she is one of our favorite interviewers on this stage. i started counting, six or seven times she has been here. most recently, wonder kids. you may also know them by the last time he was released. awesome smart fun titles. ladies and gentlemen, before you are the two authors to the library philadelphia library. [applause]. i'd like to say hello to the five insomniacs watching this at 5:00 a.m. on a sunday. i just wanted to read a little bit so i can sit and think about what i want to say before i say it. i don't just want to jibber jabber. i will read one little excerpt from the book. it's toward the end. i think the one thing you would want to know is how our beloved revolutionary war hero from france who came over in 1777 as a 17-year-old. in 1824, president monroe invited them on the eve of the 50th anniversary to come back to the nations guest and it was quite a to do. you remember what a big deal it was in philadelphia. when he arrived in new york harbor, thousands were there to meet his ship. the population was 123,000. so he has on the pope. [laughter] most of the book is about his time in the war and a little bit about that return trip. i guess you could call this a tangent. nowadays lafayette is a place, not a a person. it is a boulevard in phoenix, a pennsylvania college and a bridge across the mississippi in st. paul. it's the alabama birth place of a boxer and three different towns in wisconsin and laugh lafayette county. the chicken ranch better known as the best little for houston texas put out in mass. it is lafayette indiana where the founders of both c-span and guns and roses were born. when i bumped into an old neighbor while i was visiting my hometown she asked me what i was working on and i answered her a book about lafayette. she inquired if i would be spending a lot of time in louisiana. i was confused, wondering if she forgot that thomas jefferson decided against his initial impulse of appointing lafayette as the former french colonies first governor after the louisiana purchase but then i remembered that it must be her go to noun. i explained i met lafayette the french teenager who crossed the atlantic on his own dime to volunteer to fight with george washington in the revolutionary war. therefore i said i was more likely to visit pennsylvania where he got shot. she nevertheless professed her fondness. this encounter aroused such indignation in my breath that i moralized upon the instability of human glory and the evanescence of many other things. no, wait, that's what he did in 1970 when a random stranger in a cigar store had never heard of his revolutionary war grandfather. when i found out my old neighbor had never heard of my war hero, i went and and got a taco with my sister. it does seem eerie how one day the population of new york city was lining up to wave hello and 19 decades go by and all that's left of his memory is the name of a cajun college town. thanks to the nationwide euphoria in 1824 of the return to her, countless streets, tours, schools, war ships, horses and babies bear his name. along with scientology founder and my arkansas born great great uncle who went by fate for short. the most meaningful namesake by far is lafayette square across from the white house also known as lafayette park. this is the nations capital of protest the place were we the people gather to yell at our president, or as george hw bush once complained, he complained of the demonstrators who weren't beating those damn drums in front of the white house when i was trying to have dinner of all the rally sittings and acts of disobedience they staged, i think we can agree that what we should be the most proud of is the gathering of the ku klux klan there in 1982. this three dozen or so, stay with me those who showed up to demonstrate were provided police protection against the hordes of agitated protesters pouring into the protesters to demonstrate against their demonstration. freedom of expression only exists when the nitwits are allowed to spew their nonsense in public. this tasteless speech is literally permitted with permits issued by the national park service and the park services managing the site. it goes on from there but you can read that later. [applause]. >> when were listening to that, lafayette, would you think of him now despite all those things that are named after him, the towns and the glory that comes with that kind of latter-day fame, do you think of him now as a number skewer character? what were you trying to let the people know about him? >> he is british, i'm not sure you can tell. >> he hated the british people. >> many historic historical people in america are obscure people because we don't remember anything. yes he's obscure, but i guess maybe you should check with your teenagers if they know who ben franklin is or something. is he an obscure figure? he has become one but maybe it was just the acting from that trip in 1924 but i don't know if you have been to the monument in the brandywine valley that is a little streetlamp looking thing off the side of the road, but it's nowhere bill near westchester, that sounds like a town, right and it's in a ladies yard. i met her. she was really nice, but when they built that monument in 1895 after he had been dead for 60 years in 1895, 5000 people showed up to celebrate this not very impressive, no offense, monument being put up. then maybe the combination of the lafayette legend comes