The book was published in 1623. So just to pay for half a pound and then you could ride it to your favorite pounder they could validate to your tapes. The original binding for these folks became extremely valuable and extremely coveted in thell collect it were up. So now we talk a little bit about how this book we caught shakespeares first folio, how about evolved as a collection of that evolved through thean century. The answer is that became a finish up jack. It is not an especially rare book surviving in a number of 235, although 236 is about to be announced, so stay tuned for that. 235 copies known to survive. We are only two copies of one of them survived in the interrupt that is complete. The one at the British Library is missing one page. The one at the Henry Huntington museum in pasadena is missing a different page. Together it forms one complete copy. There is a single known surviving copy of ted bissinger on a case from 1597, the first play of shakespeare publish while shakespeare was alive and the single copy was found in a library in sweden in a boxught e university and later bought by henry fulcher. That is the only copy remaining in the world that i have helped with. So the first folio as i mentioned became a fetish of it particularly prior to the gilded age, but in the gilded age was a fetish object for collect tears. Mostly collectorcollector s would want a single exploit copy of a big original seven century by name containing all the plays and then theres the leaves of the book particularly valuable. Those do you expect over 400 years to get the most damage. The first page of the last page, the last page is fairly rare. The portrait page which contains that engraving of shakespeare that we all know so well its partly on the cover. That by the way is one of two known likenesses of shakespeare not done from life. It there is no portrait done from life that hes discovered yet. But people knew shakespeare were still alive. So when they collect these plays and a gauge to do the raving, they could have said thats not what he looked like. Shorter mustache, brighter eyes, whatever it was committed these are people who knew shakespeare co. Said this is what it looks like. The other is the effigy of shakes their ipad and a turning church which also was noncommissioned by his soninlaw and therefore someone who would have known what he w looked like. So the typical collector would have wanted a high spot including a portrait page, for example. There are many copies of that in the fulcher collection. That is one of the more valuable pages of the book. So the high spot. Someone like Henry Huntington, jpmorgan would have collected a really beautiful complete copypl and then they wouldve gone on to something else. The huntington collection has only a cynic, but also jack london and france than in Abraham Lincoln and all kinds of other things. Henry fulcher was different in these collectors and that heng singlemindedly pursued anything relating to shakespeare. It could be tangentially related to shakespeare. Mightve been a source material but they did to 17 that shakespeare might have known about barney that shakespearee might have known about, but basically he singlemindedly collected shakespeare. Let me talk a little bit about who henry folger was because most people dont know who it was then that was part of the reason to read the book. Henry clay fulcher was born in brooklyn in the 1830s,er middleclass family. His father was a millinerer supplier. He went to Amherst College and while he was in school, his fathers business what a breath and he moved back to new york city and enrolled into the college of new york which was tuition free at the time. Because a friend he had gone to school that said you have to finish at amherst, he was able to arrange a loan that enableds him to go back to amherst. The man who arranged the loan later became his mentor and employer, Charles Pratt and ill talk more about him later. He appears as a character later on as his son Charlie Pratt ended up being one of henrys life long friends, not least in part because he introduced him to his wife. So henry finished his amherst, moves back to brooklyn, and roasted in a school at columbia for law school and goes to work as a clerk in a pratt oil company. The private oil company in brooklyn has been taken over by standard oil of new york with john d. Rockefeller. Pratt becomes again an executive in the standard oil co. And henri starts at the bottom as a clerk of works his way up eventually becoming president of the Standard Oil Company of new york. 1911, the antitrust case resulted in abuse split into 36 different companies. The largest piece of standard oil answers become the secondlargest in new york and that is the one henry becomes president death and later a becomes chairman of the board. From being a clerk, he works his way up to be chairman of the board of the Standard Oil Company. So nine to five years writing excuse me, he is one of the Worlds Largest corporation and afterward he goes home and his wife who is the who was the shakespeare it in her own right has hit her masters thesis on the true text