Chernow into a rock star. It is true for years ron was recognized as one of our great contemporary historians. His life of George Washington won a pulitzer prize. His history of the house of morgan received the National Book award. His biography of Alexander Hamilton was a New York Times best seller. But lets be real. Before hamilton became a sensation, ron was not exactly what anyone would call a household name. He once said to a journal when he was told in the hundreds every week ron replied wiftfully his books usually drew about 30 letters. Now thanks to hamilton ron gets a multiple of that number every week. Now thats stardom. Im sure ron finds even more satisfying how excited hamilton has made people about American History. This one burst of musical genius has turned the Founding Fathers into, well, hip hop theyve gone from being formerly known as dead white men to living, breathing, multi racial figures whose songs young people constantly download and whose cast album just won the grammy. The most electrifying part of this is the impact on young people. How many of you in the audience have brought your families with you . Weve seen in the rsvps kids from tweens to college students. Be honest. When was the last time your kids asked to go hear a couple historians sitting around talking . So great is the excitement about hamilton that the Roosevelt Foundation has bought up blocks of tickets so Public School students can go see the show. [applause] just think of the impact in connecting our youngsters to our nations history in a fun, relevant, and catchy way. This show is not just entertainment. It is truly transform tiff teaching moments in america. I think also what that means for the future of broadway, all those youngsters getting their first exposure to one of the greatest american art forms, a chance they could never afford on their own. For so many of them, it will be at the beginning of a life long love affair with theater. All of this comes at a time when attitudes toward the american a past have been turning sour. Institutions named in honor of Woodrow Wilson and john calhoun for example are being debated. Washington and jefferson are being identified solely as slave owners. Alexander hamiltons place on the 10 bill was in jeopardy. Then the show hamilton. Now the Founding Fathers are seen as real human beings who love, hate, have passions, and ambitions, instead of card board figures in dusty books. And hamiltons place of honor on the 10 seems very secure. All of us at Hunter College look on these extraordinary developments with pride because we claim with him as one of our own. He is after all a graduate of Hunter Elementary School and hunter high. [applause] in fact, this is where it all began. By the time he was in eighth grade he had already written his very first musical based on a favorite novel, the chosen. While he was working on his first Tony Award Winning hit, he returned to Hunter High School to teach english. Now, it wasnt always clear sailing for lynn. In his fifth grade music class with mrs. Ames he got a report card that noted his many talents but also spotlighted a short , coming. After awarding him satisfactory in the stan be dard categories ms. Ames hand wrote this note. Lin manuel sings beautifully. He is very theatrical and dramatic but seems to have no interest in chorus. No interest in chorus. So it looks like even then lin manuel was dreaming of the center spotlight. Barbara ames, the teacher, with such an inspirational influence is here with us this evening. I want to welcome her and thank her on behalf of everybody for what she has done with lin manuel. Now, there are a few people in addition to mrs. Ames who have a better understanding of what makes Lin Manuel Miranda tick than ron chernow. Lin got the inspiration of course for his musical after he started reading rons outstanding biography of hamilton. He saw the story of an immigrant with an impoverished background who rose to become one of the greatest Founding Fathers and realized this story speaks volumes about the American Experience and connects directly and powerfully to the lives of countless people today who struggle to find their piece of the american dream. Lin asked ron chernow to serve as his historical adviser for the creation of hamilton and that story of the electric collaboration is what well hear tonight. Ron, we are also grateful to you for your willingness to share this experience with us. And we are delighted that the person discussting with you is our own director of roosevelt house. Harold joins us after a brilliant career in public life including being press secretary to one of hunters own. He had a long life as head of Marketing Communications for the metropolitan museum of arts and, of course, he is, himself, an extraordinary historian. No one could be better cast in this evenings role than harold. He is one of the foremost biographers of abraham lincoln. Just last year he was awarded a prize for his book on lincoln and the press and his collective contributions have earned him a National Humanities medal. Now that lins musical has taught broadway how to bring history to life perhaps the next will be about lincoln. The only caveat is that harold has reduced so much rich material that it would need to be a marathon like staging all four ring operas in one night or another nicholas nickelby. It is a pleasure to have these two outstanding authors here for what i know will be a discussion that is really transformative, what ron has called a biographers Wish Fulfillment fantasy. Will you join me tonight in welcoming them. Thank you. [applause] Harold Holzer i brought a prop for the two or three people in the audience who dont know what the book looks like. Welcome. To the audience on cspan as well. We will have a conversation and we will invite questions toward the end of the conversation so you will