in world war i when france was in a bit of a pickle and when the allied expedition forces came to help out our old allies the french against the germans and they marched into paris to the cemetery where he is buried in one of the officers famously said lafayette we are here. after that, people got busy. >> new heroes. >> yeah, there was hitler. >> more wars. >> yeah. he used to be a bigger deal, obviously and i'm not one of those writers, where the writer is like my subject is so important if he had never been born there would've been a zombie apocalypse. he was important and certainly fascinating enough, but i wasted three years on him. [laughter] so he's up there, but in the revolutionary generation it's kind of an embarrassment. you've got your washington and jefferson and your hometown boy franklin people are excited about alexander hamilton these days. i'm more partial to henry knox. you have john adams. james madison i mean there's a lot of talent there knox has to be the hipsters choice. >> yes he's definitely the writer's choice because henry knox, as you know was a bookseller in boston. the owner of the london bookshop. he joined up with the militia in massachusetts and eventually he was the guy during the siege of boston, i mean pink about the guy you buy your books from while i'm telling the story. hopefully it's still a guy or a lady in a store. yay. so the book guy there's a siege in boston and the british control the little peninsula of boston but there surrounded by all of these patriot militia that have come into the army and they get word that ethan allen and benedict arnold, arnold, who we still like at this point have captured the fort which still has all these cannons left over from the french and indian war and so in order to break the stalemate they need some weapons, not just better weapons and the thing about heavy artillery is its heavy and henry goes up to washington and says my brother and i will go get that stuff it's 300 miles away across the berkshire mountains and it's winter and washington is like go ahead and then a few weeks later the knox brothers show up and they've built these special sleds and how many hundreds of tons over the berkshires to boston and then the crappy washington and his men in the middle of the night put them up on heights and the british wake up the next morning impressed and they leave by ship to canada never to return so the moral of that story is never under estimate in independent bookseller [applause]. i know which side the bread is buttered on it just struck me. >> unless you're a quaker which is possible in this town. >> i'm sorry i was just glorifying violence mostly that was a disclaimer let's come back to that in a moment. there's a lot about quakers in this book. >> can we. >> we should have a quaker meeting on c-span. just the whole room full of people. >> no that's what q&a is scheduled for. >> if anyone says anything, it's just the sound of a bunch of sneezes. [laughter] the visuals will just be like people trying not to make eye contact. >> nobody move. >> you must do a lot of research on your books. there must be big fat books on your subject that you've read obviously. what you are doing what you're doing is you're taking the facts and your taking the urge to educate and the urge to amuse people because you are a comic writer also and you're taking your love of the history and the first question i want to ask you, obviously it's all an expression of you but in what order do those things topple out of you when you first thought of lafayette? were you waiting for the spark of an idea to come to you and then when it does come, how do you keep those things in balance while you're doing it?? >> i use an egg timer. >> no, no, those of us here, i call them the books republicans dads get for christmas. you know their single subject books about a person. >> first biography books. >> yes a door stopper and the title of the book is a person's name and then when the person says what's the book about and they'll say the person's name. >> yes. >> they won't have this weird word in their title that you're just like oh my gosh that's going to take 45 minutes to unravel. in the beginning that's sort of what i think i'm going to do is write the straight story. with lafayette i had written a short piece about that return trip and it was very sentimental and it was all about, kind of a love story and the americans affection for lafayette. i just thought i would write this nice book about this nice french boy and then, i never really think things through enough. for one thing, there's a war that he's in so that's no fun and then i mean the reason i i was drawn to him was because in 1824 the civil war was starting to bubble up i mean basically now that i think about it the civil war is bubbling up across town in independence hall in 1774. right at the beginning, and so the thing at independence hall, the first continental congress, the first thing that happened is we should start with a prayer. the second motion is in a biscuit paly and, i'm paraphrasing, i'm not going to pray with these baptists and quakers and congregationalist. we have too many religions. we can't pray together. right there is the moment of the official founding, basically, they're all like we can't get along. maybe the first thing that should have happened is let's all go home and save everyone the trouble. anyway i was drawn to him because he