presidential biographies. >> american history tv airs on c-span 3 every weekend telling the american story through events, interviews, and visits to historic locations. this month american history tv is in primetime to introduce you to programs you could see every weekend on c-span 3. our features include lectures and history, visits to college classrooms across the country, to hear -- american artifacts takes a look at the treasures at u.s. historic sites, and archives. real america revealing the 20th century through archival films and newsreels. the civil war where you hear about the people who shape the civil war in reconstruction, and the presidency focuses on u.s. presidents and first ladies to learn about their politics, policies, and legacies. all this month in primetime and every weekend on american history tv on c-span 3. >> thursday marks the 100th anniversary of the national park service. tomorrow night we bring you a number of national park service tours from our american artifacts and real america programs. some of the sites include congress hall in philadelphia. the battlefield in frederick, maryland, and the hapamatics courthouse. that starts at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span 3's american history tv. >> next we'll hear from adrienne harrison. she talks about the george washington she discovered through the books he read and collected throughout his life and about how the first commander in chief inspired her. harrison is a former west point cadet who served three tours in iraq. the fred w. smith library for the study of george washington at mount vernon hosted this hour-long event. >> good evening, ladies and gentlemen. for those of you that don't know me, my name is doug bradburn. this is where you are. you're in the library. of course, i would like to welcome c-span here as well tonight. this is our ford evening book talk. we're thankful to be sponsored by the ford motor company who have been long-time donors to the mount vernon ladies association going all the way back to henry ford who provided the first fire engine to keep the mansion from burning down, which we like to see. that is the mansion you see right there. maintained and managed by the mount vernon ladies association since 1860. built before that by the washington family and expanded by none other than george washington. of course, mount vernon ladies association have maintained this property at the highest level of historic preservation so that people everywhere could learn about the lessons and life of george washington and thiey've done this without taking any government money. they are a privately funded institution and educational institution, and it's part of our mission to help people everywhere learn about the principles of the founding and, of course, george washington's life. the topic tonight is perfect for what we do, says and we're really excited to have a special presentation for you tonight. today please where the mount vernon ladies please welcome adrienne harrison, dr. adrienne harrison is currently a fellow and consulting historian with battlefield leadership. she is a graduate of west point who later went on to earn her ma and ph.d. degrees in early american history from rutgers university. she has been an assistant professor of american history at west point. she's here for 12 years as a commissioned officer in the u.s. army, including three combat tours in iraq. so she brings a certain amount of experience to this project, and i think she'll talk to you a little bit about how personal it is and how exciting it is for her to explore the life of george washington in this way. she's here tonight to talk about her great new book, a powerful mind, the self-education of george washington, and she's doing exactly what we like to try to do here at mount vernon, which is make george washington into a human being. not the person that is just a marvel statue, although we love the great icon of george washington. we also want to recognize that he was a human who lived in the world, and one of the great ways to get at this man of action is through his reading and through his mind. he is not often associated with those things, and adrienne will talk more about that. i did want to say after her talk tonight and, of course, we'll have a chance to have questions from the audience, my colleague, mark, chief librarian, and michelle lee, special collections librarian, have made a special effort tonight to bring out some of the items from george washington's library, and you'll have an opportunity to tour the vault and see george washington's books that we have here really in the holy of holies in this temple of washington's learning, you'll get a chance to get in there behind the scenes so those of you who are able to stay a little later. it's a special evening, i think, and it should be an exciting one. everyone give a big hand for adrienne harris. >> good evening, everyone. it's a privilege to be here. especially in such a packed house. i wasn't expecting that. thank you for having me and for allowing me to indulge you with what has become one of the biggest and almost all encompassing things i have ever done in my life. i was on facebook. everybody is on facebook these days. when i was on facebook, about the same day, actually, that i received the very kind invitation for this talk, i saw a suggested ad pop up in my news feed. you know you get those, and it's like mark zuckerberg's minions are figuring out what you would want to purchase based on who you are, who your friends are, what your interests are, and what your friends like. as it happens, there was an ad that popped up for a clothing company called ranger up peril, and if you have never heard of it, it's a company that makes military themed t-shirts and sweat shirts for all the branches of the service, all patriotic sayings. it was this particular ad in question that got my attention because it had a picture on it of george washington crossing the delaware extracted from the famous painting. underneath the screen printing it said in one simple phrase, get some. the t-shirt was funny, but the tag line really caught my attention. it said, "if you insult george washington in a dream, you had better wake up and apologize. total stud." it shocked me when i saw this because this is really why i wrote this book. because this is how we think in kind of these swaggering g.i. joe type terms. george washington is the myth. he has ceased to be a real person. he is the guy that's in the painting leading this rag tag band of patriots across the delaware to slay the invaders and kill them on christmas morning. you know, he is now to us two centuries or more than two centuries removed. he is two-dimensional. he is flat, and he is far removed from us. you know, there had to be a way to make him a real person again and for me this was something that was intensely personal story because i had an interest in washington going back to my childhood, and