be invited to microphones. I want to welcome my friend ron. It is a banner day. It is wonderful that you are doing this for roosevelt house. As we sit here, it is very 25th. February 25. The 225th anniversary of the chartering of the first bank. Your subject worked against a lot of competition a lot of dissents a lot of pushback from a Recalcitrant Congress who thought it was unconstitutional. How did your character maneuver against such formidable opposition as jefferson . Ron hamilton was a messenger from the future. Hamilton had a vision of the country that was not only not based on agriculture but also based on stock exchanges and large corporations and central banks. The world that we live in today. Hamilton because of his upbringing in the caribbean as an illegitimate orphan kid has a sense of combat that he had to fight for survival. You can see this in his medical career when he battled with every verbal weapon at his disposal and wrote at inordinate length about things. Harold i wanted to get that anniversary note so we start out with a portrait of the combative hamilton. We are going to talk about this remarkable transition, transformation from the book to the stage. I think we should ask and im not sure if we can see a show of hands how many people in the audience have seen the play . [applause] i have to ask. Youve signed so many of these books. How many playbills have you signed . Ron chernow i have made a point of not exiting through the stage door with the cast members because i was so be something pretentious about it because im not one of the stars of the show. But i was there a couple of weeks ago and the cast members were all going to parties and he said come along. So they insisted i go out to the stage door. And there were several hundred people there. Rene suddenly pointed to me and said this is ron chernow, he wrote the book. They started screaming as if mick jagger had materialized. I started signing not only playbills but posters and souvenir albums and mokes. And mugs. Theres even a guy who stuck to 10 bills in my hand and asked me to sign them. [laughter] my first thought was isnt it a federal infraction to sign the currency. How many people bring the book to the show. Having the cast members sign the book. I discovered is that once you sign one persons you have to do everybodys. Harold about half of them are entrepreneurs to sell them. It is good you are keeping Small Business thriving. Congratulations are in order. Yesterday the Edward Kennedy prize for the best play adapted from American History was bestowed on hamilton. Another great kudos. When you wrote this, and i know you are writing another one, do you think in terms of adaptations . Ron theres some people who write biographies of with one eye on a possible dramatization. After the book came out in 2004, it was optioned three times for feature film. It disappeared into a black hole. I kept saying to my agent that i dont get it. This is the most extraordinary story. Illegitimate orphan reinvents himself as a founding father. There is a sex scandal. There is violence. It had all the ingredients of an extraordinary movie. He says that after he read to chapters in the book he immediately started clicking around to any said surely somebody mustve already adapted this. It was just sitting there for me as a biographer. Harold he took this formidable book on a beach vacation. What is he told you about the epiphany he had . Ron i met lin through mutual friend. And i said i heard my book made a big impression on you. He said he was reading the book on vacation and hiphop songs started rising off the page. And i said really . [laughter] then he started telling me that hamiltons life is a classic hiphop narrative. And i said what on earth is this guy talking about . I am a hiphop ignoramus. The reason i pursued it, i could tell he would did not want to do something satirical and outrageous. He wants to do a serious, complex rendering of this character. He said i will educate you about hiphop. He pointed out two things that are still very important to the show. The lyrics are so dense and so rapid that you can pack more information into these lyrics than any other musical form. He started talking about all of the rhyme. Internal rhyme and wordplay. Harold how did he get to you . Does he call your publisher . Ron i live in Brooklyn Heights and a Brayden Schenn my friend whose daughter had gone to wesleyan with him. He was excited to find out that they knew me. There was an enormous amount of happenstance. He was about to option team of rivals about lincoln. Then he read that Steven Spielberg was doing a movie based on that. On nine pages of the book. He saw that and decided that he did not want to compete with Steven Spielberg. Feeling heartbroken, he wandered into the borders bookstore and saw the book about hamilton. I said to them why does you buy the book . When he was at Hunter High School he had written a paper on hamilton and his duel. Harold it all starts at Hunter College. You say you are ignorant about hiphop. Did you need to be convinced . Ron i was intrigued by the idea. I was captivated by his show in the heights. He asked if he could come over to my house, he wanted to sing something for me. How does a bastard orphan son of a whore dropped in a forgotten spot in the caribbean impoverished in squalor grown to be a hero and the scholar . [applause] i can do the rest of you if you want me to go on. [laughter] in providence, impoverished and squalor. I had never heard such rich language in broadway lyrics. As he sang that first song, he hasnt changed the word. I was thinking this guy either writes very tight or i write very long. This is almost as is my book has been thrown in the washing machine and shrunk. This runs throughout the whole show. A cross between 18thcentury speech and early 21st century slang that is picked up in