it can't come from the press person. usually when you say that, by the way, half of all requests go away because they're not quite willing to ratchet it up that high. so i always insist that they ratchet it up that high, offer very, very specific proof. and i would say still most of the time we go with the story. but if somebody offers -- are there stories we have held over the years, stories that met that standard? yes. >> a brief portion from tonight's look at the relationship between the press and the government. see that starting at 8 p.m. eastern on our companion network, c san. c-span. >> now, more from the series of author interviews that make up c-span's latest book, "sundays at eight." this is a conversation with historian and author david mccullough from our "q&a" program. this is just under two hours. c-span: david mccullough, where did you get the title for your new book, "the greater journey?" >> it happened on november 15th, as a matter of fact. i somehow or another know exactly when i suddenly thought that's the title, "the greater journey," because i was trying to think what is this book about? it's about a journey, but a different kind of journey or a mission or an adventure or an odyssey. and i kept working with these words, the word "journey" kept coming back. and then i was thinking about their, the voyage of these americans who ventured off to france at a time when they were all only able to go across the north atlantic by sailing ship, and it was rough, and it was anything but traveling on a cruise liner. and what a journey that was. and then they got to, they landed at le havre, almost all of them, and they then went by land to paris which was a two-day trip by huge, cumbersome, stagecoach affair. and they would stop at rouen, halfway. and they would see for the first time a european masterpiece, and it was the rouen cathedral. and many of them wrote at length and very much from the heart about the impact of this one building, this one experience. and that they knew that something greater had begun,ing with in the old world. the old world to them was the new world. and i thought, that's it, "the greater journey." they know then that they are on a greater journey which will be their experience, their spiritual, mental, professional journey in thety of paris -- in the city of paris where they're trying to rise to to the occasi, to excel in a particular field whether it was writing or music or painting or sculpture or medicine, because many of them in that day went to, as medical students, went to paris because paris was the medical capital of the world. so they're ambitious to excel, and they are going against the trend because to go off to europe then was not fashionable yet, and it wasn't part of one's broadening education yet. many of them had no money, many of them had no friends in europe, knew no one in paris and spoke not a word of the language. and yet they were brave enough to go. to embark on the greater journey. c-span: this renoir painting, you know, when i first saw it, this had to cost them a lot of money to put it on there, but i assume -- is it out of copyright, or do you own the painting? [laughter] >> guest: no, no, that belongs to the museum. pont neuf, the new bridge. still there, looks just exactly like that. you can walk out to that very spot by the bridge, and except for the wagons and horses on the bridge in the painting, would be automobiles and buses now. and for many people that bridge, particularly in that day before the eiffel tower had been built, say, that bridge was the essence of paris. and it still is. it's one of the host magnificent -- most magnificent spots anywhere in the world because you really feel you're there. when you're out on the bridge, you're looking up or down the river, you see note redame -- notre dame, you see the louvre, you see the national institute on the other side of the pont neuf, the next bridge up the river. and one fellow, john sanderson from philadelphia, said i began to breathe when i got out on that bridge. i began to breathe the sort of free air of paris. c-span: a person by the name of william b. mccullough took this picture. >> guest: yes, sir. c-span: what is -- where is it and what year was it taken? >> guest: this was taken last year, last fall, last october. william b. is my second son. he is a former camera match in television -- cameraman in television and now has his own business as a builder in new england, and he's a wonderful photographer. he's a wonderful fellow to travel with. and the picture was taken just outside the sarbonnes on the left bank which is where many of these young americans went to study. they could go for free. they could go to the school of medicine in paris for free. the french government had a policy that all foreign students could attend their universities for nothing. they had to pay for their room and board, but once they got there, there was no charge for attending the university. it was the greatest university in the world. imagine a country doing that. and that sarbonnes, the experience would change several lives dramatically. and consequently, changed our story, our history. that's what interests me