it was something that had stayed with me all through my schooling from elementary school age all the way up to when i was an undergraduate at west point i did my thesis on washington's tour of the south in 1791, and it was something that i carried with me after west point in the army, and it was a moment that hit me when i was a brand new second e second lieutenant. i was 23 years old. all army stories always start with the phrase "so there i was." so there i was, a 23-year-old second lieutenant in the 82nd airborne division in what was to become the first phase of operation iraqi freedom, and i had the lives of 27 soldiers in my hands as well as the lives of the soldiers that we transported in the back of our trucks to and from the different missions we were assigned. i was in baghdad where we ended up after the invasion, and it struck me it was an air assault mission. it went all night long. after we got back we had narr narrowly invaded an ambush. we had to fight into the traffic jam. that was the definition of a theory. traffic in washington d.c. or new york city does not compare to what you see over there, and it was just one of those experiences that you are drained afterwards. it hit me how did washington do this? right? how did he experience combat, armed conflict for the first time? i realized to you that may seem strange, right? here i am in iraq in 2003 and my mind randomly goes back to george washington? you have to understand in an experience like that, everybody needs a bit of a mental escape. you need something that's going to at the end of each day, which is very long. the days and nights all started to blend together. you need something that is going to get you through, that's going to help you reset normally so you can face the next day. for me it was reading. you know, thanks to my generous family and friends and the extremely slow but usually reliable postal service, i had a steady stream of books sent to me that i would read every day. it's how i would decompress. my old thesis advisor, professor rob mcdonald, he sent me all the latest books on george washington. it kept his example always before me even though i was far removed from academia at that point. so i was thinking about washington and how did he do this? although he and i were separated obviously by more than two centuries, vastly different circumstances, there were some similarities. we were about the same age. i was a little bit older than he was when he led his first troops, but he and i both had very limited almost no professional experience at that point p when we were each given the opportunity to lead on our own for the first time. fundamentally i thought our emotional response to having to lead soldiers and having to give orders to people looking to us for direction must have been fujds u fundament fundamentally the same on some level. then the comparisons have to stop, right, because reality comes back into play. i was at least had the benefit of four years of a westpointe education behind me. i had been taught the fundamentals of how to lead people. i had extensive military training. i was an officer in the most professional, most powerful army in the world. washington had none of that. he was younger than me, and he had some fencing lessons. that was it. so no wonder. you know, when you look at my first experience compared to his, okay, his actual execution of his first mission didn't go well. let's just say that. you know, after -- you know, after leading his troops bravely with all of the brashness of youth out into the wilderness and he picked the absolute worst spot where you could possibly put a fortification. let's see if i can move these slides for you. worst place ever. he goes to an open clearing in the woods. depressed, higher ground around him, nothing but trees and high grass. that's where he put his fort. he willfully went beyond the extent of his orders and attacked a party of frenchmen and diplomats and soldiers and basically started the seven years war. his experience and mine were very different. at the found himself when we didn't have the special to set up the fort fiction he did. he didn't speak the language of his enemy at all, and he didn't have anybody with him who could, so in this first firefight that descended sinto a mass kerks he had no control when these poor frenchmen who most of them were mortally wounded or at least scared to death, when the -- when washington's native american allies descended on them and started to -- they're pleading for their lives in french. washington couldn't speak french. he had nobody with him who could. he lost control. there was nothing about him at that point that said, hey, future father of a nation. nothing about that at all. as he reversed his fortunes in if the seven years war, he was charged with leading these officers as well as these soldiers who also had no experience, and in 1755 he said something prothetic to his officers. he said having no opportunity to learn from example, let us read. he was exposed in the british army in that war to the professionalization of reading. you read to gain background knowledge to go out there and then put it into execution. he didn't have the benefit of a formal education, but at the was going to go out there and do the best he could, and he expected his officers to dpo the same. he was called the indispensable man. there's a part of washington's legacy, why we remember him as being the steely-eyed general on a white charger, the first president in the -- in one of the gilbert stewart portraits. there's a reason why we remember him that way. what is it? there's more to it than just he was a tall guy who looked good in a uniform and he was in the right place at the right time. so i carry this question with me to graduate school, and i was so excited. i was -- i got to go back to school after three combat tours, and i was going to make my mark on the world, and i went to my dissertation advisor and said, hey, i have an idea for a dissertation. i want to write about how george washington fashioned himself, and he said that's a terrible idea. that's a horrible -- because the challenge facing -- in part, there's a grain of truth in what he was saying. the challenge facing any washington historian today is what else is there to say about this man? right? he is one of the most studied men in history. not just american history, but you think of the world history or you travel anywhere else, any other countries. you're going to go to a bookstore and find something on george washington there. what else is there that's different? i was told to go back to the drawing board and try again. but i was undaunted, and so i kept this idea. i was going to figure out a way to convince him that this was a viable project. i was set. it was actually in a different grad school course that i was exposed to this book called reading revel usings by kevin sharp, and it's about the politics of reading in early modern