was french, everybody loved him and he was just kind of this other everybody's uncle from across the sea. i thought it would be nice to write a sweet simple story about this person that everyone loved. then in order to tell that story, pretty much at every step in the research, he gets here for maybe five months and he writes george washington a letter from across the campus basically saying i feel like america can defend herself like you can fight the british if you would just stop fighting with each other because all they do is bicker and the congress can't get anything done and the congress and the army are at odds and there's a can spears see within the congress and the army two outs george washington so he spends a few hours a a day fighting the british in a few hours a day trying to keep his job from the people who are undermining him and then writing about that trip in 1824, that election was in full swing when he arrived. it's the most divisive election in american history. andrew jackson wins the popular vote but no one wins the electoral college so it ends up being decided by the house, that was part of the constitution through what becomes known as the brett corrupt bargain. everything's a mess and when i'm researching i just want to go to my little battlefield to see where my french boy got shot. it happened to be in the fall of 2013. the government shutdown so independence hall was closed and yorktown battlefield was closed so all of this ended up flavoring the story and the book kind of became to books, maybe three if you count the fact that i use lafayette as a personification of the french alliance in general. it sort of, just expanded its waistline, you know. it was going to be one of those this happened to him, this happened to him then he died. >> a lot of your writing. >> very much a quaker who distracted me. >> a lot of your writing is dependent on your personality. you like going places you like telling us about the people you meet. >> yes, wes led me to one of those places, valley forge. >> yes, yes i didn't tell you one of the inside stories. >> that's true, i recommend the cucumbers for lunch. >> what i want to do, just going back a little bit. >> cm doing it to you. you have these questions you want answered and i just keep interrupting you. >> yes, your terrible of interviewing me. >> i'm just distracting you. >> i want to take you back, i want to imagine sarah vowell at school and her relationship to history. what happened that now that this is what you right now? something must have. >> i have two images of me in american history class. one of them is me skipping it to go to the public library to read and the other one is sitting there with the boring teacher at the blackboard and one kid making a break for it and jumping out the window and running away. i think my interest in history and my identification comes from my family background. >> tell us more. >> both of my parents have ancestors who were cherokee and were on the trails in the united states government will march them act him .2 oklahoma and it was just a a topic of conversation in the family and also at the church capital and in oklahoma every summer when i was a kid, we would go there and watch. we had one of those and cliff ample theater. i had a very sheltered childhood it was the only theater i saw until i was 14. i literally watched history, live every summer and this one story was so present in the family, partly because my father hated oklahoma and he hated that he was born there and it was andrew jackson's fault and it was this historical tragedy which made it so that he was born in this place he hated. he had a bit of a bone to pick with andrew jackson because of that. >> this is all making sense now. >> this historical event that happened to my -- it happened in 1838 so it's not that distant but it happened to my distant ancestors and it made history feel like something that happened to people that happened to us. it wasn't that distant thing. i don't think the school had much bearing on any of that, i think because i was never one for textbooks. i always wanted to read books and that's why i was skipping school all the time to go to the public library. >> not to psychoanalyze but what is such a clear line between your family feeling that they were affected by history and now what you are very present in the writing of. i think it was may be just the way my family was. make great great grandfather was fighting that. the cherokees, i'm technically eligible to be a member of the daughters of the confederacy because cherokee side was the confederacy. that was just like my grandfather knew that guy. he left $20 under the dinner plate when he came by and his studebaker. history was just one of those things that we talked about because it happened to regular people. the quakers that i'm at work incredibly well informed about the war. most people i would talk to had a vague notion of who lafayette was. they knew exactly who he was and had a problem with him. we were talking about that and one of the quakers said that sectarian groups tend to know their history. >> that quote actually leapt out at me while i was reading the book. >> my last book was on the united states takeover of hawaii in the 19th century. they were still protecting the american annexation and i learned so much from them. i think history filters into one of the stories is the hit sitcom series called black