particularly, what did they bring home? what did they bring back? how were we affected? how did our outlook, our culture, our politics, our country change as a consequence of the american -- of the paris experience of these americans? c-span: how many times have you been to arrest? >> guest: well, rosalie and i first went in 1961. i was then part of the kennedy administration and very young, and we were on our way to the near east. i was doing a magazine about the arab world for the u.s. information agency. and our first time there were no jets as yet, so we flew over on a prop plane, took forever. we landed at night. it was february, it was cold and rainy, and it didn't matter in the slightest to us. we were in paris, and we walked for hours that night just so thrilled to be there. and we've been going back fairly off ever since. i would -- i've never counted up the times that we've been to paris, probably 20 times, maybe more. but i've also done research there before because part of the john adams book took place in paris, as you know, and the jefferson/adams/franklin time in paris, a very important part of the american story. but i also was there to do work on my book about the panama canal because so much of that research material on the french attempt to build the canal is there. and then i went back to france to follow harry truman's experiences in the army in world war i. most of my visits have been because of my work, although we have had a few times when we went strictly for pleasure. always with pleasure. c-span: up here on our scream is the gal -- screen is the gallery of the louvre which you write a lot about in the book. what is it? >> guest: that's a painting by samuel f.b. morse, the same man -- amazingly -- the same man who invented the telegraph, one of the most important inventions of the 19th century. and morse felt to -- felt to bligeed to bring european culture back to america. he'd gone to paris because, as he said, i need paris for my from negatives, my painting. -- negatives, my painting. they all felt that, those that went, and hundreds went. but he was one of the first. and he decided that he was going to do a painting that would show americans what the inside of a great art museum looked like and what great masterpieces looked like. keep in mind, there were no museums of art in the united states. this was 1832 when it was painted. no museums of art. you couldn't go to a museum and look at paintings anywhere in the united states. and very few paintings of any kind -- unless they'd been copied for private ownership -- were of the great masters. now, most of these are renaissance paintings, italian paintings, some of which were already part of the louver. -- the louvre. you see the ho that lisa right there -- mona least -- lisa right there. the partition hangs over the door up on the right-hand side right at the corner. c-span: how big is this painting? >> guest: the painting is six feet by nine feet, it's huge. and it, it was much bigger than anything of the kind ever attempted by an american. no american had ever attempted to paint anything like this until then. he did an earlier painting, a famous painting which is at the corcoran here in washington of the congress in session which had never been done before. he was always trying to break new ground. but the 30-some paintings in this picture, he -- they are not how they were actually hung in the louvre. he went through the entire collection, over a thousand masterpieces, picking out those paintings that he thought americans should know about or that he thought these are the paintings that i truly love, that i care about. and these are, to me, the treasures of the world, and i want to share them with my negative countrymen. my fellow countrymen. so he arranged them, as it were, in his mind. but he went and copied each of these paintings as they hung in the gallery at the time. and many of them were hung very high up, just as they are here. so he had to build his open special scaffolding -- his own special scaffolding to move from spot to spot to get up there to paint them. now, a lot -- he himself gave a key to this painting when it came back so that if you went to see it on exhibit, you could see which pent paintings were which, which was the rem perhaps, so forth. but what he didn't give was a key to the people in the painting. and there is, in effect be, a code to this painting done by the man who virtually at this same time invented the morse cold because his -- code, because he got the idea for the morse code, for the telegraph and the code while he was in paris, while he was in france. but the code, every painting is a collection of choices by the author, by the painter. and it's not just what's in the painting. nothing gets in a painting by accident. always there because somebody's thought about it. but they're also thinking about what's not in the painting, what i'm leaving out. just as when one's writing a book or composing a symphony, you're leaving a lot out. you have to. so in peopling this picture, which he's done because he wants to give scale to the room and to the painting, the haven -- the main room, the grand gallery which is at the center of the