england, and it focuses on a guy named sir william drake who during the previous century prior to washington's life, he was a political operative who learned the art and science of being a public figure and a political figure through reading. it was something about what sharp had argued that in talking about drake sharp said that reading is essentially something that is political and it's specific to times and places. we think about our own reading. that's pretty much true for all of us, right? our predelictions, our believes inform how we receive the things that we read. whether you are conservative, liberal, religious, not. it doesn't matter. it somehow will inform the way that you receive things. in that i found an opportunity. he included an appendix about washington's reading. this was something that, you know, longmore basically says that washington, the reader, was practical, but not really all that bright. he is not that much of an intellectual. the appendix itself kind of talks about the main topics that you'll find in washington's library, and sums it up by saying, yeah, he is not really that much of an intellectual. he left it at that. for me it was my opportunity. that's the fun of being a historian, right? we debate things. for me taking the -- what sharp had said about reading being political and reading being relative to a moment and being practical knowledge that you can apply to your specific tasks in front of you with the ball that i viewed longmore had dropped, there was my opportunity for the dissertation. i wanted to look at washington, how he did it, how he did this self-fashioning, this self-presentation through looking at his reading. that was something that aside from longmore, you won't find a whole lot of biographies that talk about it to any great extent, and most of them tend to be dismissive of his reading efforts. it's want something we see. we remember the statue or the painting, and here the books are even -- they're urnt the table. like, he is not touching them. he is not looking at them. it looks like he would rather not. if you look at the expression on wash wish's face, right? like he has been there, done that. i'm over it. so really, that was my idea. i was able to sell that to my advisor, but then the next question for me was how do you approach that? so washington's library, so what? what do you do about it? well, i looked at -- i started with the 1799 inventory that was made as part of the estate inventory as required by law when he passed away. when he passed away, there were over 900 volumes, 1,200 different works that were in the library. everything ranging from history to military science, to religion, to maps, political pamphlets, and the like. so, okay, 900 volumes. that's a lot. so of that what did he read? when you think about it, think about yourselves and your own book shelves. whether or not you have real book shelves, if you like to read real books, which i do, or if you like to have the nook or the kindle or ipad experience, we all probably have books on our shelves that we've never read, right? that thing that you pick up in a bookstore that you think looks fascinating and you never get to it, or some book that a well-intentioned person gave you as a gift and you are, like, yeah, thanks. i'll treasure that. as you consign it to the shelf never to be touched again. you know, bearing that in mind about ourselves -- books will tell you just on the spines on the shelf will tell you something about who you are. right? take me, for example. my shelves are almost all history. i'm a historian. right? that's what i enjoy. you'll find almost all history. not a science fiction title on there. right? that's just me. it will tell you something about your priorities. again, mine are history because i'm trying to make a living out of it. i have 99% history. less than 1 % anything else. if that's true of -- i think the same you can probably apply to yourself. if that's true for us, why would that be different for washington? i looked at what is on his shelves. this cursory look. kind of the longmore approach. what is it that's on his shelves? what's there, and what's not there because what's not there is also telling. right? so what is there is a lot of history, politics, military, agriculture. all the things that washington did in his life and what jumps off of the shelves at you. what's not there? literature. washington was not a man who read for pleasure. he had no time for that. none whatsoever. you know, maybe it wasn't all that interested in it either. otherwise, he would have maybe made time for us. that by itself is telling, and there's information we can get from there. there's conclusions we can draw. then how do you get further? i had to have a method, and that's really what i want to spend the rest of my time talking to you about because i'm pretty confident that you are mostly all versed in his biography, so i won't go on and on, but my method. so i looked at the volumes, and, all right, what do we know? we know that washington didn't read, write, speak, or understand any language other than english. right? he just couldn't. anything that was printed in a foreign language, i excluded for the purposes of my study. now, for things like don kehote, that he had an english translation of, that was a good example because he went and got a copy. english translations were different, and i took those with a grain of salt. maybe he did read them. that was easy. zo how do western what he read and what he didn't? well, you approach the idea of book ownership itself and what does that mean? right? books in the 18th century are luxury items. they're expensive. they're hard to come by. especially in virginia. even in williamsburg there's a printing press down there. there's a post office. it's not a book bindery. they don't a lot of book -- washington has to order his books during the colonial period -- he has to order them from england. if he took the time to order it and specifically order a certain title or additioedition, that m intended to use it. i'll make that assumption. he is not going to line -- ever. so he wasn't trying to put together a nice looking bookshelf to impress. books are expensive. they're hard to come by. if he ordered it, he was going to read it. another assumption i made is for the books that he owned that were clearly his -- i had to separate what was his from what belonged to the rest of the people in his household because in 17 99 the law was that an estate counted everything in the house, even for the residents there that were still alive. martha washington's books, nellie's books, and other relatives that had either lived there or were on extended stays were also counted. if it had the markings of ownership of somebody else, martha's signature, bushrod's signature, anything about women's literature, i kind of just assumed washington didn't have time for that and set that aside. i narrow the list further. for his books there are 