David McCullough: 2011 National Book Festival

from the Library of Congress in Washington DC good afternoon it's wonderful to have you all here on this first National Book Festival in our history to continue for a second day thank you for coming thank you for bringing the Sun out and making it clear that sheer human 'ti can always overcome the most inaccurate of weather predictions special thanks to one of our new sponsors Wells Fargo which has specifically been sponsoring the new history and biography pavilion we were coming to the close of this 11th annual National Book Festival and all of us at the Library of Congress hope you've enjoyed it as much as we've enjoyed planning and bringing it to you with so many great sponsors and partners it's a joyous event but you know it's also an important one because the ability to read is the key to a good life in every sense of the word reading is central not just to enriching our own lives extending our horizons of our society and building and sustaining a dynamic democracy and we are grateful to the 115 writers who have brought us the ongoing richness of American creative spirit in a collective and public and national way here on the mall at the height of our capital at the 11th National Book Festival cannot of course have been the success it has been the unprecedented number of people who participated without the work of over a hundred volunteers have given generously of their time and that's actually a more than a thousand it's it's a record in that respect as well as the number of people like you who've been here but I want to speak that's for recognition of Deanna Markham she is the wonderful library and who keeps us all here in Washington throughout the nation she's been the executive director of the festival Jennifer Gavin its project manager John called a long time ahead of our center of the book with a 15 state centers and the author's coordinator Suzy Cole the director of development and the thousand volunteers made up of library staff who were here on their own time it's a free weekend this is not their divvy but it's their pleasure and also members of the Junior League and half a thousand of them and other individuals have just loved the Book Festival many of these volunteers who returned year after year to help we couldn't manage a book festival without that staff from fleischman-hillard deserves special commendation for all the logistics of getting these tents up and installing the technology that that has made a communication possible our security staff worked hard to ensure that the books a festival is a safe and happy experience for all of the book lovers who have joined us this weekend I think we're especially grateful for the men many who brought their children and celebrated the multi-generational task of reading and reading to each other and extending the conversations that you never quite have with that screen in front of you with one another so it's grateful to our many many sponsors who have contributed the financial resources and the partner institutions with all kinds of attractions that have made this event not only possible but sustaining and I'm going to specially mention our co-chairman of our new board for the for the festival David Rubenstein has been a great benefactor and unfortunately can't be here today but deserves our great thanks he's no chairman with me of this new board we have for the festival and its many members are also here and we thank them and finally thank the authors and their publishers for making the books and for having them come alive here at the Book Festival on the National Mall and making it a landmark and continuing event here in Washington a Nobel laureate and we began the festival this year with a Nobel laureate and literature reading yesterday I didn't reminded me that a Nobel laureate and neuroscience said not long ago in a talk at the Library of Congress he said you know he said I've reached the conclusion that the human brain is wired for narrative and so we closed our festival today with the man who has drawn more of us than we can imagine into a fresh and in new ways into many parts of the unique narrative that is the history of the United States of America he's twice won the given surprise for lifting first Harry Truman and then John Adams out of they were well known of course but out of the relative neglect that that they had received compared to the presidents that preceded and succeeded with April John Adams was president between George Washington and Thomas Jefferson Harry Truman between Franklin Roosevelt and too late Eisner all these are iconic figures but he's created new icons new narratives he's humanized history and more than that he's also celebrated the human stories behind great events like the building of the Panama Canal the Brooklyn Bridge and also of historic tragedies like the Johnstown Flood David McCullough is our citizen chronicler his latest book is the greater journey Americans in Paris the 19th century story of creative Americans journeying back across the Atlantic to discover the science the art and the learning of the old world even at a time when other Americans were journeying physically to the Pacific to discover the national resources the natural beauty and the challenges of the American frontier America was opening up a new world physically in the West while enriching itself culturally and intellectually in the great city of light in the journey eastward across the sea ladies and gentlemen David McCullough came into my office two days after the first National Book Festival to say how important it was to continue to do this kind of event nationally and he offered to help in any way he could one day after that came the unspeakable tragedy of 9/11 one of the darkest days in all the narrative of our national life but he came back the next year to