painting is, was the largest room in the world. so that's the vista in the painting. and this is the -- [speaking french] which is a smaller room. all exactly the same today, by way. the paintings aren't there that way. but he's showing you the expanse of this space, the scale of this public cultural treasure open to the public. but he's not showing you the public that really would have been there. there are no french aristocrats in the painting, there are no priests in the painting, there are no soldiers in the painting, all of whom would have been there. every time the public was present. and this would have been huge crowds always. this amazed americans, not just how many paintings there were, but how many people came, and all kinds of people. now, he does have a woman from britain who stands at the door to the left, her back to you and her child. and that's probably to show that people, people of all walks of life and from -- and who don't the live in paris are welcome here and come here. you can tell who she is by that peak of her hat, her cap, that white cap is sort of signature of people coming from britain. he himself stands down stage from center. he's the man bending over, the pretty young student who's working, making a copy of the -- [inaudible] which is over on the left of the marriage of canaa. and he is showing himself not just as a painter, but as a teacher. and he's very proud of that, samuel morse was. over in the left-hand corner is his best friend in paris, the great american author james pennimore cooper with his wife and daughter who is also an art student. coming through the door is a sculptor named reno, also a friend, an american, and there's another friend of his, harbach, who is over on the left who's an american artist in paris. now, what this painting also doesn't show is the tranquility of the setting, the warmth of the red walls, the warmth of the glow in the grand gallery conveys a sense that all is right with the world. outside those very walls is one of the most horrific, deadly scourges ever to hit paris, the great cholera epidemic of 1832. people were literally dying in the streets. dropping dead. 18,000 people died in less than six months just in the city of paris. both of these men were terrified that they were going to contract the disease and die too. and everybody who could get out of paris was leaving. but cooper, who was very wealthy because his books, "last of the no here cans" and others were so successful, could have left. but he had his family with him, and his wife was very ill and couldn't be moved. c-span: how old was he? >> guest: he was in his 40s, they both were in their 40s. morse, who had no money and was living very modestly, was staying because he was determined to finish that painting before his money ran out and he had to leave. cooper, out of friendship to morse and to see him through this ordeal, came to the louver every afternoon to be with his pal, to sit with him, talk with him while he worked. it is a, it is an amazing story of friendship, of a friend in need. and both of these men were similar in some ways. they each had a distinguished father, they each went to yale university, yale college as it was then, they were each talented, they each lived in new york, but they were vastly different in more ways, in more important ways. and yet this bond of friendship was like very little i've ever written about or known about. it's a terrific story. and i felt that not only is it an immensely important painting and interesting painting to say the least, but it's an amazing story. i could are written a whole book -- i could have written a whole book just on this one painting. c-span: how long did it take him? >> guest: he worked on it just about a year. started this the fall of 18 be 1, and -- 1831. c-span: i read it's coming to washington this summer. >> guest: it's coming to the national gallery. it's just been to yale which was a thrill for everybody there because both morse and cooper went to yale. and the cooper -- and the morse papers are at yale. but the fact that it's coming to the national gallery is thrilling. it deserves much more attention than it's getting. for a long time, it's been in storage for years. c-span: who owns it? >> guest: the tara foundation in chicago. c-span: used to have a museum. >> guest: yes, that's right. when he finished, he thought maybe he could get enough money to more than compensate him for all his work, thought he might get somewhere 3, $4,000 for it which was considerable amount of money then. he couldn't sell it. finally, somebody from up in cooperstown, cooper's hometown, bought it for $2,000. in the 980s -- 1980s it sold for over $2 million which was the greatest amount of money ever paid for a painting by an american at that point. no longer that way. but it's a very important painting. c-span: in your book, you have acknowledgments, including a man named mike hill. and the interesting thing i read was that he unlocked the magic of the ely hugh washburn diary. will you tell us who he was and where was it found? >> guest: yes. well, first of all, mike hill has worked with me for 25 years now as a research assistant. he lives here outside