what we're here for tonight is the fantastic conversation we're all going have with our

finalists tonight and. i know we're here to hear them talk. i'm going to be as brief as possible and, introducing them so we can turn it over to them. and many of them don't really need. a introduction. we have with us stacy shift who written countless biographies. cleopatra, benjamin franklin, a pulitzer prize winner, and a george washington book prize winner. and i know i'm probably skipping a couple of biographies in there as well. fred kaplan, who has also written an enormous number of biographies, i couldn't believe it. i mean i've familiar with several of them, and i kept looking for your list. and i couldn't believe i mean, mark twain, charles dickens, henry james, abraham lincoln, john quincy adams, a finalist for the pulitzer prize. i mean, missing a lot of people, too, aren't i. well. i have to confess. i'm not missing them anymore. for right. and he is. and here tonight to talk about thomas jefferson, who's he has recently written and is a

finalist. mary sarah builder, who's a professor of law, boston college, and one of the leading thinkers on the constitution, who wrote a bancroft prizewinning book on james madison in the constitution, which was a finalist. the george washington book prize, which is here. she's here tonight to talk about female genius, the biography of eliza, harriet. we're going to learn a lot more about. and then we have maurizio valsania who has written eight books for italian and four in english and three on thomas jefferson. and he's recently turned his gaze to george washington, which the subject of his book that's a finalist for the george washington prize. so all of you. thank you very much much. so i have to meet with another mike. so give us a second here.

i'll just try to think of the names, friends. don't exclude yourself. i miss my. well, that would be a that would a great question. what your relationship is to each one of these both while writing it afterwards. and but first, i might actually note that this is the first time that all four finalists have been biographies. and i thought that might be a great way. start the conversation. and i'll ask you a few questions. and i want to be clear to feel like you can be rude. interrupt me. you know, interject when you feel necessary not here to hear me. talk here to you all. share your thoughts and your work in these. so, stacy, i thought i'd start with you and your biography on somebody named sam adams, who may be the most well-known known revolutionary, thanks to some beer. but i thought i'd just ask you. i mean, you have written so many

different biographies. what was different about sam adams, who is into beer, although, you know, i should say straight off that you should never research a topic where the first hit when you google it is the beer, right. research very difficult. i mean, this was a this was a difficult think as a general rule to go back half a step. and i don't know how, my fellow feel about this. you always have sort of less than you would like and too much to get your arms around. and i realize that doesn't sound it makes sense, but it seems always the case. and in this case, it was really adams's letters, which i knew. we know from john adams, his diary that samuel adams burns, a great portion of his correspond so that basically nobody will be off. all fingerprints are covered. and so i knew i was working from truncated record in terms of his personal, but i also had the other side of the correspondence. i had what people were writing to him, which was fabulous and very rich and had never really been mined before. on the other hand, i the sort of too big to get your arms around part of it, i thought the outset

that i would read all of the boston newspapers during the pre-revolutionary period because adams was writing under countless pseudonyms and, those papers. and so i said to joe ellis, one day, i'm going to read all the boston papers for those years. and he said, great, see you in 20 years. so i read the boston because of the boston evening post only for those years. but but basically this was a book that was and it turned out to be a smart to have done because boston is is a character really in the book and in boston plays a role here almost in a sort of as a personality of its own. so those were just two pieces of the two poles of the research really went into it. yeah, i'll leave it there because i think have more to say. oh, yeah. and fred, you wrote something called a literary biography. and that's been your genre. i don't know if you could talk a little bit more. what a literary biography means and what it revealed about thomas jefferson that perhaps regular biographies have not. my interest as been in language and language as an expression of human nature, a personal of

context of, situation, and my fascination childhood on has with reading and with words and they they the key. it seems me because of who i am to understanding jefferson, for example, is to understand how jefferson's mind worked and to understand jefferson's mind worked. i need to and could only approach his mind through his written words. jefferson was a great. he had a great talent. great gift to give. was not always totally in his control. he sometimes was a compulsive writer. he also was a writer who was capable of being truthful and

untruthful almost at the same time. it's a great gift. it's a great gift that he had. it served him very well. just the way all our little virtues and our vices serve us well. we need them so, jefferson was the wordsmith of the revolution? certainly, and had much to say. there after that. it left an indelible impression on the american. he was a figure of great controversy in his lifetime. he was not a public speaker. he hardly liked to speak in public at all. he could hardly heard. he mumbled. he mumbled, you want to hear him talk? you almost never could hear a word or repeat it. but he wrote everything and everything course was published. the great cable news. the social media of the day was

the newspaper. so the more i approached to jefferson as it was to lincoln and to john quincy adams as to the their greatness as as synthesize, as of language and ideas and public grow and so i've devoted a lot of years to doing that, not because i love somehow wondrous, wonderful, and they're all human beings we are, but because they had great gifts and they gave they gave richly of those gifts gifts. great. thank you. and mary so you've uncovered somebody named eliza harriet, which when you read the book, it's clear she just exists in just shards that you had to find. i don't know if you could tell us about how you came across project, but how you