of shakespeare. He and his wife put go throughdn catalogs and order things for their collection and open the t packages that arrive can examine the books come up with the books. They read the books that they bought. They examine the books they bought. They wrote about shakespeare, read the place can examine the plays. They were very much involved in the shakespeare world together. They would examine these books. Emily went right out and index card with all the bibliographic information including where they d ipurchased that, with thethey we love charles stanley. Compuy secretive about his collecting. So you could imagine hes been collecting since the late 1800s, that people would have gotten wind of what he was doing. So as i mentioned, most collectors had a copy, maybe two, maybe three. Henry hu large number. But folder did what anybody to know what he was doing. H so he swore his dearest to secrecy, not all of them respected that by the way. One of them blabbed right away to the New York Times that folger had paid the world record price for a book. Theres only one place that information could it come from and it was the dealer. Folger was not happy. He wrote to the dealer and scolded him. But folger was trying to keep secret what he was doing in a vain effort to keep his identity secret and keep prices down. Bi so imagine if youre bill gates and you decide youre going toon collect i dont know jane austen and every time something jane austen comes up at auction, everybody else in the audience goes \0 oh, and the prices go up. So folger if itd been known what he was doing that he was not just collecting a copy or two but he was continuing to collect them. He imagined the prices would have gone up and he was quite right. Whereas Henry Huntington would attend the options and take a bow when he won a coveted item, folger did not attend the auction and he again swore his dearest to secrecy. A lot of the information got around what folger was doing at that he was doing this collecting. Even at the time the ground was broken on the property on east capitol street directly east of the great capitol dome, he did want to cite up safe coming soon Folger Library because he wanted to keep it secret what he was doing and he is continuing toec. Collect. Let me mention a couple of glitches in the building of the library. One was that he had an endowment set up, the incumbent which would have been used to run the library and then to make acquisitions. He was specific in his testament exactly how this would work and get the tablet drop below x dollars and they could not make any additional acquisitions and so on. But in october 1929 the stock market had a 40 off sale andsad the value of your standard oil stock fell tremendously and, therefore, the money he had anticipated would be equitable e for building and running the library shrank a great deal. It is because of emily folgers generosity and our vision as well as an reset the library built that the library actually gets to completion. The other glitch in the building of the library was that henry folger took a little over a decade to assemble 14 parcels of land on east capitol street between second and third street on capitol hill in washington, d. C. In order to build the library. So he buys the townhouses on that \street { g}street up one at a time. Finally when hes assembled the last of the 14 properties he opens the newspaper and sees congress about to condemned this block in order to build thefl annex to the library off congress. So theyre going to use the condemnation, congress would use a fifth amendment to condemn the block and build the annex to the original Thomas Jefferson building for the library off congress. What to do . So henry folger contacted library of congress and with his help carved the property henry folger had acquired out of the parsnips going to be devoted to the annex. If you go to washington, d. C. And you visit the Folger Library you will see why the Folger Library is the annex for the library of congress. That was a great achievement to have been able to do that. Let me tell you a couple of stories about acquisition. Le partly the book is, i tried to ride in a way that created some suspense as to whether henry folger was going to be successful at his acquisition or not. So really these are about chasing these coveted objects. I tell basically three stories. One is the chase for the only known copy, and how that ends at how henry agonizes over how much too big for it. How dealers write to them saying i have a lead on this and i can get it for you. I can get it for you. Hes already got it. So if already sent his agent from london. Ag he said get on the ferry, get over to sweden, bring cash with you and give me that book. And here all the dealers are thinking can i buy . Shall i buy it . Another story involves the chase for the vincent copy which is a very large copy of the first folio in its original, with its original 17thcentury binding included in a more modern binding. Its got the portrait pickets an all the pages. Its got all the place in it. And it was, it was the first presentation copy of a first folio. He so if