give the final talk at the Book Festival a year later and he ended it in a way will not forget some will argue he suggested that you have to regulate what people think and write and even read and they ended it was just two words we don't we are we are glad to have him here the middle of freedom winner back to end the first 2-day National Book Festival we've ever had and the first of the second decade of this wonderful event that we at the Library of Congress are so privileged to share with you all ladies and gentlemen David McCullough thank you very much thank you thank you very much what a thrilled what a thrill to be here among people who believed in ideas in the printed word and the use of the language and this human spirit has expressed in books in writing and what a tremendous pleasure and thrill and honor it is to be introduced by James Billington we have had a number of eminent distinguished librarians of Congress Archibald MacLeish the famous poet Daniel Boorstin scholar and historian and attorney but we have never had an ax more accomplished productive inspirational or far-seeing librarian of Congress than James Billington I like to think of our Library of Congress as the mother church for our national public library system one of the greatest institutions in American life freeze of the people just imagine every single citizen everybody of every age in this country can get essentially a free education by going to the public library and furthermore after one has finished one's formal education one can then begin the great adventure of learning which is for the rest of your life through the public library and don't please let's not ever forget that it isn't just the books in the library or the manuscripts or the back issues of newspapers and the maps that are a value but the people who work there the librarians it took me a while to catch on to this when I first started doing research for my work that if I went up to the librarian and told her or him what it was I was trying to do what I was trying to achieve and how much I don't know they went right to work for me and solved all kinds of problems and they still do and I'm forever indebted to them I'd like to begin with a couple of lessons from history there are innumerable math lessons of history of course but just a few to sort of set the scene one of them is that you can make a very good case and I try to make the case that nothing ever happened in the past nobody ever lived in the past they lived in the present but it was their present not ours different from ours but they didn't live in the past Washington and John Adams Jefferson didn't walk around saying isn't this fascinating living in the past aren't we picturesque and our funny clothes nor did they have any idea how it was going to turn out any more than we do very important point they they couldn't foresee the future any more than we can there's no such thing as the foreseeable future just as there's there's no such thing as a man made women woman or a man made man it doesn't happen life is a is a joint effort a great accomplishment is a joint effort education is a joint effort progress is a joint effort a nation is a joint effort and we have to see it that way and one of the key factors in all our accomplishment all our lives each and every one of us has been our teachers we are more indebted to our teachers than anybody in our society yes and let's not do anything that makes their job harder each and every one of us I hope has had one or two or maybe more teachers who have changed our lives who made us see in a way we never did before who opened up the window and let in the fresh air and changed our outlook changed our love of learning which is really what it's about curiosity curiosity is one of the essential elements of being a human being curiosity is what separates us from the cabbages and and it's accelerative like gravity the more we know the more we want to know and I applaud particularly those teachers who encourage their students to ask questions not just to know the answers to every question but to ask questions because it's by asking questions that you find things out and later in life especially I have never embarked on a project for one of my books now this is a confession in front of a large and very important influential audience I have never embarked on a book about a subject that I knew all about I knew something about them I knew enough that it was interesting to me I knew that compelled to want to write about it but more important compelled to want to know more about it if I knew all about it I wouldn't want to take on the book because what would the u.s. be I wouldn't be in a journey it wouldn't be an adventure I want to tell you how this present book of mine got its start or at least a good nudge in the right direction it happened right here in Washington I was driving down Massachusetts Avenue one morning during the rush hour and all of a sudden right by Sheridan Circle right just past the Embassy Row there was a horrific traffic jam everything stopped and I looked over and there was old General Phil shirt and Sheridan up on his horse the wreck was a pigeon on his hat and I began to wonder how many people who go around this circle every day twice a day thousands of them have any idea who he was and as I was thinking that and getting a little discouraged Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue began playing on the car radio and suddenly the magic the power of that music not only lifted me out of my traffic jam doldrums but sent me soaring and then I thought who's more alive in our world today in our lives today Sherman or Gershwin who's more important to American history Sherman or Gershwin and of course they were both important but we must not I said to myself we must not leave Gershwin out of it history is much more than