of washington, and he's within easy access to not just the great treasure houses of diaries and letters here at the library of congress and the archives and smithsonian, but also collections at places like charlottesville, virginia. and he does research for lots of other people too. he doesn't just work with me. c-span: who else has he worked with? >> guest: well, he works with-and-a-half thain yell fill brick -- nathaniel philbrick, he works we've van thomas, he works with michael beschloss, a number of people. i don't know all of his clients, but he's the best. and he was, ely hugh washburn was a congressman from illinois who was a fellow congressman or fellow politician in illinois with abraham lincoln and a very close friend of abraham lincoln's. and when lincoln became president, it was washburn as much as anybody else who kept telling lincoln you've got to give this man, grant, full chance to show what he can do. because washburn came from georgia lee that -- gallena, illinois, which is where grant was living before the war started. what also distinguished him was he was one of four brothers who all served in congress, in the house or the senate. all four from different states, all got reelected regularly, all four had distinguished careers. one was a general in the civil war, another was as the mayor, as the governor of maine was, it appears to have been, the first person to refer to the new political party as the republican party. and they grew up on a hard scrabble farm in western maine in utteroverty. utter poverty. and ten children, and all of those children were exceptional. and the it is an amazing, amazing story. their mother could read, but she felt very embarrassed because she might make it embarrassing for her children who became so distinguished if she were seen to be someone who wasn't as educated as she should have been. but she was a very wise, bright woman who insisted to her children that education was everything. and if they could get an education and keep learning and keep, keep the love of learning, there was nothing they couldn't do. after the civil war was over, and, of course, grant had distinguished himself conspicuously, washburn was exhausted. and when grant became president, he first offered him the position of secretary of state. but washburn was quite ill, and he declined it three days later. he said, i can't do it. so he appointed washburn the, our minister or our ambassador to france, to arrest. washburn went over thinking this is going to be just what i need to recover my strength and have a little peace and quiet with my family. he arrived on the eve of the franco-prussian war, and in very short order, the germans were marching on paris, and in very short order the germans surrounded paris, and paris was cut off from the world. now, all the other ambassadors for all the other powers left the city, got out, except washburn. and he said it's my duty to stay here. and he stayed through the entire siege which lasted five months, and he stayed through the horrific, the god awful, bloody commune that followed where french were killing each other by the thousands in the city of paris. he not only stayed and served ainitially helping americans who were there, but also the germans who were there, had been living there as workers who were innocent of doing anything wrong to get them out of the city on the request of the german government, some 20,000 of them. he organized, arranged all that with special trains and so forth. magnificent humanitarian, successful mission. but through all that he also kept a diary every day. and the diary wasn't just did this, quick little notes, did that, lunch with so and so, met with -- no. they are long, superbly written entries of real substance. there's nothing like them in existence. and they were unknown. and we, mike hill found them, and he found them in a place no one would think to look, in the library of congress. now, what had happened was that the family or somebody had taken his letters -- he also wrote letters during this time -- and copies of the diary. the diary entries were written on separate sheets of paper and later bound in an original diary. but he made letter press copies as they were known then, like a carbon copy, and another group was bound in with the letters so that you couldn't tell if it said april 9th if it was a letter, it didn't say "dear friend," it just said "april 9th." and these were all mixed in with these hundreds of letters. mike, going through the letters thinking they're all letters, suddenly realized these respect letters, and he -- these aren't letters. and he went to jeff flannery who runs the manuscript division there and said, what is this, what's going on? and jeff had never looked at it before either closely, and they suddenly realized these are diary entries. but, of course, they were letter press. where is the original? well, the original, it turns out, was up in maine. the family homestead up in maine. well, in writing the book i was able to draw on this experience and his attempt to safe the life of the archbishop of paris, for example, who was imprisoned and going to be executed by the commonards as they were known. and