the music. I was so impressed by the first song. He spent an entire year writing the first song and the entire year writing the second song. The reason he spent so much time of those first two songs was establishing the style. That was a great breakthrough. No great breakthrough in broadway history. It proved not only to me but to himself that he can do it. The director said at this rate we would all be dead before we finished the show. So he put him on this regimen of doing one or two songs a month. He would be the keyboard singing another song. They were done more or less in chronological order. I can still remember my reactions. I can remember sitting alone in my office listening to the first king george the third song, youll be back. I remember sitting there laughing uproariously. It was so ingenious. Such extraordinary craftsmanship in this show. He was visualizing the whole scene around it. The great rewind seen when angelica sings the song satisfied. She keeps rewinding the scene where she meets hamilton. The sister eliza singing helpless. You suddenly see that it is tragic because she sees deeply into his nature and realizes that her very innocent sister is going to have a more complicated marriage than she bargained for. Harold he is clearly not a big reviser. You say he gets the songs down quickly. Ron i am a compulsive reviser. He actually is a reviser because he is an almost manic perfectionists. He kept revising it up until the day they recorded the cast album which they call freezing the show. Otherwise he would still be rewriting the show. His mind is always throwing off these sparks. He was constantly sharpening and tightening it. I was commenting through the end of the Public Theater ron and even the beginning of the broadway run. He responds to things that i had said. I said late in the game there is a very big point about hamiltons life that we havent covered. When he took over the government he was bankrupt and by the time he left five years later the country had gone from bankruptcy to prosperity and he had restored american credit. The next time i saw the show madison comes out and he says you took us from bankruptcy to prosperity. I hate to admit it but he doesnt get enough credit for all the credit he gave to us. That was a direct reaction to my saying that. Before he had madison coming out and saying that hamilton had died a poor man. He was wonderfully responsive. I would give him my reactions to things he would be sitting there at his laptop and if i said something completely asinine he would not say anything he would just air at me in silence. Stare in silence. If i said something that struck a nerve, he would start typing furiously on the laptop. Harold so you were never directly confronted with a suggestion that wasnt going to work. Ron he is very diplomatic. Harold how did you respond to him aside from astonishment . That race blind casting that you encountered. Ron im embarrassed to say now that lin and i went through this. Where he was sending me songs. I wasnt thinking about the casting. I want you to come and listen. I went to this little rehearsal studio in the garment district. He was already in their standing there with actors. The first thought that went through my head was oh my god, they are all black and latino. The only musical i ever saw about the Founding Fathers was 1776. A bunch of middleaged white males and powdered wigs. I was thinking to myself that im going to take him aside and say we are talking about the Founding Fathers of the United States here they started singing. They did the entire first act. I said these are the most glorious voices i have ever heard. About two or three minutes into it, i was thinking that i have never heard any singers capture the fire and passion of the American Revolution the way these young black and latino performers did. I had become a raging militants on this whole issue. It is more than colorblind casting. I would say after a couple of minutes i completely stopped thinking about what color or ethnicity anybody was. When it started at the Public Theater people didnt have a picture of what this was going to be. It became a nonfactor. By having this young black and latino cast, incidentally this has gotten less attention, is how young everybody is. We have our image, maybe not hamilton who died relatively young. Our image of washington and jefferson and madison is often them as older man. The casting of young actors was in its way as innovative as having people of color. And more accurate in a certain way. And captures the spirit of the revolution. An extraordinary inspiration on their part. They only say that one of the things that that accomplishment is that it immediately shakes the audience out of their preconceptions. These figures are familiar to us as icons on the wall. Suddenly you walk in. They could begins kids walking down the street today. The director had another inspired idea. From the neck down their 18thcentury but from the neck up their 21st century. Sasha has an afro. You are simultaneously seeing americas past and americas present. The visual effect of these new york type kids. Harold you became the historical advisor to the show. Ron i laughed and i said you want me to tell you when something is an error . He said yes, i want to the historians to take this seriously. He showed great strength and great integrity in terms of wanting to have the story be accurate. But after a while i felt that the least important thing i was doing was affecting the show for historical accuracy. He was have a plausible dramatic reason for why something was happening the way it was. He never placed any limits on what i could say or do. At rehearsals but i didnt want to do that unless the actors initiated it. I was always afraid, i didnt want to take him aside and say heres what i think about aaron burr. They had to respond to the l