Her distinguished bibliography includes the 2015 biography of e. E. Cummings, a life, which was chosen by the economist as one of the best books of the year, and is now considered the definitive biography of that iconoclastic poet. Other biographical works include, american bloomsbury the leading figures of the Transcendentalist Movement and my name is bill, on bill wilson, for his life and the creation of alcoholics anonymous. And home before dark, the groundbreaking biography of her father, writer john cheever. Shes also the author of five novels, and a frequent contributor of essays and articles to leading publications. Shes influential in shaping and sustaining our literary culture as a member of the corporation and of the Authors Guild council and is a faculty member at Bennington College mfa program, and the new school in new york city. In her fascinating and compelling new book, she traces the pervasive influence of alcohol at key moments over centuries of american political and cultural history from the beer shortage induced a legal beershortageinduced illegal landing of the pilgrims at cape cod to the assassination of president kennedy and president nixons last days in the white house and explores its impact on many historic and literary figures in between and since, asking the central question, what forms a National Character . Ladies and gentlemen, susan cheever. [applause] susan thanks for coming. So, its a great honor to be here at a store that is the center of the literary universe in this country, if not the world. Im just going to talk about this book a little bit and read three short sections from it and hope that it somehow informs you and intrigues you at the same time. One of the great privileges of being a writer is that we get to make history come alive which is really fun. We get to take the pictures off the wall and make them dance and make them eat and make them drink and make them fall in and out of love with each other. We can notice that ulysses s. Grant was a short man at man that adored his wife or that Alexander Hamilton hated drinking because his father was a trunk who took offense left him with hiseft mother or that Henry David Thoreau was a favorite teacher and we can include not just the moment as events which happened and people in history books but also the texture of their everyday lives. Did their shoes hurt, how were they feeling about themselves that they were they thinking about what they were going to have for dinner that kind of stuff which really takes us there into history. The food, the sex, the clothes in the drinking. In this book by looking looking into drinking in america at the drinking in america and shoving its influence ive tried to bring our heroes and our villains to life on the page. I hope if you read this book you will come to think of John Quincy Adams as a sad friend who lost two brothers and two sons to alcoholism and sympathize with Henry Kissinger who had the unenviable job of babysitting a drunk. This book has spanned four centuries and starts with the pilgrims and we will get into that it goes through the revolution, the civil war, senator joe mccarthy, the jfk assassination. I just took a bunch of events in which alcohol seemed to have or did have a huge effect on what happened and went through them. Starting in 1620, so it begins with the pilgrims. When Henry David Thoreau moved to walden pond in 1845 the last thing that he had in mind was writing a book about it. He didnt have anywhere else to live, he had moved in with the emersons because emerson went to europe. So throw did but he did not think he was going to write about it, he thought he would write a book about a river trip he took with his brother. But hawthorne asked him to come give a talk at the concord athenaeum. Theame and david talk about river trip. In the q a, all anybody wanted to know was what it was like to live in a shack at walden pond. So i believe that q and as are magic. [laughter] and i know that this one will not disappoint us. Here you go. The pilgrims landed the mayflower at cape cod massachusetts on a cold november day in 1620 because they were running out of beer. From kingl charter james was for a grant of land in Northern Virginia instead they anchored illegally and carved their First Community from the sand. Laying the foundation of the american character. Since the beginning, drinking and taverns have been a much as much a part of American Life as churches and preachers or elections and politics. A glass of beer a bottle of rum or even a dry martini is a silent powerful thirdparty too many decisions that shape the american story from the American Century to the present. And one of the things is ambivalence. There are countries where people drink more and there are countries where people drink less. But there is no other country strongestere the country in the world in 1830, outlawed it in and by 1950 we 1930, were back to being up there and now we are on our way back in another direction so we get the medal for ambivalence when it comes to drinking. Every century the drinking pendulum swings wildly and that isnt so true in the countries. In other countries. We are a country of extremes and we love it or hate it. Now i will read the longest of the three sections. By a washington native, strobe talbot, in his wonderful book, the great experiment, im always selling other peoples books, that we began to win the civil war when lincoln fired his sober general, george mcclellan, and hired his drunken general, as grant. And, indeed that is when the , tide seemed to turn and it did grants candof attitude or his refusal to admit defeat because of the Forward Motion that nobody could seem to stop. As lincoln said of grant, he is a man who gits it and he was also a man who drank so here goes grant. Of all the drunken