washburn was protestant, he was not a catholic, but he greatly admired the archbishop, and he knew that this was a terrible thing that was happening because they were killing priests, executing them, and he was unsuccessful in saving that man's life. he was executed. but nobody tried harder to get him out. and that whole story, this is a man that, again, was quietly heroic. and his sense of duty was amazing and admirable in the extreme. but also i think he felt a strong sense of duty to keep that diary. he would come in after a terrible day of seeing the most heartbreaking, sometimes nauseating experiences and acts of human savagery and sit down at 1:00 in the morning and write long entries in superb english. the use of the command of the language, it's humbling. and here was a man who never really had an education as we would call it today. but this is true of the letters and diaries i worked with through the whole book. people like charles sumner, people like emma willard, the great champion of higher education for women or elizabeth black welshing the first woman -- blackwell , the first woman doctor in america. they were wonderful writers, and they weren't writing writing, they were writing letters. it was a time when people believed in writing letters, and writing letters was part of life, part of what you were expected to do. sumner's story is so arresting. c-span: massachusetts? >> guest: massachusetts senator, senator charles sumner, one of the most important figures of 19th century america in that he was the most powerful voice for abolition in the united states senate. he's the one that was nearly beaten to death on the floor of the senate with a heavy walking stick by a southern congressman who was offended by a speech that sumner had given. sumner went over, sumner graduated from harvard, went to harvard law school, practiced law for three years and decided i don't know enough. my education is not sufficient. i want to know more. i want to learn more. i'm going to go to paris. so he borrowed $3,000 from friends, closed up his law office and went to the sarbonnes attending lectures in everything; geology, classics, everything. c-span: in french or english? >> guest: in french, and he doesn't people french, so he had to learn french. took a crammed course that he organized himself with tutors and in about a month was able to do it. the daunting, undaunted courage of these people is inspiring. he, and he attended the lectures, and he kept a journal, and the journal is fabulous. it's been published, four volumes. and in the journal he writes about what he's listening to or who he's meeting and what he's learning and so forth. but there's one entry where the speaker was sort of tedious, and he found himself looking around the lecture hall, mind wandering, and he noticed that the students, other students and several hundred, nearly a thousand people in this lecture hall, that the other students treated the black students who were there just as though they were like everybody else. dressed the same, acted the same -- c-span: what year? >> guest: this is in 1836. c-span: how old was he then? >> guest: he was young, he was still in his 20s. and he, and he wrote in the diary maybe how we treat black people at home is the result of what we've been taught and not part of the natural order of things. now, that's almost exactly quote-unquote. it was an epiphany for him. he, as if he suddenly saw the light truly. because we know that he'd been to washington on a trip before he went to paris and had seen slaves working in the field in maryland and thought they looked like that's all they were good for. had no sympathy for people in bond bage, no -- bondage, no sensible interest in african-americans at all. he came home with this new point of view, got into politics, was elected to the united states senate in his 40s, early 40s, and he became the powerhouse voice for abolition. changed by that experience in paris. so that, that's bringing home something that's not tangible, it's not a work of sculpture or a painting or a musical composition. but he brought home an idea and a new mission. the beating left him very damaged both psychologically and physically. and he went back to paris several times to relieve himself of these anxieties that he felt and his inability to perform as a senator. and it always helped him. so he came home and carried on. i think he's one of the most admirable figures in our story. his statue stands in the public garden in boston. i doubt that one bostonian in a thousand has any idea who he was. we all should know. c-span: your time frame on this whole book is from when to when? >> guest: 1830 to 1900. 