397 volumes that have either hit his signature, his book plate, or both. snoo tlnt an ink smuj hoor blot out of place. this is very carefully done. his book plates where they're affixed are perfectly centered in the middle of the panl. they weren't happen hazard husband slapped on there with too much paste. this was done deliberately and with care. if he is taking the time to do that and putting his mark of ownership on it, then, again, that was something that was important to him. there are other books in there, particularly a lot of the ones that he was gifted over the years of his celebrity after the revolution and during his presidency and beyond, that the gifted books don't have -- they don't all have marks of ownership in them. we know they were his because they came with a letter that's now in his published papers saying, yeah, this was sent to him by so and so. if he didn't bother to do that, odds are he might not even have touched it. it could have been go is that one of his secretaries liked to buy and put on a shelf for him. i narrowed it down by looking that the. now i have a smaller list. now this is approachable. now what to do with that information. well, i had a choice to make. i could either take a fanatic approach and look at the different subjects that were in the library. kind of taking what longmore had started that i hold e told you about and kind of carry that on and go into more depth. i could do that. or i could take a chronological approach. for me i decided after doing some research and figuring out how and when he acquired these books over time, that i was going to do the chronological thing because in order to make sense of what washington read and why i needed to put him in the context of the wider world that he lived in because he is not someone who left a ton of marginal notes. there's only a handful of books that have his writing in them. he is not someone who referred to -- he didn't quote things verbatim in his writing. i had to be able to connect some more of the dots. that made the difference. i was able to see using the inventories of the books that he made over time beginning the first one in 1759 when he married martha and was taking over the custus estate, and then he took possession of the custus library and divvied it up for himself and his stepson. i had that inventory. one made in 1783 at his request by lunde washington, who was his estate manager here in mount vernon. i had to compare against that the inventory that was made on his stepson's death in 1782. jackie custus dies at the siege of typhoid. he lived here at one point. what was his and what was his stepfather's? then i had the inventory that was done in 1799. that's also a good one. then to get further at this and to kind of use as a guide, i had the auction catalogs from when the washington library went up for sale around the time of the civil war when the family -- when the descendants went bankrupt because when those books went for auction -- well, anything to do with washington was worth money. anything with his signature or his handwriting was worth that much more. people even then were pretty good at picking out the fakes. the signatures and the fake book plates, and it was in everybody's interest to make sure this was right and so the auction catalog shows which specific volumes had signatures in them, which had marginal notes in them, which had other people's signatures in them. any sort of other which had oth people's signatures them. for example, some of the religious books that came from his mother, you know present or given to her son on her death. they had notes like that. the guy who compile it booy the name of pc appleton. that was my handbook going through the process. it was able to help me find where they were so i can see it myself. i had a framework and i had to go about figuring out, lets put the books with the context of what he was doing. i learned something -- i learned a lot of practicalities of what he's doing. if you want to find washington books now, besides what's here in the library or the library congress, there is some scattered all over the place. the biggest single concentration is in boston. the subscription library if you are not familiar with it. members there pulled their resources together when the big auction is going to happen, they thought it was a shame and this was all going to split up and we would lose track of it. i went to boston and i was given many permissions and i was being watched as a hawk making sure i was not pocketing these. i will give you a quick sample of the relativism. i was reading one book called "the exposition." i know when washington came to possess this book -- the early 1760s. i am reading this book and its got its signature on it and it is really nothing else there. i am reading it and it is dry. i could not find anything that's there or relevant that washington would use. what is it that he's going to get from this -- so i am approaching this book and i am reading it and i am not getting anything. i sort of having a panic attack. i turned the page and i am a third of the way and i keep ongoing. i see two glorious thumbprints in the margins of the book that's much bigger than mine and clearly belong to hands that were bigger than mine. there were smudges. you know it is meticulous as washington was of book ownership. the oils on your hands or ink stain. and you know -- i am looking of the thumbprints, i cannot prove they are his. to me, it was like all right, these are here for a reaso reason -- they were dripping it. i was reading what was on the page and it was about the organization of bishop and d-- e was in the house of burgesses debating of the two acts of debating of the salaries of priests. it was a hot and heavy debate about whether virginia should petition of the bishop of cantebury of virginia. my theory seems to be holding weight so i persevere. when it comes to organization of the book. how did i approach it knowing that's the method i want at it. how did i write the book going at a chronological method. i wrote the period time. how did he enter in the public life and what were some of the things he read and why and how his reading interests change overtime. even though he starts to write out scientist things. as soon as that war was over, he sets that stuff aside. he does not read it anymore. not until he's going to be a commandeering general. he turns his interest to other things. what was it that's going onto his life that commits to his interest. was it enthralling anymore or it was hugely important to him and now it is not. i broke it down and i looked at it. he had moments where things will change and things would happen and new opportunities would open up. the first chapter conclude with the end of the seven years war where he knows once and for all, there is no british commission waiting for him. it is not going to happen. he's done with the military at that point and he's going to turn his attention