ash. it's about this black family and there's a whole episode about martin luther king day and how they go skiing on martin luther king day and how the different generations are relating to these stories. there was the whole episode about the n-word. there was one episode recently about a family member who is hesitant to visit a physician and there was a whole thing about experiments on black people. it was really like a little documentary. i think people who come from and who dissent from people who have been left out or wronged in some way tend to be focused on history because they're still upset about it. >> so you're one of the few americans because you're so engaged in history that you won't be offended by the fact that my history and my country goes back so much further. >> you know, i was thinking that there's an american high school in paris and it's basically like an international school. i remember this kid, i was telling him up what to do what i do and this kid said i i don't understand that, there's only like 400 years of it. and i was like whoa, what happened? i think your history is my history to. >> of yeah? [laughter] >> i've actually spent a lot of time writing about how british americans are and it's not necessarily a complement. [laughter] >> does to let you know about my education, very convenient place to start is with the war of the roses. when i went to my first goal, that is where we started and i did about two years of that. then when i was taken away from that, i went to another school and we started there again. >> all i know about other tutors. i did it three times she school, the moment when she stopped being cool, that was the big moment. >> what about magna carta? >> great rock band, one of my favorites. let's talk about writing for a bit. i recently had the pleasure, i reviewed a book about hank williams. it was fantastic it. you wrote someone in san francisco, i presume about the hank williams soapbox? >> it was a wonderful piece of writing but did you kind of start off as a a music writer? >> yes, pretty much. i used to be way artsy or. i studied art history and school. i started reading for my college newspaper. actually started writing about visual art because i felt the art reviews could be better in the newspaper. i decided i should give it a whirl. then after school i wrote for some art magazines so far and did some book reviews. then i moved into music partly because the music writer that i interviewed for my college paper, he kind of got me my first job in journalism. through him he was the biggest writer i had ever met. i had also been a college radio dj. i started writing record reviews for spin and then for weekly newspapers. mostly the first ten years i would write anything. i would write a book review, and interview, radio documentary and i just did as much as i could. i think that was great looking back. but everything paid so poorly that i just had to do whatever i i could do and i had so many different interests. writing about music, i remember, i always love music, but sometime i was running out of adjectives in record reviews. and also, i think i was becoming a nicer nicer person. that made it harder to be an honest critic. i remember one time toward the and i was writing a review and they were obviously terrible but i felt so bad saying that so i said the drums sounded really well. >> i've only reviewed one novel and i'll never do it again because i felt i couldn't be honest about the book. i felt too bad about doing it. >> there just little delicate flowers. what came first then? we know you from a string of books and music reviews, what was the thing that first took off for you, let's put it that way. >> it all seemed like a progression at the time. this is making me sound like i have multiple personality disorder. it's always like one thing. i started working on this american life because i was writing my first book which was a diary of listening to the radio for a year which is not a task i recommend doing. it was 1990, 1994. remember that midterm congressional election that year when the dittohead caucus, those charmers took over the congress and they were calling themselves that is they were very proud two oh their allegiance to rush limbaugh and they felt that rush limbaugh and talk radio people like him had won them this revolutionary election and i i had never listen to rush limbaugh. nobody i ever knew listened to rush limbaugh. i just thought radio is having this huge affect of the country and no one was right about appearing there was no radio critics like there were in media coverage so i thought i want to write about it so i i just turned on the radio and started listening. i heard some really dispiriting things. i was writing for one of the local papers in chicago and i was having dinner and i told him i had written a book review about a record guide and a book, a music reference book. i had gotten thank you letter from this random guy in chicago because i had mentioned a great old seattle punk band and this guy thanked me for mentioning them. it was just a guy. he wasn't in the band. he closed in his thank you letter this book he had made. this was sort of, maybe al gore had invented the internet by that point but normal people didn't have access to it at that point. you use to all of the corners of a possession in the world now and its expression but at the time he had all of these pie charts. as