70 years. and it's a period that hasn't been looked at much. a great deal's been written and marvelous things have been written about jefferson, adams and franklin in paris in the 18th century, and an enormous amount, as you know, has been written about the 1920s and the '30s, gertrude stein, scott fitzgerald and so totforth. but -- so forth. but i felt this period was just waiting, and it sure appealed to me. i think, i've been thinking a lot about this idea, this point of view. i think that history is, as you know, is much more than just politics and soldiers and social issues. it's also medicine and science and art and music and theater and poetry and ideas. and we shouldn't lump things into categories. it's all part of the same thing. and one of the most interesting characters in this study that i've done is al very webb dell -- oliver wendell holmes sr. who spent his whole life devoted to medical science. was on the harvard medical school faculty for 35 years and a very prominent figure in american medicine. but he saw that there was nothing, there was no incongruity. he also wrote poetry and essays and helped to start a magazine called "the atlantic monthly." it's all part of it. and i think that's the way history ought to be taught, and uh-uh think it's the way it -- and i think it's the way it ought to be written. it's the way i would like to think myself more about as teem goes on -- as time goes on. i, in my own life i at one point thought i wanted to be a painter, another point i thought i wanted to be an actor, at another point i thought i wanted to be an architect. all along i thought i wanted to be a writer. but it's all there. it's all part of what we are about. we human beings. history is human, and i was writing down -- riding down massachusetts avenue one time, this was a number of years ago -- c-span: here in washington. >> guest: yeah, on my way to work driving. and i got to sheridan circle, and i was driving, it was rush hour, and the traffic was terrific, and there was a traffic jam at sheridan circle. and there was old phil sheridan, general sheridan, in the center of the circle with the requisite pigeon on his head, and it's a wonderful statue. it's a beautiful statue. he's the one that did the faces of the presidents in the black hills. and i wondered at the time as i wonder about charles sumner in the public garden in boston how many americans have any idea who that man is? how many people drive around this circle every day twice a day have any idea who they're looking at or why it's called sheridan circle? at the same time, gershwin's rhapsody in blue was playing on my car radio. and i thought gershwin is as alive at this minute for me and anybody else stuck in this traffic jam who has tuned into the same station as he was in the 1930s. he's real, he's with us, he's part of us. now, who's the more important character in history, phil sheridan or george gershwin? well, the answer, of course, is they both are very important. and it may be that thinking about gershwin started me thinking about americans in arrest and the whole part of ger, win's repertory and the movie and gene kelly and all that and thinking about paris, americans in paris. i don't know where the idea first began. it may have been begun back when i was in high school, i don't know. c-span: one of the things that you read through the book, it's over 500 pages, lots of different characters, you read about central paris -- >> guest: yes. c-span: and today there's 11 million plus people this that whole area. we've got some photographs want to put on the screen so that you can describe where these are, where the locations are. we can just throw up anything we've got of that area, of the gardens -- >> guest: yes. c-span: the champs dell say, what about all that? how much of an area did you write about? >> guest: right now we're looking at the april erie guards, and that's very important in the story that of all of the people i have written about. and they are right at the louvre. the louvre itself is -- there you are on the seine, there's the pedestrian bridge, wonderful bridge for people made of iron as it was originally. it's a favorite place to gather as is to walk along the river today still. the palaise royale, that looks like the palace van dome which is -- no, i guess it is. it's hard for me to see. i think that if i were to walk with you, brian, around that section of paris, i could show you an amazing number of places that are just the same as they were then where these, particularly the people, all were and stayed. rosalie and i stay in the hotel de louvre which is at the foot of the avenue of the opera. if you have a picture of the avenue of the opera that was in the book, it's in the back end sheet of the book. it's taken from what's called the pizarro room which is where he did a number of his paintings, and looking straight up the avenue toward the opera house, that looks exactly the same today as it did then. this, of course, is looking at the eiffel tower which was built in 1889 for the 1889 world's fair. the hotel d' louvre is where morse and his family stayed when they came back later on, it's where mark twain stayed, it's where nathaniel hawthorne stayed. history is everywhere in paris, and that is one of the things that so impressed the people when they went over. keep in mind that everything here was still relatively new. independence hall wasn't even a hundred years old. we think of it as an historic, old building. wasn't even a hundred years old. and when they got to a coo three drag, great, gothic cathedral that was built before columbus ever sailed, that, to them, was an overwhelming experience in itself. sumner called it the prestige of