Susan jeff guinn, what is the story you tell in the book, the vagabonds . Jeff the story i meant to tell is how america morphed into a car culture, from horse and wagon to everybody wanting cars to go places. I did not know until i started researching that henry ford and Thomas Edison were at the forefront of this, so the book became a story about that point. Susan how did the idea come to you for telling this story . Jeff what i try to do is go everywhere the people i write about went. I always use my car. Id rather drive, and that way you really get a sense of place. Somewhere along the line in the 30,000 or so miles i drive every year i started wondering how we got to be a country, a culture where we take for granted we are going to get in a car and go everywhere we want to. Since i did not know, i thought it would be a good idea to write a book about that. As always happens when you look into history, there is more to it than you ever expected. Susan your book begins and ends with
Fords pardoning of nixon. They moved their Classes Online due to the coronavirus pandemic. Video of the class is courtesy of the school. We are ready to. Thank you for logging into class remotely during this unpleasant coronavirus situation, which will hopefully pass soon. Im glad to see you are all well and have safely moved out of the dorms. I took a little walk through campus today. Since we are social distancing here, dr. Kristin kuby isnt here with me in the room, but she is on zoom video. Say hello. There she is. She can answer any questions about your papers afterward or online. Today, we get into one of my favorite chapters in the whole year, and that is the chapter on Richard Nixon, followed by gerald ford in this president s in constitution book. The nixon chapter was written by the late stanley cutler. He was a professor of history at the university of madison, wisconsin. One of the great scholars of the watergate era. This chapter was one of the last things that he wrote be
26,000 american deaths. So there are more than 14,200 graves here, many of them who died in the meuseargonne area, but also some civilians and other soldiers brought from other areas . Yeah. But basically most of the soldiers here died during the meuseargonne, the final result which was dramatic for that battle. It was over 26,000 soldiers killed, 96,000 wounded, more or less. Its almost a half percent of the soldiers that are still buried here in france in that cemetery. We have few civilians, maybe well see some of the graves later on. Especially nurses, people from the American Red Cross, from the ymca, some special graves we will see walking in the graveyard. The cemetery itself, graves that were consolidated from smaller cemeteries. So when soldiers died in battle, they were buried in small cemeteries around the region, and then the American Government had made the decision that they would allow families to repatriate their loved ones after the war. So about 60 to 70 of the famili
Or through our social media feeds. The cspan, created by americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. For six days in early october 1918, more than 500 u. S. Soldiers were surrounded by germans in the argon forest in northeastern france. At the time, the story of the lost battalion became front page news back home and it continues to be remembered as one of world war is most dramatic stories. Up next, on american artifacts, we travel to france with a battlefield guide and a historian who explain what happened and show us century old trenches and a memorial to the lost battalion in the argon forest. Where are we standing . We are int the middle of the forest. Were standing close by to a mine crater. A big mine exploding here. You look at the size of the crater, its probably nowadays one century after world still around 25 feet deep and Something Like 80 feet wide. So such a big mine exploding here. We have to imagine cloud
Tonight we are very pleased to welcome back mark wilkinson. He has also been the director at the atwood house museum. Mr. Wilkins is a published auth author. He has a masters from Harvard University and he is currently working on several books related to world war one aviation. Mr. Will kins is also conservativing as producer of aerial effects documentary film. His new book, aeroneurosis. Due to unforeseen complications, we dont have any copies you can have signed tonight. The speaker graciously agreed to personalize some as well. Please join us in welcoming mark wilkins. Thank you for that very nice introduction, crystal. Im very happy to be here tonight. Thank you all for coming. I hope you find this topic as fascinating as i do. Basically the to give you a little background, the book was something i did for air and space magazine. Anyway, the research for that article sort of opened my eyes to the amount of material about how greatly about a a lot of these First World War pilots suf