you know they went through a lot of drummers in the band. there were these charts about rusty played on 15% of the songs. and all the other drummers. >> wait till we tell kurt what was on c-span. he was the guitar player and songwriter. >> oh my gosh, that man should run for president. >> this guy was in chicago. i'll give you a tape recorder. it wasn't even would you like to work for my radio show it was i'll give you a tape recorder. that was the whole conversation. of course are going to go to this guy's apartment and talk to him about his obsession about how that started. that was my first piece. it's probably on the internet now. >> i would love to hear that. i don't have that. >> anyway i guess you could say that came out of me working for that paper. then i started working on that show and doing more stories and then i made a documentary, i keep bringing this up, the trail of of tears. that changed my life because that was the first american history story i had done and i loved it. it was hard because a lot of people died in the story. >> but it's the personal connection. >> yes it was a personal connection. it's interesting, that story i was doing what i was going to be doing for the rest of my life right away which was a road trip. it was a documentary of driving the trail with my twin sister. we went to places along the way and it turned out, out, basically what i've always been writing about is america and american culture. whether was writing about hank williams or new england missionaries to hawaii or whatever. that trip, it seemed like the perfect way to talk about, not just american history, but america itself. it was a road trip so we would stop and we were crying every day because every time we would stop it would be where more people were buried along the way. like 4000 people died along that trip which was about a fourth of the tribe. every day we would drive and stop and stand and sometimes there were little old graves and cry, and then, because it was a road trip, we would go get barbecue or we would look in listen to chuck berry or, at one point going to chattanooga which was one of the starting points, it just starts were cherokee were living and they were kicked out from there and there were some in chattanooga. then we stayed at the chattanooga choo-choo. it was really fun to say choo-choo all day long. we would cry and then it would be a fun road trip. it was always, like later on, i remember reading what the novelist steve erickson wrote that the two great inventions of america are annihilation and fun. he was writing about the nuclear test in the nevada desert and vegas. so on that trip, it would be indian genocide, barbecue. racism, watching the x-files with my sister in a motel room. so the whole thing seemed, because this country is both of those things, it's annihilation and it's fun. i think it's such an extreme place. >> and your new books are a good example of that too because a lot of the things you're doing are fun things to be doing and yet what we were doing when we were on the valley forge site is we were in an area where there had been an edible the station and deprivation yet we were having an enjoyable time. >> i didn't really know what we were looking at so you were all able to explain it to me so that worked out. >> one reason i invited wes because he's british and i thought this will be fun, to be with the british person and rub it in all day. but he knew nothing about the revolution before because they don't care about it. they don't learn about it. i think it was just like a colony that was lost. he robbed me of what was supposed to be my greatest fun of the day. i just remember there is that big monument at valley forge with all the names of the generals like lafayette and dekalb, green and those are people you know. wes was like you know that big monument thing with all the brooklyn street names. [laughter] >> i know what i'm talking about >> yeah, he was like we just focused on the wars we won which there are a lot of those. >> some with your help now. somebody said a very funny thing. how do you set lafayette? >> i'm saying lafayette. kind of like that song where i was dancing at the lesbian bar. >> you've got that whole shopping thing named after him. >> i don't think he got any of the backend on that. >> maybe his family did. [laughter] >> he was french and he came over. >> they were sitting in their underwear and i'm going i just wanted to watch c-span, like real c-span. >> i think they're getting their money's worth. the cultural references have been so wide ranging. so lafayette was a frenchman who came over to america to fight against the british. someone said very cleverly in your book, you're talking about a frenchman who got muddled up in a war very far away who was battling someone very close to where he was from. >> was it you wes, did you say that. >> oh yes, it was me. [laughter] >> one reason, i love it when people quote themselves. [laughter] >> i think you improved whatever i said. >> no you just set it. >> that i just say it? >> yes. >> i think it sounds too good for me. that bit about ukraine, i wasn't sure about that at all. >> do we need to complement you further? it's all about you. >> yes it is all about me. >> i could go on talking to you for hours, but what we should do, because of what i see so frantically occurring is we should take some question. >> it's like when he plays the could