age. there's the route of italy with the louver on the left. c-span: don't you have your own painting in the book? >> guest: no, i don't have -- a painting that belongs to me. it's not a painting, it's an engraving. that's part of a collection i have. this one right here. if you can bring up that picture that's in the very back page, back -- the end sheets of the book. there are two, the opening end sheet is of the route of italy and the back end sheet is of the avenue of the opera looking up toward the -- no, the end sheet. c-span: oh, here, yes. right. >> guest: there you go. c-span: be -- yeah. >> guest: now, that picture if you took the wagons and horses out and put automobiles in, that view from the hotel is exactly the same today. over here by the fountain is now where you've got a taxi stand. and rosalie and i stay there, and this is very close to the view we have through the window of the room we've been getting. now turning to the opposite end of the book, the front end, and that's the rue d' rivoli, and that looks exactly the same today too with the stores and the colonnade on the left, that's the twillery garden fence on the right and the louvre, part of the louvre on the right, the building rising up on the right. now, that picture and the one that's at the end sheet of the book, are postcards that my mother's parents brought back from paris after a visit there about 1907. photographs were probably taken about 1900. and those postcards were up in our attic in an album. they saved all the postcards, and they're just as sharp, as you can see, just as sharp and clear as if they'd been taken yesterday. and they're over a hundred years old. c-span: in the book -- >> guest: my mother was 7 years old, so she remembered some of it. so i heard some of these stories as a child, but she department remember -- she didn't remember an awful lot. c-span: tim lawson is your son-in-law, married to dory who actually represents you. >> guest: yes, she does can, my speaking schedules. and tim is a painter, very good painter. c-span: what did he do? >> guest: well, he went with me, for example, he went with me out to see this painting of the gallery of the louvre when it was in storage in chicago. and he went with me to see the work that's in, at the st. goldens' home in cornish, new hampshire. he went with me to the metropolitan. he went with me off to museums, particularly the museum of fine arts in boston to look at the sergeants that are there and the mary cassettes that are there. c-span: you said your daughter melissa read every -- >> guest: yes. i marshaled the whole team, as it were, and my son, david jr., is -- speeches english in high school, and he went over all my grammar and punctuation were carefully, and rosalie is my editor-in-chief. c-span: your wife. >> guest: i read everything, or she reads everything aloud to me. i want to hear it. i write for the ear. i try to to write for the ear as well as the eye. it's what all the great writers that i've admired so much of my life did. c-span: what book is this for you? what number? >> guest: this is number nine. c-span: are you going to do another book? >> guest: i don't know. c-span: the last time we talked about this business was 2005 up in the knox home in maine. >> guest: yep. c-span: and you said you had 12 ideas for a book, and this is the book that came out of those 12 ideas. >> guest: yes. c-span: you've got another list of 12? >> guest: no, it's up to 27 now. [laughter] c-span: 27 now? what was this experience like writing this book compared to the others? >> guest: i've thought a good deal about that because it's been different. and i've hugely enjoyed every subject i've ever undertaken except one, and i stopped, stopped the prompt after a couple of months -- project after a couple of months, i knew it wasn't right for me. c-span: that was the painter. >> guest: picasso. yeah, that was a long time ago. so i'm not in any way trying to say that the previous work has been less than i would have wished. it's been more than i would have wished in every case. but i have had a better time writing this book than anything i've ever done can. i think in part because so much of it is about summits that really matter to me -- subjects that really matter to me. it's what i love. not that i don't love history and the usual sense, politics, american history of all kinds, but to be able to write about people like augustus suspect godde, this s, to write about louis gots chalk, the brilliant pianist -- c-span: they all went to paris. >> guest: all went to paris. i love architecture. i think in some ways architecture may be our most important be art form because we live in it, it shapes us. and paris really is about architecture. there's no, there's no natural salesmen door there -- splendor there, no no snow-covered mountain range in the distance, no beautiful shoreline on the sea. the river's there, but rivers are in lots of cities. it's what people have built and what they've put their heart and soul into. it's not just what's in the museums, it's the museums themselves. and the idea there was no school of architecture in america, none. so these people who went over, these young men that