generals who fought during the civil war, and there were many, the one who most famously battled the bottle was ulysses s. Grant. Born the son of a letter to in ohio, grant was sent to west point where he graduated in the bottom half of his class. At west point he fell in love with his roommates sister, julia. He proposed, she demurred when he proposed she asks for more time. His father disapproved of julia. Her parents disapproved of him. After a fouryear courtship he finally won her over and they were married in 1848. The couple adored each other in war and peace in the sobriety and drunkenness. They had four children. Almost 40 years later grants dying act was to finish his great autobiography on the personal memoirs of ulysses s. Grant said so that they could be supported after he died. A soldiers life is not his own in the grant was posted from camp to camp finally ending up in fort humboldt in california. Here was his beloved wife and family far away. His drinking began to catch up with him. There was plenty of tolerance for drinking in the military but less tolerance for a drunk. Grant was a small man, 5foot 2 inches who became famous for being unable to hold his liquor. He would sometimes get a drunk on what appeared to be one glass and other times would drink a great deal. Grants commander at fort humboldt took offense. Colonel Robert Buchanan gave grant the choice of resigning his post in his military career or having charges pressed against him. Grant resigned. Suddenly at the age of 32 and with a family to support, grant had no profession. And even of his own grandchildren. Grant tried farming which didnt work out and finally his father came around. And offered him a job with no conditions. So grant moved his family back to helena, illinois, and joined his fathers story. But what of the alcohol and binge drinking that had gotten him booted out of the army . Under julias gentle influence, grant, who thought she was much too good for him, was able to moderate his drinking. He was able to drink less at home that as a soldier. Like many alcoholics, he struggled to control his drinking, a struggle that was sometimes more successful than others. When the war began in april, 1861, grant acted decisively. Soon he was the head of the company of illinois volunteers who launched an attack on the Confederate Army near the important junction of the ohio and mississippi rivers. At this point, grant did not drink and he didnt tolerate tricking among his men. Grants forces one and the early victory for the union after the , demoralizing defeat of bull run made him famous. Grants next engagement was more complicated and perilous but equally victorious. Now a major general, grant led his forces south to mississippi on the Tennessee River where the Confederate Army was massed. And by this time he started drinking again. On the morning of april 6, 1862, the Confederate Army launched a surprise attack with the aim of wiping out the main union army once and for all. The confederates name to battles after the places where they were , sharpsburg, manassas, bull run. Am i getting this right . Army named him after a landmark, shiloh, antietam. I call it Pittsburg Landing but it was really shiloh. The first day of the battle was disastrous for the union but grants troops hung on fighting desperately in the mud. Other grant himself was not around. It was said he was visiting troops across the river. Night fell without her treat from the Union Although many of the men were 2 miles closer to the Tennessee River in defeat from where they had begun the day. The troops were exhausted. Many people thought the union was beaten including the Union General and grants friend William Tecumseh sherman. Sherman had been in the thick of the battle all day slowly losing ground. Grant had been absent during the first day and his men thought he had been dragging. Sherman, who had his own struggles with reputation when he had been treated for a nervous condition earlier in the war, was ready to quit. Perhaps he thought war was over. Then, during the night, grant reappeared. It was raining hard, and grant set up camp under a tree, ignoring the pain from an ankle injury caused when he fell off before. E the evening general sherman found grant under this big oak tree before dawn, smoking a large cigar. The rain was heavier and thunder and lightning had begun to flash to the trees paired sherman was coming to talk about the details of what seemed inevitable, a union retreat. The trees were dripping water, the battlefields or a sea of mud. But grant was placidly puffing away, as if he were in a Gentlemens Club with a snifter of brandy. As the storm passed to the south, the two men stood quietly looking for the Rolling Hills beyond the battlefield in the darkness. Standing there, sherman found he could not bear to talk about retreat. Although he still believed it was necessary. Well, grant, we have had the devils own day, havent we . Yes, grant replied. We will lick them tomorrow though. Grant was right. Instead being finished off the next day, the union launch date furious counterattack, and it drove the Confederate Army back to its original position. Later in the war, sherman summed up his friendship with grant for a reporter, general grant is a great general, he said. I know him well. He stood by me when i was crazy and i stood by him when he was drunk. Now, sir, we stand by each other always. [laughter] so that is grant and sherman. Conclusiongo to this , which the more i think about this book, the more i become interested in the different ways we write history. I do think that there is a new kind of writing history that is growing up in this country that is very exciting. But i do think more and more historians are including peoples intimate lives, rather than just the monumental parts