of the leader of the colonial society. he married martha and he's in the top. he's got to know what he's talking about. religion is all important to him. as we get closer to the american revolution. he's a leading revolutionary and i know the opinion ideologically, some of his fellow founding fathers, he does that leap faster than benjamin franklin does. when it becomes clear that he's going to be the commander of the army -- oh, he does not know anything about the army. so he was buying fieldman yu ma things that we would give lieutenants and sergeants to read it. he's reading it as a general. he reads military signs on the fly as he's establishing continental army practices throughout the world making time of where he can but there is a political problem of the war. how do you get the soldiers to join the military stay in. it is a recruiting question. now we don't worry about their pay anymore. thankfully, i don't worry about that. why would you join that army. you are not going to do it for pay. you are not going to do it for any sort of immediate benefits and you are not going to have shoes or well equipped or well fed. please join up and stay in. how do you do that? >> he's starting to use political pamphlets and he had thomas paine traveling with him and he had it right out to his troops. he starts collecting things like things of sermons. he used these to messages to his troops. they would hear these types of sermons that would reiterate from different types of angles. so he starts to leverage these sermons and kind of popular media for a lack of a better term to his advantage as a leader. he's starting to learn how to har harenness the power of the printed work. that comes into play after the revolution between the confederation period of his presidency where there is an interest of him personally but what is going to happen to this confederation and government that was not going to go that well. he started advising people on how to pick biographers. we see that he's starting to use books in media and prints in a way where before it was about getting the knowledge that's already there on the page. now her's trying to start to control the message a little bit. that was kind of an interesting maturation of washington's intellectual use as president. who could imagine to be the first president. look at the current elections. no way that is shaping up, whatever your leanings are. imagine being washington and you have to be first, how do you do that? how do you establish the legitimacy of this office that you are in of this government under the new constitution that not everybody is on board with. how do you do that? that was all on him. if you read the second constitution it was written with him in mind. highway had to make something that's legitimate or authoritative and sustainable. he knew that. again, how does he do it? he chose to use public ceremonies and go on tours. he's charting this path that he believes bridges the gap and this new american public that's starting to sketch out. he's that kind of bridge and he's using ceremonies to do it. well, okay, that's a way, right? but, as any good politician knows, you have to know how people think about what you are doing. he had to figure it out. in the 1790s, there is no opinion polls and the media moves throw. how do you figure it out? well, for the most part, you have newspapers. newspapers proliferated after the war ended. some media outlets start to turn against him. they turn against him personally. that was something difficult to ta take. they were attacking his family and that was something he could not take so he distrust the newspape newspapers. if you are washington, you are doing your job and you don't know how people think and you cannot trust the newspaper, where else can you look to gauge public opinion? well, where else do you look? printed sermons were a way to gauge the way people are responding away from the city and the newspaper where the stories are being written and reprinted over and over again. the pope even when the american revolution ended, they were still talking about politics and so you see in washington collection, he starts of all these -- almost any policies that his administration had anything to do with it. it is all in there. some are favorable to him or to his administration, some are unfavorable but they were more in his opinion, i think they were more balanced than what he was getting in the newspaper. it was a way to see how people in all different reaches of the new united states were reacting to his presidential performance so to speak. so then i moved on. i concerned myself of the library and the physical structu structure of the library. what does that tell us? having looked at the reading he's done in his life and how his interests change overtime. well, where? and what do we get out of that? well, we know a couple of things. we know after we retire from the presidency of his final retirement. he was concerned of what people would think about him and his legacy long after he was gone.f there is an enduring interest of him long after his death. he made an attempt to shape his record. he made plans for the construction of the building at mount vernon and all of the copies of the different acts of congress. nef everything from the government that he led and the army he led, he was asking his former officer still at the capitol to send him copies of it. he was completing his record for what prosperity were going to see. historians would benefit of his books and papers but the official record. you see what's there, but again i return to the idea of what was not there. those newspapers that he did not trust. you won't find those in washington's catalog. he did not keep them. he kept the sermons that were not all together complementary of his policies. the newspapers, he does not. maybe he got rid of himself. phillip sends him a copy everyday or every edition of his newspaper. sometimes it disappears. another theory that i heard some antidote or evidence is martha could not bear for the audience to read them so she burned them. that's telling moments of washington's life and what he expects people to think of him. he had a vested interest and he understood that books and friends and media were a powerful things. powerful things that would inform of not just how people thought about him but also people would think about the efforts that he and of his public service and he perfectly held. sadly he passed away before any of that. it would have come out to be the nation's first presidential library. too bad, it did not get built. it would have made this place looked very different. that's okay. >> it is coming a long now. then there is a study of mount vernon. i am sure most of you and not all of you been through the mansion on the tours so you are familiar of where the room is located underneath the master bedroom suite. on the second floor, there is a private staircase that connects the bedroom