you look at the portrait which is reproduced on thehe inside cover, the end of paper of my book of the millionaire and the bard you will see at the top of the portrait \page page{ g} is someones handwriting. That is not graffiti. That is in latin i gift from the printer William Jager here so we gave this as a presentation copy so i know this is one of the first copies off the press. It came up available for sale when henry folger found out about it through the senses that shakespeare scholar had produce essentially lifting not only the location of all the known copies of first folio backache attractive but also their condition, but plays with a missing. Did they they have a portrait, how much was paid for if he could wangle out of the owners. T henry wanted to own not only the copies tha they came up at auctn but also wanted to go after copies were not yet up for sale. So he basically viewed this as a Shopping Catalog and also had his dealers keep their air to ground for any aristocrat whoo h might have no use for an old book of poetry, as somebody called it, and he pursued those copies through barrys book dealers. When you get wind of this particular copy that was for sale, i told the story of how his running of the standard of a Company Really contributed to his technique. E. Tech it was truly an american whichhe is not necessarily a good thing if youre an english nobleman and you insulted by the approach that the american would take which was basically okay, how much . How much . So the volume was owned by a noble named continents be crushed that i could not make up such a name. He quoted a very high price for his copy of the first folio, ann henry possibly could not afford it, so he tried various techniques, could i pay for half now, half later . Could i pay for it but it stays in england for a while . If you send it to me, can they do that on approval . If i dont like it i will send it back to you but i will give you 200 pounds for your trouble. Didnt go over well. The nobleman essentially said i changed my mind, i dont really need the money. So not going to sell. But if you want to write me every Christmas Nsb if i change my mind that would be okay. Ha that would be okay. Andy did. Eventually the nobleman quoted the price, quoted a price, a very high one, and, and henry folger met it. That resulted in henry folgers first trip to europe, excusing, first trip to england he picked the copy up and brought it back personally on the ship with his wife, emily. So that when he gets. Let me tell you a story about another exceptional copy and that was probably also one of the first copies that came off the press, the law at the time in 1623 wouldve required any publisher to send a copy of every book that they publish to the major universities, including oxford university, the library. It without a fight thomas bodily come in his collection he was not a fan of place. He saw them as tricky but apparently they change their mind at some point because a copy of the first folio ended up there. Once the first folio sold out, a second, third and fourth folio were also produced. They are much less valuable and they include plays that were attributed to shakespeare but not written by shakespeare. You can imagine the first folio sells pretty well, so the publisher says maybe we can find someone plays by this shakespeare guy. And theyre not by shakespeare. Sir John Oldcastle is not by shakespeare. Nonetheless, when a copy of a subsequent folder, second, third folder comes to the Bodleian Library they figure the first folio is superfluous. Fluous s so to get rid of it at a library sale. For 24 pounds. Wouldnt you have liked to have been at that step . So think of that as you walk out of the library and the friends of the library have their sail out there, you will never know what you find there. So the bodleian disposes of this copy as surplus for 24 pounds. I will fastforward to the middle of the story. A collector in the 1900s brings a copy of something into the Bodleian Library and asks the library to authenticate it. E is it a first folio . Well, not only is it a first folio, it is a very first folio. So how can they tell this . At the time that the first folio went to the bodleian it had a piece of furniture on the spine, through which a chain wouldve been a threat and locked so you can take the book off the shelf and stand at a podium and read it but you couldnt steal the book. All of the books at the bodleian of the era wouldve been bound by a man named william wild goose. Using the same leather, the same techniques and ornaments and, therefore, when the skin into i the bodleian in the early 1900s, they were able to say how many books have a half on the spine by this exact size and this . It is not only a copy, it is a copy that we disposed up. What did you . He the collector is willing to part with a copy. So he courts them a price, 2500 pounds which was a very high number at the time. The librarian runs some articles in the london book collectingoo papers and asks for donations from oxford men to raise the money to be able to buy it. Henry folger, i can just imagine, in his office at the