Be occupying. So yes he was a terrific guy and the only choice for a really successful first president because of the trust that people had in him, that he could in habit this presidency, and they could trust him in that position. But he brought with him some problems. A question i sometimes get and you probably do, as well if not washington, who would be the next obvious choice and my answer is, there wasnt another choice and thats kind of the point he was the in dispensable man. He was somewhat in dispensable perhaps, yeah. So that brings us to this question of what to call him, this debate that you write about, you know, the title controversy. I wonder if you could just give us a little bit of background to the debate. Why did it even happen . The constitution says that this person will be the president of the United States. Why did people in the senate feel like they needed something more than that . Well, the senate had convened once the senate convened in early april 1789 and fin
But there was another group of americans that worried about a weak executive that would be subject to corruption and manipulation, like a weak king could be manipulated by his court. And so for them, it stood to reason that they would be more interested in a strong title to counteract this weak this fear of a weak president. It seems like all sides agreed that the person should be George Washington. Yes. He was the obvious choice. He was really the most trusted man in america. And i would say the most celebrated person in the western world at that time. I mean, really. When you think about it. And so he studied at the end of the war. He was he and the nation were one. The union. He was like a steadying influence on an unsettled america. People celebrated him, though, with such enthusiasm that he was for the presidency a blessing, as i said. Trusted guy that he was. But he was a bit of a curse as well. Because he was so celebrated that the enthusiasm toward washington were so excessive
With richard brookhiser, Senior Editor of National Review at the New York Historical society. Everyone felt they knew her. And they did pretty much because she laid her life out for everybody to see. And she told us about what life was like in suburbia for women in the 1960s through the 1990s. And one of the wonderful things about her, you know, she wrote mainly humor, and it was schumer that was accessible to everyone. Because it was humor that happens to everyones lives but they might not recognize it until they saw it written on the page or in a newspaper column. Because funny things happen to us all the time, but we have to be out on the look out for them come and she was the one that focused our attention on the funny things that happen in the family, things that at the moment seem like craziness and driving you nuts, but when you look back at them you think that was really funny. So thats a real gift. Thats a literary gift. The life and times of erma bombeck this weekend as a boo
Five slices. One is the first five years and the next 20 years, the work phase in the resting phase afterwards. What i think we should do is play, learn and work and rest at the same time because the world moves so fast today we cant afford to have education anymore. We need to stay up to date. Next on booktv historians myron magnet recounts the personal and public lives of americas founders through an examination of their homes. This is about one hour. Are we all adjusted . Well adjusted, rick. Myron you have written a sumptuous book. Its sumptuous physically and its also very rich in terms of its content and something quite surprising. Let me start with the devils question. We have had a founders revival going on for 20 years. We have had put dig books on all the big guys. We are getting books on the lesserknown figures. Why do we need another one . First of all its nice to see you. You will see 32 pages of very expensive color. It seemed to me that one of the things that people hadn
Were reading the pamphlets loser is writing. The very short and easy to read. This means nobody is reading the classics anymore. The greeks and romans. And then we get this time and time again. We get it with twitter now the people say its terrible. Anyone could say anything. This is good because its broadening access to publishing to more bald people in democratizing publishing. Clearly what happens each time you have one of these expansions as it initially appears to be completely unmanageable and it takes some time to work up mechanisms in the stuff you want to see from the stuff you dont. And the Printing Press made it easier to publish books, there was an explosion of publishing. People felt really overwhelmed. There were complaints of information overload in the 1500s. But what happened in the centuries after that. People came up with technologies, tools for dealing with it. Conflict book reviews, table of contents, index. They work out which books may be relevant to and which pa