with the study below. martha was on the second floor. even the location of that library within the house is telling, i think about washington's attitude towards reading his need for concentration and need for privacy, he did not want people to see that he was studying or reading as much as he was. he did not want to get drawn in intellectu intellectual conversations. he's not in the same league by qualifications as guys like jefferson and randolph and adam and all the rest of them. he did not want to get sucked in those conversations so the library stays hidden. there is no hallway that leads to that library, you go through a series of doors to get into it. visitors from mount vernon never sets foot in the library. everything about that and his placement and design of it, if you look at the furnishing of that, it is sparsely furnished. that was a place for him to work. he would go there every morning or before dawn or he was up before everybody else. he would return there or in the evening before retiring. he would do everything from his reading or managing his states or catching up to his correspondence. so between the placement of the room and the way it was furnished, reading his approach to it whether you talk about the book or the letter or whatever the case maybe was something that's intensely private for him. because when you look at he is life, he was always conscious of what he called his defective education. he did not -- that was achilles' heel. gre it does no good for anybody else that was around washington that was working for him or serving with him to see his flaws and nervousness and the fact that he felt odd to the extent of the responsibility that he bore. what good would that apply? he needed to give off the air of confidence. you don't display the fact that you don't read or write in foreign languages or you minute neuroscien minimize that. the commander general out there with a book. all right, guys, line up there. that's not what you want to see. a leader that was unsure of themselves. this was something that was in his interest to keep private. it was in his interest professionally, so in the end, what's this so what of all of this and what he learned and what i hope you to learn from this, i think it teaches us that washington was a real person. this was a humanizing book. this was a way to get into his mind and a way that other biographers -- a lot of his greatness is just assumed. people don't never before looked at that dimension of how he made himself and how he fashioned himself and his legacy. people have talked about his connections and powerful relationships, the fact that he was in the right place at the right time or benjamin frankly quit -- there is that element to it. he's in the right place at the right time. he had the right qualifications. he was a native born american with military experience, check, check, check. but, beyond that, he had to have done something else and i think reading is that practical deliberate, immediate reading helped him prepare for and deal with the responsibility that he had in different parts of his life whether it is here at mount vernon or trying to get out from underneath the debt tobacco planning or diminishing returns or being a military officer or being a political leader, reading is kind of how he did that. so, i think we see the human watch and we see washington with nurse. we don't think of washington as being nervous about anything. he's there, he's in command of himself. that's all there is to it. he's ready to take on whatever that comes out of it. he was a real person with real anxieties just as we all are as we take on new positions whether whatever it is we choose to do in our public or private lives. he was like us. he was real. he had flaws and he had vulnerabilities and he had strengths. it gave him the security and knowledge he needed to be able to do what he's able to do which was not probable. here is a look at the the real person. the library right here that's under everybody's nose at all times. with that, i thank you and welcome your questions. [ applause ] >> okay, we'll open up for questions. i want everyone to wait for the mic to come. we have a lot of people in the over flow room, we want to be able to hear your questions. i do want to correct one thing on the record, this design for this building is exactly what george washington had in mind. >> he found a sheet of paper and there it was, it was all laid out. >> all right, who wants to be first then? >> do you have any clues of the first book you read. if you want to learn abou about -- agriculture or whiskey, how do you order books from over seas? you cannot buy all the books available. how did he ask somebody to select the right books for him. >> as far as the first book he purchased, we all know the rules of -- he copied out all those rules by hand and committing them to memory. the first book he purchased is to his great the late frederick duke. it sounds like something that would fly off the shelves. this guy who was used. he was a huge military leader who had some acclaim over in europe and the eulogy washington bought it. it was interesting when you read it. it describes a lot of the quality that frederick had where washington kind of forced himself into being someone into a leader of character or bravery and someone who took duties seriously and value virtues. we bought this book when he was 14 years old. by the way, he did it and he went throughout the rest of his life. some of it we can discern through his letters about his friends and neighbors about certain things like farming. there is a book and one of a few examples we have is called duhamel's. washington heard of this book presumably from someone. there is no written document that i have seen. he writes to his agent robert carey in london asked for that title. he heard about this from some where. if you are in the city like new york or philadelphia, there are book shops and there are lists of what is out or what you can order. but, in a place like this where you removed from all of that. it relies on word of mouth or written recommendations. agriculture, you will find him asking for specific titles because it is something he felt comfortable talking about so. >> but, did you find anything interesting in the schooling he did receive up to that point. there must be some mathematics. was that helpful? >> yeah, sure, it was. we know that washington was educated up to today in equivalent to maybe up to middle school level. from the time he lived with his brother, lawrence, he did not have a private tutor. we know from looking at his schoolboy common place books. he had a clear gift for mathematics. he seems to take quite well and he has very neat sums and math problems written out that you could see him learning and applying this knowledge. a lot of that knowledge particularly is regarding to math and he learned on the practical level when he decided to pursue an early career and surveying. he