standard allcaps\all caps at 23 broadway was rubbing his handsds together saying i can pay 232500, i can do that. As it turned out to oxford men were not all that generous to begin with. Therefore the library and others had to scold them saying what are you thinking not givinggsa money, this book could be part of the transatlantic trade and culture. Ill go across the pond to the United States. We dont even know who this millionaire is whos making an offer for this book. Who knows who we might be . Fo he might even be in trade. How can we let him have this valuable book . Ultimately with the help of ab lord, they were able to raise the last bit of money and buy the book for the collection. That is one henry did not get. He didnt get the vincent copy turkey did not get the bodleian copy. In 2011 the Folger Library mounted an exhibit on the firstt folio and included several copies that were borrowed from other collectors or collections. The bodleian declined to send their copy over to visit. So if you want to see it, if i want to see it you had to gof over to england in order to behi able to do that. Let me just finish up and then ill take some questions if yous have any. You can go to the microphone and you can ask me. By talking a little bit about what the library meant. In particular how henry folger and emily folger viewed it. They viewed themselves as taking these volumes off the shelves, dusty shelves of the aristocrats and bringin bring it into placee scholars would have access to them. In wisconsin you would i think have to drive to chicago to see the closest copy that you would have available to you on acal typical day to be able to see. If you are in new york or los angeles, San Francisco, there are a couple of copies that you might have access to see. Uc irvine, the libra in San Francisco and ucla has a copy. But you were in the middle of the country, you had to travel quite a ways before he gets a copy of this. However the Folger Library is sending 18 of its copies of the first folio around the United States for the 400th anniversary of shakespeares death. And each state gets the visit plus the District Of Columbia and puerto rico. And you have the opportunitylu started november 3 to see copy n on display. So i urge you definitely take the time to go see a copy of that. Its not something you come across every day. And ive been going aroundy and traveling around and looking at the exhibits and seeing the copies and talking about them. It is really something to see one. So arguably that is of the book that saved half of shakespeares plays. Arguably half of the place wouldve disappeared. By the way that is spot on for the number of plays that we know of from that era that we dont have copies of. So samuel pepys was one of the direst who would write aboutut going to see a play, and wee dont have copies of the. Shakespeare wouldve been spot on for 50 . So bravo two innings and condo for bringing us the book tond shake shakespeare and bravo to emily and henry folger for for p putting their collection and a place for scholars want access to them. But beaches close by giving you a few things shakespeare by the numbers. Some 900, 235, 82, 13, five pictures of my numbers. 900 pages in the first folio, 235 so far survived in copies. 82 of those are at Folger Library. So 82, at the at the time that folger died, half, that was about half of the worlds known copies were in his collection. So 82 his collection. The next largest is in japan, 13 copy to the next next largest after that is the British Library at five. So 82 is extraordinary. Part of the story is about the obsession of collecting. Having a willing partner in in emily folger was one of his secret weapons. And continuing to collect these books, continuing to collect through their entire career and then i was extremely fortunate beneficiary being able to use their collection or archive to write the book. The so if you have any questions ibo would be happy to answer them. [applause] bravo to you. Think you spent as an english major who studied in london for a semester to visit stratford and who has taught shakespeares plays over 20 years that are so may things i didnt understand at all until i read your book. Ea thank you. I think most people dont know how come it was not destined tod be that these place would survive. And again the idea that one of the corridors of hamlet survives into copies and titus only in one. A very thin thread. This is a fantastic book. I encourage everyone to read it, even if theyre not shakespearean scholars. I had to say i went to amherst so its nice to read about an alarm by thoughts of what is going to ask spirit than he also saw the name pratt all over the place. Pratt hall all over. Very generous. The question unscrewed ask is about the writing. Because i think its incredibly well structured and balanced and you keep things moving all the time. Ti how did you decide not to sort d of get sucked in perhaps to all the discussion about standard oil and his work of there . It really keeps the focus on folger. Its really a personal kind of book. Listen to him. [laughter] first you are giving me credit that is