guitar jumping up and down. >> if you'd like to ask your question, please do so. if you would like that question to be heard on the podcast or on the television, then please wait until the microphone gets to you even if you think you can shout loud enough. does anybody have a question for sarah? >> there's one right there. that gentleman there. the microphone is coming toward him now. >> i would like to thank wes and say he really did prepare questions about the actual book and i kind of kept derailing you. >> i would just like to ask one good question at the beginning and then have a chat. >> i think that's what people want. >> i mean what are they gonna do, fire us? >> my only agenda is keeping you talking because it's so entertaining. let's have a question. >> i been thinking all day about what question i wanted to ask sarah vowell. >> what did you come up with? >> so when you went on the trail of tears ran to her, when you wrote a bout it in your book which is what i think of when i see the 20-dollar bill, people are talking about putting a woman on a $10 bill and leaving the $20 bill alone. i'm wondering first what did you think when you heard that news. who do you think should be on either of those two bills? >> the 10-dollar bill, as i recall, they're not going to completely ditch hamilton, right. one of the proposals as there will be two pictures or there will be two separate $10 bills, i don't know. don't know. but yes, why the ten. why hamilton? everybody loves the treasury secretary. [laughter] but like andrew jackson, people are talking about a and i would love to get rid of him on the 20 because it's really distracting, you know [applause]. like say you have the afternoon off and you and your sister are going to go see the new tom cruise movie and you've got your popcorn and you're paying for it and then you have to look at the face of the guy whose policy, you know, ruined your ancestors life. it kinda puts a damper on things, right. so. so if they want a woman, i'm not completely opposed to everything about jackson, but there's just something, i'm against nullification like everyone else here. but you know, what was i going to say. >> you were going to mention someone you might like to have. >> i grew up in montana and our great heroine in montana is jeannette rankin. i think her name is been thrown about. she is the first female congressperson and she is the only member of congress who voted against entering world war i and world war ii. even though i think most people in montana, i think most people are kind of on board with world war ii, everyone when i was growing up there was always so proud that she voted her conscience. when i was a teenager in the 80s 80s in the anti- nuclear movement, she was our great hero she had just been a a great peace activist her entire life through the vietnam war. she is one of the great heroes of montana. whether you agree of with how she voted or not, she held her ground and it was not a popular stance, especially with world war ii. she is, i think a person of character and quality and i wouldn't mind looking at her when i was buying junior mints or something. [applause]. >> there was another question right back there. >> so i haven't had a chance to read your book yet. >> that's okay it just came out yesterday. what were you doing last night? >> i'm sorry, i was studying for a test. but i did buy it. >> okay. >> so i was wondering. >> did you take the test yet? >> yes i did. >> how did you do? >> i got an a. >> oh then that was worth that. >> so i studied the revolutionary war and i was wondering if there is anything, when you were reading the correspondence between the gay trio and if there was anything that you read that was really, a lot of the personal stuff is left out of the history books in the biographies. >> i know they're just so focused on the accomplishments and achievements and not who was making out. [laughter] >> yes so i was wondering if there was anything. >> oh, i remember when i was at valley forge and we asked the ranger, like, like, remember there was that house that washington state in an hamilton was staying in and we asked him and he didn't really want to talk about that. >> no he was quite off put by that. >> no, i mean is that what you mean about their allegedly affection for one another? i mean no i didn't come across any new groundbreaking evidence. that would probably pretty disgusting, physical evidence, especially by this point. >> put that on the 20. [laughter] >> no i didn't. i did spend a little bit of time on stoy ben because he is so important to the actual story and because he's the one who re- shaped the continental army into an effective fighting force in the whole reason he came here was because he was out of a job and there were those gay rumors about him that he had been with inappropriate with little boys and he was out of a job. because he had this rumor hanging over his head and he was broke, that's why he came here. he didn't have a commission when he left europe. as far as i know there is no conclusive evidence one way or in other. i know the advocate refers to him as a confirmed bachelor. i mean it's possible. maybe it's even probable that he was a homosexual. another author wrote that it's possible that when he arrived at valley forge that he witnessed the first soldier being dismissed from the military for homosexual and trans- homosexuality. a man who was literally