borrowed a signature rurveyi from his mentor and he had his father's old surveying instrument and he started surveying the farm that he grew up on. we had those early surveys and you can see him getting better and better at it as he applied himself. it gave him the fundamentals but a lot of it was self taught after that. >> i would say the agriculture is where you see him of the most focused on or the happiest as a reader. it is where you see him applying himself. he entered in the 1780s and correspondence with some english agriculture reformers. he takes these books that are written over seas and do the conversi conversion math. americans always rejected european measurements and even back then. you can match that. it is neat and deliberate. the farming, he builds that 16 sided barn, the barns. he's taking notes and he makes himself femanuals that he takes out with him. he's not going to take the expensive books in the field. that's crazy. what if he drops it in maneuver? that's crazy. >> he's pulling ideas from these different books the way students would now. you know if they are pursuing some sort of a project and experimental projects. that's where you see his passion comes through the most. >> if those of you are going to do the tours afterwards, we pull out of adrienne speaking of of some notes and varlow -- i saw a gentleman up here. >> yeah. if you go for the bookstore in front of ford's theater. you will see they stack up all the books on lincoln. i want to thank you for your perseverance and fighting through your thesis. it seems that they were important to him and he read for military reasons, political reasons -- and basically to persevere and while you also mentioned, he never shared what he read close to the best of what he read. did he ever inquire, did you ever find any evidence of him inquiring what jefferson read or adams read or what others read? if so, did that influence his? i want to add one last question since you mentioned of the political election, what would all the kand dacandidates need about washington today? [ laughs ] >> well, i think he knows who he is for starter and what he did. that's a little iffy depending on which candidates with are ta talking about. you don't find of a specific reading especially guys like jefferson or adams about what they recommend. these guys are universally trained scholars and attorneys. for them, reading is something that they were trained to do. these are classically educated. for that, you don't find washington soliciting advice from that. you see him asking for add vivis a younger man, he's asking his mentor and certainly he would talk to general braddock that he served under staff officer and he's exposed to that. if he was not asking the question, he would hear a conversation of reading and he was picking up on it. otherwise, he really does -- he tends to stay clear of the philosophical conversations and stayed with those that he felt very comfortable weighing in on. hey, what do you think about or could you recommend me a book about political philosophy of voltaire because he has voltaire's work in his library. did you read tomas hobbs instead or what does he think about it? that's something that washington does not feel comfortable doing. that's very much practical of things he's asking about. >> you talked about his political books he was looking for, is there a track of those books that led to the ability that he gained to find the right people and the right organization to run the government? >> you mean in terms of setting up the presidential cabinet and that kind of thing? no. there really isn't. finding a good team of advisors was something that washington learned how to do through experience. he does this during the revolution and he has what he called his military family and aids and top commander. he learned that through his experience and the previous war and his inexperience in this one. they almost lost the war. he learned value of something he applied before but straight from what he returns to having descendent opinions. he would throw out ideas and get opinions from those around him whether they are his cabinet officers during his presidency. he would listen to what they have to say or respecting the fact they were qualified for his position than he was. he would listen to their opinion but he knew it is his job to weigh in. he took his time and that's something that jefferson would derive from washington and had a powerful mind but not a first order. he was slow in making decisions. this is why. this is the play on words that i put on the title. that's not coming from the reading example. that's coming from experience. english history would show him that king would also have councils. they were parliament structure. that's something he's very much tapping into of the british example. which seem sort of unusual for the time. >> yes, it certainly is unusual, you are absolutely right. again, we have the interception of experience of his reading. most of his military reading was british or english translation of some french texts. the english army and the french army were the most powerful in the world. so he's using all of that and what he learns immediately from his military reading is how unprepared he is. the organization that he led and not just him. he had two officers with experience, that's it. all the rest of them were henry knox who's a book seller and who likes till artillery. he write books and that's it. he's good of plucking out people of potentials but he does not have the experience. he reads from british manuals, listening to those officers and talking about their readings about grand strategy and how you go about winning wars, particularly continental war. you don't want to have the long protracted war. you want one big battle that decides everything. then you surrender or you win with honor or everybody goes home. and short of that. those were the two ways that you won wars. for washington, he tries the big battle in new york and he fails miserably. he had nothing to work with. you have manhattan and brooklyn heights and long island and stat en island that's out there. you have two rivers and a huge harbor that could hold all the oil navy. how do you defend that? he's got some guys from new england and no navy to speak of. he tries the big battle and he and his army failed. he learns that and he's smart enough politically to learn that the british does not want this to go on forever and so does he. the british are going to have less of a stomach for it. they have a massive war debt from the last war from the seven years of war that they are still paying off. they're not going to want this to go on. the british people are largely either in different or not in favor of waging war or people that's largely related to them. he figures all he had to do is survive. he goes against the grain of what's expected of an 18 century commander in order to do this. the reading, it shows him where his