Table. When i started my journey as a professional writer in 1984, i could never imagined that id be signing books with two recipients of the congressional gold medal, the highest civilian honor in the united states, and i am humbled to be here. But im also proud to be here, to be with them. This book, its an interesting book because National Geographic has a series called remember, and the whole idea is to tell stories as much as possible through eyewitness accounts and through contemporary photographs. Now, the first two books that i wrote in this series were called remember little big horn, and remember the alamo. Now, how i became the expert on eyewitness accounts of battles where everybody died i dont know, but [laughter] but as the curator at the alamo said, everybodys got to have a niche. Also ive written a lot of history, and this is the first book ive ever written where lots of people were still alive. And that was a wonderful, wonderful experience because i got to interview,
He was one of the founders of the Automobile Industry in the United States. He moved here with his family when he was about 16 and his father had a machine temporary. They repaired machines and built small steam engines. Thats where he became familiar with the manufacturing process. We are talking about the late 1800s. Frankly, he hated horses. He said theres got to be a better way to get around than a horse. He was tinkering in his fathers shop trying to build something that would be selfpropelled. Behind me is a three wheel car he built. It was a Steam Powered car and did not work very well. They rebuilt engine three or four times and finally scrapped the whole project. He built a bigger, four wheel steam car and it worked pretty well. You have to remember there were no selfpropelled vehicles. The only selfpropelled things were maybe a steam engine, train, or ship or Something Like that. There were no selfpropelled cars or automobiles. They didnt even have a name at the time. They ha
Ands available for sale signing at the conclusion of the program. So please, without further ado join me in welcoming him this , evening. [applause] dan thank you so much. Thank you, amanda. Really generous and sweet introduction. 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 really give you my a game to take that seriously. Be a little intellectual, be a little heavy. 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 wanted to talk about the automobile and a little bit of this theory of how one understands that. To reason i am doing that is put us in the present moment, whereas 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 lover and hater of cars for a v
Weekend, American History tv is joining our Comcast Cable partners to showcase the history of lansing, michigan. To watch more video from cities on our current tour, visit cspan. Org citiestour. We continue now with a look at the history of lansing. Elissa my district goes from the northern suburbs of detroit all the way west to lansing and east lansing and Michigan State university and the state capital. Our biggest economic driver is both our gm plants, but also the State Government, because we have lansing, a lot of state workers. There is a big relationship between the federal government and our district. First of all, lets remember that in michigan, 43 of the state budget is federal dollars. So, that means every single day we should be working together. Michigan State University takes in a ton of federal grant money for all the research, Scientific Research in particular, that we do here. We have our local communities, Fire Departments that have federal grants. We have block grant
Later we will visit the sheridan library. We begin with the history of the rodeo. There is no place better to be the second week in july. We would just love to invite you all to come to sheridan. What so proudly we hail by the twilights last gleaming. This week is the biggest week and sheridan economically we forget about that because 89 years ago sheraton was dead as a door nail. So some citizens decided we needed to have a rodeo to provide some Economic Opportunity at entertainment and that was the charter that still is so. Were still doing the same thing and we hope the Founding Fathers would be proud of that. The walkie financier family they bought historic pk ranch out west of town for two years they have a big radio out in the fields. It was such a big deal i think there was cars from 23 states. They said if we can do it why cant we do it here. A group of concerned citizens got together and formed a committee and they decided that they were to have a rodeo. They did not do start