almost all at that time like richard morris hunt, charles mckim, h.h. richardson who changed the look of our cities, changed the look of america all went there to study architecture, came back different from what they had been. you go to boston, copley square, tripty church on one -- trinity church on one side, h.h. richardson. look across the square, the boston public library by charles mckim, trained this paris. -- in paris. and very similar in many ways to the bibliotech -- [inaudible] which is in paris. and he said so. they were taking, you used the word earlier, "inspiration." inspiration from paris. and again and again, brian, they all wrote they wanted to bring something home to make things better here. they wanted, they were doing something they felt was a service to their country, not just to their own ambitions. c-span: you did not, have not mentioned george healey, and i'm going to put up here on our screen the painting that you write about, "webster's reply to herman cain." >> guest: yes. george healey is, to me, a great american story. george healey was an irish boy, grew up in the streets of boston, no money, no education but talent to paint and draw. and he was told, you're good. you could go to to all the way with this talent. but he knew he had to go train with somebody. there was nobody to train with, no art school. so without any money except what he'd been able to save, no knowledge of french, knowing no one in paris, he went to paris. and he became the most sought after and, in many ways, most accomplished portrait painter, american portrait painter of the 19th century. there's accept of his paintings -- seven of his paintings at the white house, there's 17 of his paintings in the national portrait gallery. his paintings are in most every gallery, major gallery in the united states. he was phenomenal. c-span: what is that painting? >> guest: but he also -- this painting right here is the biggest single work he ever did by far. i can't remember the dimensions, but they're enormous. it's enormous. it covers the whole back wall behind the stage at one of the most historic buildings in boston, in the united states. and this is webster's reply to haine, famous moment in congress. and dan yell webster is on the -- daniel webster is on the right, and there are all these other characters portrayed there are from actual studies, most all of them, of faces that he did at the time. so it is, it is an accurate historic document. he's also put a few people in there that were not present when haine -- webster delivered his great speech because he wanted to include them. and it was painted in paris. it cost him almost two years of his work, of his life, his professional life. he got, much like morse, he got scarcely what he hoped he would be recompensed for it, i think it was there are -- $2,000. he said it didn't matter because he felt he'd recorded something and made a contribution not just to the art of portraiture, but to the history of his country. c-span: how long did it take you to write this? >> guest: four years. c-span: where did you do most of the writing? >> guest: well, i did a lot of the writing on martha's vineyard where we live, and i did a lot of the writing in maine where we also spend a good part of each year. i did some of it when we were traveling, and i spent a great deal of time in washington, boston, new york looking at paintings, looking at architecture and, of course, doing reasonable care with original documents -- research with original documents. c-span: touring begins on may the 25th. you've got framing ham, massachusetts, washington, d.c., top of the hay author series. politics & prose here, kaufman concert hall in new york city, that's june 6th. june 8th, world's fair council, dallas museum of art. hines history center, that's in your hometown of pittsburgh, chicago public library. june. 14th, is it wayzata? why there? >> guest: it's outside of minneapolis. because a wonderful friend of mind, bill waters, who was on -- very active in the national park foundation has organized an event and wants me to come and do it. c-span: philadelphia. then harvard bookstore, and the tour as listed is closed on, later on june in portsmouth, new hampshire. >> guest: yeah. c-span: how do you feel about this? >> guest: i love it. spam why? >> guest: i like to meet the people that read my work. i like to, i like to see what's going on in these different places. i enjoy, i enjoy talking to audiences and particularly audiences that are a mixture of general rations. general rations. i guess maybe it's the irish in me. c-span: maybe i missed it, but you didn't answer the question about whether you're going to do another book. >> guest: no, i didn't. [laughter] c-span: what's your thinking? >> guest: oh, i'm thinking all the time about it. something happens when one of these ideas just clicks, and that's it. and i can't explain what that process is. and i just know that's what i want to do. and it'll happen. it'll be different. i've, i've never undertaken a subject that i knew a lot about. i didn't know much about john adams. i knew a certain amount. i wasn't an adams scholar or a truman scholar or a brooklyn bridge scholar.