just politics and the military I'll say it again history is much more than politics and the military there are as many of you appreciate and know maybe know far more about it than I do certain ancient civilizations about which all we know is their art and their architecture so we must take art and architecture and music and poetry and drama and dance and science and ideas seriously as a subject for history it's um it's who we are as human beings take away Willa Cather take away Mark Twain take away Gershwin take away Winslow Homer take away the poets of our time and end times before Walt Whitman and it's as if you took away the Mississippi River or the or the Rocky Mountains we wouldn't feel the same way about who we are and of course some of our greatest statesmen of all having their own way been masters of the literary form read Lincoln's second inaugural address for example it's a work of art and here we are in this magnificent capitol of ours surrounded by science art music history all part of the story so it couldn't be a more appropriate place for us to to give our our respect to and our belief in that we have to do more to understand the history of our culture and we have to keep on teaching the culture that we profess we cannot we cannot we must cut back cutting back on art programs music programs theater and we must concentrate on what our children and grandchildren are reading when I've set out to try and understand somebody about whom I'm writing I try of course to read what they wrote and because of our wonderful libraries like the Library of Congress University Libraries letters and diaries have survived that take us into the lives of these vanished people and you get to know them in a way that you can't get to know people in real life in some ways you get to know them better than you know people in real life because in real life you don't get to read other people's mail but I try also not just to read what they wrote but to read what they read and it's a very revealing part of who they were and what their time was we are what we read to a far greater extent than most people have any idea we walk around all of us every day for example quoting Shakespeare servantes Alexander Pope but we don't even know it and what we are reading shapes how we think our vocabulary shapes what we think we think with words and when we have a student body whose vocabularies are declining their vocabulary total number of words they know and use in everyday language is declining we've got a very serious problem and it has to be faced and one of the best of all ways is to make sure we know what they're reading and to encourage them to read the best work possible and encourage the best teachers who are showing them what they the teachers love show them what you love is what the great teachers have all known how to do now in my book about the Americans who went to Paris I'm writing about a generation beginning about 1830 extending on into 1900 really two generations who went to Paris not because they were alienated with American life or American culture not because they were angry or feeling an overwhelming sense of self-pity quite the contrary they were going there to improve themselves to better serve their country and they said so again and again not to serve their country in politics or in the military to serve their country to perform at the best of their ability the desire to excel ambition to excel not to be wealthy not to be famous not to be powerful but to excel whether they were painters musicians our writers or sculptors or our physicians or in one case a politician named Charles Sumner who one who wanted to improve his mind who wanted to come back with a greater sense of the potential of civilization in the public garden in Boston there's a statue for Charles Sumner all it says there is some nerd there's no explanation no explanation who he was no explanation who the sculptor was most people I think probably more than one out of a thousand people in Boston has no idea who he was if they have any thought about it is probably that he built the Sumner tunnel in Boston which he did not Charles Sumner went to Paris because he wanted to attend lectures at the Sorbonne and he attended lectures of all kinds and he took notes he crammed in French before he started his lecture attendance and he became quite fluent in it and he took notes on everything everything imaginable and one day he his mind began to strain a little because the professor was running on a little longer than he expected so he was too began looking around that the other students in the hall this hall is still there by the way and they're close to a thousand students in the hall and he noticed that the black students we're treated just as everyone else they talked the same as everyone else they dressed the same as everyone else and they have the same ambitions that he had and he wrote in his journal that night I wonder if the way we treat black people at home has more to do with how we've been taught than the nature of things and it transformed him overnight literally overnight into an abolitionist and he came back got into politics was elected to the United States Senate when he was 40 years old and right up there on the hill he led he led the abolitionist movement in the Senate with the strongest most powerful voice of all second only to Abraham Lincoln in what he how he was felt as a force in the country and as many of you know he almost paid the price for it with his life he was almost beaten to death by a congressman from South Carolina who attacked him blindsided him with a heavy walking stick and virtually killed him and from which Sumner never really recovered either psychologically or physically that man that remarkable man was changed by his experience in Paris and we were changed as a people and a country as a