Dan thank you so much. Thank you, amanda. Really generous and sweet introduction. I thank everybody for being here, otherwise, i would be up here by myself. Especially, amanda told me the smithsonian associate people have reminded me how engaged these audiences are. I feel like i have to be up on my toes and really give you my agame to take that seriously. And to be a little intellectual, be a little heavy. Talking about the past, present, and future of the automobile. Theres a lot of material in the book. Look at that. It is right there. Everything from teaching my daughter to drive, to a freudian analysis of henry ford. I cannot capture all of that tonight. What i thought i would do is talk about the early automobile and a little bit of this theory of how one understands that. The reason i am doing that is to put us in the present moment, where, as some of you may have heard, Driverless Cars are on the horizon. But at the end of the day, i really want to talk about cars. I am both a
Refugee but my parents were refugees. Theres a fracturing of the share experience. Me life was different in the United States, the life was different in canada, my sisters life is different in england. Did all right relatively speaking but that vastly overlambingers and yep oliving together in the same language and the same cultural context, the same as it were social abilities, we share that experience, unity of time and place and experience that we shared, and then gets fractured and get bren up. Even if we had moved to the same place, there would have been a fracture because i spoke english better, was not a professional who lost his job to migrate. Had not lost my social contact and so on. So what happen is this fracturing of a shared experience within the family and one of the ways again to agree with reyna is to tell stories or write to build the bridges, theres something about building a bridge between the new country and old country within this community, within a family, multi
Stage right here with all of us. Thank you. Thank you. With the applause most celebrated living historian in the United States of america of the American Experience which is even greater. Hes been called dean of americana and reason why hes taken pus down the georgetown shroud and building of the canal the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, Harriet Truman john adams, the americans in paris. The wright brother and sister. And this fabulous new book to talk about a little bit later, the pioneer. So won the Pulitzer Prize twice, the National Award twice and been given the medal or freedom of honor even better than honor and youve been writing, david, about america the trajectory has been 150 years since lets say the revolution to charlesmanburg and beyond. Is there a scene here . Yes. I now see it as i have not some things you gain from time going by. I would see now that almost all of my books are about americans who set out to accomplish Something Worthy that would they knew would be diff
Anything yet. We do a lot here at the Historical Society. We provide great programs. Educational workshops. We run National History day in massachusetts. We convene academic seminars and mount exhibitions been but more than anything, what we do is hold an amazing collection of almost 14 million items. We provided to historians and researchers for free. In our holdings, we have the equivalent of 2 and a half president ial libraries. We have the papers of john adams, John Quincy Adams and the personal papers of Thomas Jefferson. Thats important to mention because we have a very special program that has a very special connection. Tonight, we will hear about the publication, the president s and which noted historians rank them on a variety of categories. And if theres anything we like talking about more than president s, its historians talking about president s. So this is on brand for us. As we do with most of our public programs, we have pulled together a small display in the room with t
Panel again with elizabeth cobbs. We had the great pleasure and i had the privilege of being on a panel with her five years ago in tucson, when we both had books out at about the same time at the tucson book festival, and our panel was called women in war because elisabeth had written a wonderful book called the hello girls about women, telephone operator during world war one, who were among the First American women to be in combat settings when they went to france during world war one and kept the troops in touch with each other. And that was wonderful. And i had written a book about women codebreakers during world war two, and also on the panel was kate moore, who had written a wonderful book called radium girls. And that was i remember that elizabeth went first of the three of us. And the minute she started talking, i was like, this is just going to be great. So so youre in for a treat to to hear her speak about her wonderful work. And im such a fan of your book and really look forw