drummed out of the camp. i don't know about hamilton. i read some of those letters and they are very affectionate. they are in a war together and very good friends so who knows. it's very possible and that was basically the reason he came here whether he was gay or not. certainly up through the don't ask don't tell area, he did have an important story because so many of his drill manual that he wrote was officially part of the u.s. army until 1912. month much of what is in the drill manual today still carries over from him. his ideas about military order and discipline and training exercises have been part of the american military tradition from the get-go. if gay and lesbian soldiers were being excluded that is pretty hypocritical so i don't know. with him it seems, definitely it's possible, maybe it's probable. about the other other guys, i'm not sure. >> have a question on the end of the row right there. so earlier you mention this monument that was located somewhere locally and one of the fascinating things about your book as you look for these, off the beaten path landmarks. as someone who took road trips as a kid i can relate to that very much. do you have a story about what you consider to be the strangest of these landmarks you've ever encountered, whether for research for one year books or for personal travel? >> the strangest, i don't know about the strangest but some of the most perplexing are, well i remember going going to the mckinley memorial in canton ohio. he was assassinated president and id remember that in the gift shop of the mckinley memorial, a souvenir was a yo-yo. it's this incredibly dull stone edifice to this assassinated pres., one of them, and that was the memento, memento, a yo-yo. i found that a little >> >> everybody knew him. everybody and their dog. said he would go well into his 90s it was on the old property of the old mansion and also of high-school before that so they put up us statue of malcolm and when that statue with the up my sister's dog went bananas because he remembered malcolm. so it was so weird when he saw the statue. but the town just put up of monument to a guy. [laughter] because you isolda we all grew up to say hi. [laughter] but it is still there. >> one more question. >> questions about the two revolutions. he was not totally satisfied. but he and jefferson wrote those together. >> dave wrote a draft of that. then it was edited and. give him a microphone. >> the declaration of the rights of man? but it was lafayette at jefferson who wrote one of the drafts. >> one more question. >> [inaudible] to ever be somebody who is reluctant to take part to share their thoughts with you? >> no. it is usually the opposite especially with local knowledge. it was that way when i was a reporter i remembered the oneida company with the vegetarian sexual colts. [laughter] naiad written them off a little bit. that is the term of free love and with their living arrangements and a eight i had a lot of condescending feelings and there wasn't thinking of these people as people after i have lived among them for a while it was one of those utopian communities i took that to our from a retired high-school he said i have spent so much time thinking about these people and why would come here. because they had this idea that god had made the perfect and they didn't sleep around? i don't know. [laughter] but he said he kept thinking why would they do this? and they practiced group marriage i thought of it of leave the - - living in a big house he said he kept thinking about them with jonathan edwards sanders in the hands of an angry god. so that is pretty harsh new and terrifying that god is tingling over the fire of how rigid god was in that form of christianity to say what if you are one of these people end there is a place here today give yourself not as an ugly and depraved senator bennett with the value and will it really change our thought and there are some disturbing things that it was a place of refuge and he really made him seem there is so much knowledge out there. it comes back to learning history for me it comes from talking with my grandfather or people like that. imi writer but there is something to be said and to meet its your fellow citizens. i was talking to those quakers of another book coming into the world to look at the discord of american life. or when congress shuts down the government or when they show up at military funerals and all of the of fights about abortion but when i was talking to these friends joking and talking but everything they went through because of the war the stuff was stolen it was a hardship for the people but there are real reasons and obviously i did not give up my quest to write about this warrior but to have a very pleasant civil conversation nobody is going to write newspaper article about that. and sometimes disagreements that may be at those a different - - goes a little differently there are some things to be learned from archives to talk to other people that is important in a useful and pleasant. >> she will be there signing her book. [applause] >> [inaudible conversations] >> good evening. ladies and gentleman. the microphones work. i am glad you can join us tonight we do this to give you exposure to authors you read not normally see on your campus or in front of the congressional committee. we have a kind of different one tonight. this young man contacted me to tell me about his book