consequence and if you'd think that's something of in this guy exaggeration when John Brown and his band of men in Kansas heard about what had happened Sumner that's what caused them to attack and make what's become known as the Pottawatomie massacre which inflamed the country when that story broke one of the lessons of history is one thing always leads to another just as it does in real life individual life which is one of the reasons among the many reasons why we have to do a better job of teaching our children and our grandchildren history I want to read you written something written by a Boston Irish boy who is about almost almost 21 years old not quite who had no money no friends in high places knew no one in Paris no contact spoke not a word of French but he was ambitious to a be a painter and so he went to Paris to study art and he succeeded in a magnificent fashion which is a story unto itself here's what he wrote in those far-off days there were no art schools in America no drawing classes no collections of fine plaster casts and very few pictures on exhibit I knew no one in France I was greatly utterly ignorant of the language I did not know what I should do when once there but I was not yet 21 and 20 and I had a great stock of courage and of experienced experience which is sometimes a great help and a strong desire to do my very best the strong to desire to do my very best that young man became the most accomplished and commissioned portrait artist on both sides of the Atlantic he painted virtually everybody and anybody who was anybody on both sides right now there are seven paintings portraits by George PA Healy hanging in the White House there are 17 portraits by George Healy hanging in the National Portrait Gallery and over in the Corcoran Gallery all this here in our Capitol over in the Portrait Gallery is his great picture of Abraham Lincoln painted in Illinois at Springfield just after Lincoln found out that he'd been elected president and it was while Lincoln was sitting for that portrait and Healy was painting him without his beard that he read aloud the letter from the young woman telling him Abe Lincoln that he would be much handsomer if he grew a beard and Lincoln turned to Healy and said mr. Healy would you like to paint me with a beard and Healy and all commendable honesty said no sir I would not so it's one of the very few images in color by a painter that we have of Abraham Lincoln and one of the greatest of all Heelys portraits a Healy another Healy portrait of Abraham Lincoln hangs over the mantelpiece in the State Dining Room at the White House here's this young man who had no advantages none had never been to college never been to an art school who decided to take upon himself to do this was brave my consensus is my my thesis is that not all pioneers went west and that's what this book is largely about Oliver Wendell Holmes senior was a poet and an essayist he'd already written a very famous popular poem called Old Ironsides which is what kept the USS Constitution the famous ship in Boston from going to the scrapheap Holmes decided he wanted to be a doctor and that he in order to get the finest medical education possible he had to go to Paris not so much because the medical training in Paris was far advanced by our Terms but it was infinitely far advanced by the terms of the nineteenth century and particularly way ahead of American medicine very American medicine was pathetically backward there were very few medical schools over half of all the doctors in the United States at that time this in the 1830s and 40s had never been to medical school and they trained with other doctors who've never been to medical school hey the Harvard Medical School had a faculty of about seven they and and when they got to Paris they were in a medical school with several thousand students being taught by the greatest physicians in who were the greatest physicians in the world it was the leading medical center of the world and if they could go there in two years they could learn as much as or more than they would learn in general practice here in ten years now there were two very important reasons for this apart from the fact that we were so far behind and because Paris was Paris it was the cultural capital of the world both of these reasons had to do with our culture our society our moral rules and regulations than it had to do with science most American women at that time would have truly literally preferred to have died than to have a man examine their body and since all doctors were men alas thousands of women died unnecessarily because of that in France and Europe there was no such stigma about women being examined for illness or birth or whatever by male physicians none and equally important students could make the rounds with a trained physician in the hospital to watch the physician attending doing examinations of women patients the second very important roadblock for us was the with the strong opposition to the use of cadavers in many states really more than half of the states they were illegal now what that meant was that there was a black market for human bodies and because of that the bodies were very expensive and because of that students almost never got to dissect a body that could ever wear as in Paris again in France there was no stigma about it and so dissecting for hours at a time every day for years at a time was an enormous part of their training and one of the young American students who loved this best then became extremely good at it was young Oliver Wendell Holmes senior who came back from that training in Paris to then teach anatomy at Harvard for more than 35 years devoting his entire professional life to science now I bring up Holmes primarily because he is only one example of the people who went to Paris who came home to teach they came home to teach