not due because i did write a lot about the Standard Oil Company. D its just that ended up in a footnote. Because more than one, theres a very, very long footnote about the Standard Oil Company, and in particular what most people know of the Standard Oil Company comes from a book written by ida tarbell, the history of the Standard Oil Company. About essentially a response to that. In part to give you some context of what was going on in the business world, this is a man, imagine steve jobs as a i shakespeare collector. He is one of the wealthiest menn in the world, and he is doing this night if i come hes Biggest Company in the world. But tarbell was not an unbiased journalist. Her father had been put out of business by competition with Standard Oil Company. Essential her father built barrels that i was transported in and in an effort to save money and cut his cause,on rockefeller hired his own coopers, bought his own forest and made his own barrels and, therefore, her father was out of business. This is hard and unbiased opinion. I am not an apologist for standard oil. Pologi they did many things later on they were extremely anticonsumer but the things that she wrote about primarily were things that were very positive for consumers and very negative for rockefellers competitors. So thank you for the couplets that all of that information is any footnote still in the book. Ill have to go back to that. Thank you. Thank you for your very informative speech. When the question of the another more of a drawn out one was henry v, one of the place that might been lost no. That was safe. Thats reassuring. The more drawnout question is with the piracy going on backe then which is very surprising to me, but how could we be sure as we reach shakespeares plays how can we be sure what we read is what shakespeare want us to see and not what maybe some elves conjured up . What we have is excellent so im not complaining but it was something that was maybe changed, be interested to see what the answer is we cannot know. Isnt that awful . Much ink has been spilled trying to go back to figure out what the original text mightve looked like. Mi not a word, not a line of poetry, of pros exist in shakespeares hand. The only thing we know for sure we have in his hand is six words. Williawords. William shakespeare, william shakespeare, william shakespeare. Thats it. So we dont know. Pe t. We dont have the manuscripts to compare two to say this is how he wrote it. Heres a draft and this is what we have. What we do have though is innings and condo acted with him. So from 1597 until he retired in 1611 we know they were acting together. E they are on the same play. They wouldve been better to see this is how he did it. Thats how i think that is a compelling argument. Thats reassuring. Thank you. I had a question about the publication of the first folio. I was wondering, i know the first copy of the sonnets was published in 1609. I was one if that played a role at all in the publication of the first folio or are they focused solely on the place . The publication of the sonnets is an interesting story added to touch on it in the the millionaire and the bard that that was also done without mi shakespeares permission. The ba he did not publish those and make money from it. They were published, he does not know how all reclaims not to know how. Those were acquired by the publisher. I dont think those two were related. They wrote about wanting to memorialize their friend pics of the right some essentiallywrites preparatory polymer as did a few other poets at the beginning of the first folio and that is what they say they want to do this as a memorial. So the sonnets were really published again by a pirate with the intent of making money. This volume, hemings and condell had no idea whether they would make money, whether it would sell out. Would people by place to read them, you know . Thanks. Thank you for your talk and for your book. A question from the book. This is at the end of the the millionaire and the bard, right before the epilogue pickett talks about emily and she died on february 1, 1936. She was 77 and outlived henry by six years, her funeral was held in new york. S held after death she made to final contributions to the library. The first was a generous sum of cash to secure its future. The other bequest was veryquests strange. [laughter] both she and henry have their ashes interred at the library. So this is something, this is low bit of a spoiler, so if you dont like suspense been destroyed, cover your ears now. B henry folger died two weeks after breaking ground on the library. So all those cases of booksof never saw them again. She, however, did. S the library was open and she lived another six years. So she got to enjoy the collection and seeing the library and so on and so forth. They had not discussed what would happen, with they be buried at thei the library but e had henrys ashes interred in the niche. So if you go into the old reading room, a copy of that effigy of shakespeare from the trinity church, stratforduponavon looking over the readers, that people who ara in the the room, and just below