shortfalls are and his lack of education keeps him humble enough that although he wants to be seen as and needs to be seen as the big commandeering general worthy of the title and the rank. he cannot do it. so he has the to do what's necessary in order to survive. he has no other choice. if he had that big military education that all his british counter parts had. it would have been harder for him. he's aggressive by nature and he wants ta bhat big battle. it would be harder for him to see it if he had that education behind him. it potentially blinded in what his army were. he would think that the army would take it away. >> as a military commandeering yourself, i wonder if you could say more about the tactical literature that he read and how well lessons that he was able to absorbed from literature match with the battle plan that he's thinking. >> to give you a good example, when washington took over the army in cambridge after being commandeering chief, he's a going up north. he's been to boston before. what he saw horrified him. he was horrified by the fact that they elected their own officers that's completely different from the world that he came from where you know your connections and birth and connections got you to your position. he had to restructure this. you see him reading in these steal manuals are directed at sergeants and lieutenants to read. he starts to read or writing for the first time of how to do fundamental things about how to keep accountability of your soldiers and equipment and how to keep the camp cleaned and steriled so you don't want to have open sources of water. and in terms of his strategy, he's relying on the grand strategy, he got big ideas that he would have gotten of his knowledge of british military history and exploits, you know probably where he got from reading things and caesar's commentaries. but, that's kind of again a blend of his reading and his goals and knowing what the expectations were on both sides. and he's always aware of that and he's always aware of the fact that he needs for this revolution to work and it is a revolution for him and not a rebelli rebellion. for a revolution to work. he has to be seen as leading a legitimate fighting force and not a band of rebels. until 1776 when independence is declared, that was what it was to both americans and the british. for washington, he felt something different. his first task and part of his strategy is making a professional force. you see him advocating over and over again for congress to regular pay and uniforms and things that are not really a commandeering general problem usually, he's making a big deal out of all this. it is about legitimacy as much as he needs to win for hi his -- the sake of americans and the british needs to recognize they are fighting a real armed force. this is not just a band of criminals that should be crushed as in previous rebellion of history. that's the strategy that we don't cast. we think of strategies of big campaigning but a key component for washington is the politicals always merging with the military and that was a big part of it and a direct application of that reading. >> first, it second it is kind psychological question. did george washington strike you as a visual or audio or tactical learner? >> huh, i think i will return to the agriculture because that's where you see him really kind of actively putting multiple things together. he's reading different sources and got his own creative ideas and putting him to action. i think he's you know certainly a a tactical learner. when you see him going out there and i know they're experimenting with crops. he's going out there and learning surveying by doing it. he's got one book in one hand and the stakes in the other. his skills get better overtime and his agriculture skills and it is so complicated and he's trying to innovate ahead of what a lot of his peers are doing. i think he's very much a tactical. i think he's happiest as a tactical learner. >> one more question. >> this is set up of the 19th century literally household on the books side were two great works. can you talk about washington's readings of either ones and how that informs the periods you are talking about. >> i will talk about washington in the bible. that's alwaysing a hot topic of washington and religion. it is a debate that continues to go on what he actually believes. washington's relationship with the bible goes all the way back to his childhood. mary washington, his mother read to her children from the bible and the book of common prayers and sermon books everyday. that was apart of his early education was growing up with that. it was important for him not just, leave aside for a moment of the question of faith, for some one like him who wants to make it in virginia and society, he needs to grow up a good anglangl anglican. and how you perform through out the service and for those people who are not of -- there is an active worship that goes on. there is nealing akneeling or rr rituals that go along with it that requires members to participate. once the ambition really got going which was from adolescence on ward. it was important for him to learn how to behave the right way. you were on stage. everybody from the lowest person and socially ranking person from the congregating person of the leader of the pact was on display. you don't want to make a misstep that's certainly noticed. as a young man, and politically church and states are tied together, you need to understand that. he makes biblical references throughout his life, throughout his public life. there are some prayers that attributed to washington. he mentions of devine providence and different names. even when he tells lafayette of retiring of his own vines and victory. that was biblical. it was something of an important book throughout his life, religion here at mount vernon was taken seriously. it was something he participated as well and the rest of the family. it was one of those books that were always with him and useful for him. lets give adrienne a big round of applause. [ applause ] >> that was wonderful, we really love what you are doing and the great work you are doing and particularly here in washington's library. some lodgistic concerns. we have books for sale. what better place to buy a book after talking about reading. this should inspire you all to give books to people whether they read it or not. we sell it at the door there. we are in that inventory of his death. and so i guess, mark, is in the back and michelle and our special liberian right there. you want to meet in the book out, it is right in the back. lets give a big round of applause. thank you. [ applause ] coming up next on american history tv, a discussion about roosevelt's mother, sarah, and her relationship with members of the family and followed by two historians of the biographies. we'll look at the book collective and rent by george washington throughout his life. ♪ one hundred years ago, p