and the big inventions. And there are many historians who are doing those who actually take you to the place and let you be in the scene with the people they are writing about. What, i hope to be, one of those historians appeared i hope that i, in this book, take you to that place and let you feel what it was like to be grant on that night, or that you feel what it was like to be eaten out at ticonderoga to ticonderoga ethan allen at ticonderoga. Also somewhat drunk. Ok. Words about the nature of history. Of decemberd week 1620, almost a month after make our landing on cape cod, after bearing unimaginable hardships, the journey, the explanation of cape cod sands, winter storm that almost wrecked the sailing ship they were using to explore the coast, a dozen men including bradford, Myles Standish and winslow landed in what would come to be named limit harbor. They landed around the bend in Provincetown Harbor but knew they could not settle there. So they spent a month looking for a place to settle. Im not saying that this happened because the russian was a gallon of beer a day, but their rations were a gallon of your day, but they were between two of the greatest harbors, new york and boston and they went in circles until they found a place to settle, plymouth. They had to drink beer, because they cannot drink water. The way you drink water, they drink beer. If theres any possible thing that might have needed to do with a clear head, that was difficult for them. [laughter] that is not the point of this paragraph. For bradford, the pilgrim story was parallel to the biblical story of exodus. Israelites had with gods help finally found their canon. Bradfords view of history, like many of his companions on the mayflower was entirely shaped by , his knowledge of the King James BibleOld Testament that was completed a few years earlier. Every seat was the red the. Every voyage was the voyage of the israelites. Every hardship was bellicose. Bradfords worldview every hardship was biblical. Theever happened to pilgrims happened in a larger spiritual, Historic Context overseen by an erratic but loving god this was the controlling idea through which he saw and understood and wrote about everything. Bradford took history personally. Unlike radfords history, claims to be objective. Our historians write as if they are reporting events within a biased i heard this happened, and then that happened. This is our modern equivalent of gods will, and observance neutrality, occasionally punctuated with wise commentary. There are many advantages to this kind of history. The historian stands away hassively ostensibly no ax to grind. In taking a broad, dispassionate view, historians miss a lot. Their emphasis is on the sweep of time, not the moments that make up our lives. They are never personal. Their opinions and the assumptions on which they base their lives are Hidden History is as far away as it can get it from memoir. In these books we see that panoplies of history from the narrow keyhole of that day and time. Our own beliefs and knowledge are stuck in the First Quarter of the 21st century looking back is like trying to make out the details of the ship on the far horizon. Historians make many decisions about how to deal with this. Should we bring modern knowledge to bear on the counter characters we write about . What type of language should we use . How do we acknowledge the differences between then and now . How do we factor in womens rights or racial integration into times when those were unheard of . So those were questions. Now i will go to the National Character. What creates a National Character . America is another name for opportunity, wrote wealth auto Emerson Ralph Waldo emerson. The american attitude toward the , the americanship insistence on doing things to benefit the individual all come from that cold afternoon in Provincetown Harbor. Character is a culmination of environment and experience and the american character was being formed those minutes when the pilgrims finally, exhaustively reached the beach. , to survive they have to develop a fierce individualism and a craving for freedom toward what will become the Louisiana Purchase and westward to where their feisty spirit will settle a huge tracts of plans. Tracts of land and explore seemingly impossible rivers and mountain ranges. The american character has been formed by 100 forces that is defining it is like trying to meld jello to a wall. But it has been driven by many forces, natural and manmade. Forces, a force of brilliance and incompetence, was their passionate connection to drinking. [applause] questions . This exciting new history you talk about writing about, is it that what you try to aim with is a secret history, somewhat of a blurring of the lines between like a psychoanalysis of history and History Today . Not at all. I do not think it is about getting inside peoples psyches, we cannot do that. Yes, exactly. This young man is intelligently asking, i will try to rephrase his question fairly. I amis new kind of history talking about is more like psychoanalysis than history . Or more like psychoanalysis than the old history, or is anything like psychoanalysis . My answer is no. I do not think this new history im talking about a writing is going to get inside peoples psyche. That is what novelists do. On a good day. The detailss about that make up their everyday. Ives you can say the right brothers invented the airplane. Or you can say, on such and such a date, but wrights shoes hurt and he had okra for breakfast. Thats a bad example but im talking about getting down into the lives, drilling down into the everyday, so i as a reader feel that i was there as well. What i want to know what the right brothers, and im not saying my questions were not answered by dan mcculloughs marvelous book, is word