in art schools they came home to teach in medical schools they came home to teach in law schools and they came home to teach English and and writing in our universities and they changed our educational system to a much greater degree than most people have any idea one of my favorite characters of all that I was able to write about was Elizabeth Blackwell who was the first female dr. American female doctor in our country another another was the wonderful creator of the Emma Willard school in Troy New York Emma Willard who was the first woman to champion higher education for women in America and spent her whole life in education we have people like John Singer Sargent whose innate ability was was he was a prodigy he was painting some of the greatest pictures ever painted by an American when he was still in his 20s in Paris working primarily under a French painter named Carolus Duran who really was his master and who sent him down to Spain to study Velasquez because he said everything you need to know is found in velasca it goes on and on and and Augustus saint-gaudens so again like George PA Healy was a boy growing up in the streets of a city big city in America New York put to work when he was all of 13 years old by his father very little education but a great deal of talent but also this drive this desire to excel and he became the great American sculptor of the 19th century in my view he's the greatest American sculptor ever and we have his his monuments to our history many of the most important spots in America his great was his greatest work in my view is the Shaw Memorial which is on Beacon Hill in Boston which is the first work of American art by a major American sculptor or painter which portrays black Americans in a heroic role it's about the 54th regiment from Massachusetts which served under captain Shaw and who were so many of whom were killed at Fort Wagner and if you've seen the movie glory you know what that's about the Shaw Memorial is a breathtaking and immortal work there is a gilded reproduction of it it's really a duplicate of it here in the National Gallery and there is another very important Saint Gaudens piece in the cemetery here which is his monument memorial to clover Adams the wife of Henry Adams mysterious looking figure with a shawl over the head excuse me which is also to be seen in a duplicate version at the National Portrait Gallery the great statue of General Sherman the stands at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York at the entrance to Central Park right across the Plaza Hotel is also st. Gaudens work which i think is the greatest equestrian statue in america now here's this boy who was a shoemakers son and he did indeed desire to excel and he did indeed excel and he did brunt bring it home and I want to read you something that he wrote this is years afterward when he was coming back from Paris after completing the Sherman statue he wrote writing to his friend will lo who was a very good American painter who'd also been in Paris with him dear old fellow telling him I'm coming home I've had a wonderful experience in Paris and it was been surprising in many respects one of which is to find out how much of an American I am I belong in America he continued that is my home he was ready to come home and he felt that he was coming home with the best that was in him which wouldn't have possibly been impossible if he'd stayed at home we owe more to our friendship and our association with France than we have any idea we all know about Lafayette of course but let's not forget that the French army that served in the Revolutionary War was crucial under Rochambeau in fact the army of under Rochambeau at at the surrender at Yorktown was as big as the American army under Washington and the money that they loaned us and the fact that the our country was more than doubled with the Louisiana Purchase the fact that the greatest tribute to our to our Creed if you will that was a gift from another country from France the statue of liberty by bartholdy which stands of course at our greatest port of entry in the country the French the friendship left their names all over the states and cities and colleges and university we may not pronounce them correctly but they are French names and of course let's not ever ever forget that more Americans more of our people are buried in France than any other place in the world except our own country because of those who died in World War one and World War two and if you've ever been to the battlefield to Normandy or the battlefields of the first world war which in many ways are even more moving because nobody goes to see them anymore you know what a toll it took we are again we are more indebted to other people than we have any idea and we are particularly indebted to all those people who preceded us who preceded us as painters writers artists musicians and who left us the poetry we loved and the architecture we loved and the buildings that have shaped us after we shape them and we're indebted to those who had the fundamental nobility and character to express the best of our intentions in words that have survived who were not just depending on tomorrow's poll or tomorrow's rating or getting our faces on television as the purpose of achieving high office but who were trying to do what's best for the country and then when you read about these young Americans who were going there to serve in medicine and painting and the theater and to do what they did for the best of their country it is inspiring beyond any way I can express it at least right now this afternoon for you on we go this has been a presentation of the Library of Congress visit us at loc.gov

Channel: Library of Congress

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Length: 40min 6sec (2406 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 04 2011