that is a niche with their ashes in there. So that was the other bequest. Thank you for asking here. How much do you know about hemings and condell, their origin in the company . What roles they mightve played . We know a little bit. Know so let me work a little bit backwards. One is that is a memorial to them in the church are at st. Mary in london. And to my knowledge its the only sculpture as a tribute to a book, because it got a bust as shakespeare, a stone copy of the first folio, and then the plaque is to honor hemings and condello they are not completely unknown. There was a little thin book written about them in the 1960s. So we know something about what their wheels were. Theres a woman who does research on wills of the area and we know a little bit about that. They acted in the same company with him. The earliest that i saw was 1597. So we actually have a copy of a broadside that lists hemings and condell and shakespeare as acting in the play together. So that we know they knew each other. If you saw shakespeare in love, that is an actor who was a stuttering i dont know if remember that he comes out and two houses, that is innings. We do know something about what they did. They also again wererethey shareholders in the theater a company and not just actors so they would have been sharing in the profits of the company. So we do know that about them. And we know that lots of children. I forgot one had nine and one had six come Something Like that, and their parish was st. Mary in london and that is where this memorial is. That church by the way, this is more than you want to know but that church by the way was destroyed in the blitz and then rebuild, and then taken board b board to fulton, missouri, where it is at the university of missouri campus and that is where churchill delivered his iron curtain speech. So much more than you wanted to know, but there you go. Well, thank you very much. You have any other questions i would be happy to answer them. [applause] [inaudible conversations] booktv is on twitter and facebook, and we want to hear from you. Tweet us, twitter. Com mac booktv or post a comment on our facebook page, facebook. Com mac booktv. Spirit with here with thomas koos book is crossexamine history, laura gets answers on experts about our president. What were some of the questions you want answered about our president . Theres a different series of questions for every president. George washington i want to know why did he stand head and shoulders above the other founders even though he wasnt exactly a rocket scientist. John adams it was why did a person favored freedom of speech and freedom of the press and the constitution agreed to this act . It goes from there. Major series of questions about the most controversial areas of each significant american president. What were some of the most interesting things you found in your research. The most interesting thing was to learn during the cuban missile crisis, the 13 days of conversations in executive Committee Meetings that all of john f. Kennedy spent fighters including attorney general Robert Kennedy were ramping up and seeking massive retaliation which surely wouldve led to world war iii and only because president jfk was the calm head do we negotiate a resolution that avoided world war iii and often missiles out of the soviet, out of cuba and back to the soviet union. Thats the Biggest Surprise of all of the interviews. How did you go about doing your research for this book . Identified a major biographer of every significant american president and then i lined up an interview with the person all over the country. There are 31, and everywhere from Colorado Springs colorado to boston, massachusetts, come in between. I live in dallas. A lot of these bestselling authors come to texas on the National Book tours but i targeted to a pub would be the most knowledgeable historians about our significant president and thats who i interviewed for the book. Do you have a favorite president based on your research . My Favorite Book will be Abraham Lincoln. I interviewed Harold Holter and ronald whyte, two of our top lincoln biographers. He will always be at the top of the mountain. I have a new appreciation for george washington, Thomas Jefferson, andrew jackson, franklin roosevelt, Harry Franklin roosevelt, harry truman, Dwight Eisenhower lincoln will always be at the top of the mountain. Why do you think that is . He had the biggest challenge of any president. He had a country divided in half. He presided over a civil war were so mad 50,000 people lost their lives. He abolished slavery, the great tarnish our nation that it didnt present for over 100 years. So for him to get rid of slavery and to bring the country together after the civil war is what puts them at the top of the mountain. Good evening, everyone and welcome to the center for strategic and international studies. Andrew schwartz, Senior Vice President at csi yes and its my honor to host James Kitfield and redoing this in partnership with the center for the study of the american, the center for the study of the presidency and congress were just talking upstairs