reconstructed the life. somebody whose records are so dispersed and fragmented. yeah so unlike everyone else who people know. i wrote about somebody who really been completely forgotten. she was the first public lecturer in the united states and she wasn't educator of women. and she lectures in philadelphia in the summer of 1787, when constitution was being drafted and i argue she may have inspired the gender language of the constitution. and i learned about her. george washington kept a diary that summer and he wrote that he went to hear a lady lecture at the college hall and then he said she was quite tolerable, which was actually, i thought, pretty good. you know, i'd be happy with quite tolerable. and and so i became interested in her. there's only five letters of hers that existed and four of them are to george washington. and you would think that would be great, but they're mostly

like, can you send the carriage to pick me up? she wanted to visit mount vernon. she didn't have means to do it. and george washington very graciously sent the carriage. so my biography tried to recreate her and understand her understand how extraordinary, really courageous it was for her stand up there. and what it told us about washington and other that he went to listen her. he went to listen to her with ladies, who he spent a lot of the summer of 1787 hanging out and a lot of the biography based on sort of what stacy talked about and fred talked about, which was about newspapers and really she placed a lot of advertisement and wrote comments in the newspaper and it was really a biography about that. but but unfortunately any papers whatsoever. so it's great. and mauricio, you wrote a biography of the body using the and emotions as lens to

understand george washington. can you tell us about what that approach is like the sources you use and how can also provide new insight on somebody like george washington? sure. and well, that was because fred took the mind of he was out with body. no kidding. well, first off, let me just tell a few about the title, because i understand it may be a little bit off putting some people how dare i say this, puny italian to demote to to to pull down washington from his pedestal. but that's definitely not what i'm trying to do. i think it was a brave he was only able to withstand the revolution and to win many battles. but also he was able to overcome his sense of insecurity and he wasn't born into a fair facts or the virginia nobility. it was pretty much

self-conscious about and he didn't get a degree to begin with. but then another thing, the title washington the myth of american masculinity. so another title would have been george washington defeats the myth of american masculinity. by that, you would agree with me. that would have to be a clumsy so george washington's body his mind. but his body underwent a process aggrandizement especially during the 19th century. he kept serving his country even when he was dead. what happened, which is kind curious if you think about that, is that the real man was transformed into some sort of cartoonish figure, like a superman or someone who would all of a sudden throw dollars across, reverse or wrestling the

other males, which is if you think about that, that's a kind of childish and ridiculous. so what i'm trying to do with the book is to by using his own body and his own measurements is to provide a better understanding of the idea of the 18th century ideals, manliness and masculine beauty. so there wasn't at all. and that's a surprising part about washington, is that he was a self-confident about the fact that he was not six foot eight or something, but he was a man of his time. and he tried to, to, to reason with the environment around him and to being able to convey other messages rather than this sort of reckless alpha may, alpha male attitude, you know, in your face.

i brag about my achievements. i'm stronger than you. i than you are. so that repertoire didn't belong washington because he was a brave. it was not a cartoon he was able to create a network of friendships. he was able to, even when necessary to pull the string but to convey a strong message messages include with his own body so i could go on forever. but that's not the case. just think about the brown suit from hartford, connecticut, that he wore during the inauguration in new york city. so that was a piece of he's ability to convey political through his own by dressing down and becoming visually an so that was important than tossing silver dollars across rivers by

the way the silver dollar wasn't invented until 1794. so anyway yes so that body thing is a non verbal language and the 18th century was such a fascinating thing world. and with sometimes need work of translation. being able to reconnect with that and with george washington as well. that's great. so i have to confess, i started on june 26th here, and when i arrived, they gave me these four books and you read on june 26? well, you know, in a matter of actually, it was interesting because i think i the only person who read them so closely, so quickly in order and i was thinking about this one thing about this event, which is what are some things that really these books together in, what are the things that really emerged i think in all four of yours in some ways is the idea of debate and disagreement. it's something, fred, that you

call the dialectic of jefferson's writing. so i don't know, fred, if you could talk a little bit about jefferson and this dialectic that you think is so essential who he was and it really comes out in, i think, that famous manuscript people might want to learn about. and that's the between the debate between the the heart and the head in terms of walk over and further from mouth than the others. so it was harder for you to hear when you made your initial remarks. so it's. can you hear me okay? can you hear me all right? yes. okay, good, good, good. yes. i think we just move in a more. yeah, guess we so when asked i recently i may be here this evening about the the the number

of biography phase i have written and and stacey of course has written. and i want to emphasize one of my great talents is for forgetfulness because the kinds of books that write take a long time to do approximately three years of research, approximately two years of writing. i to immerse myself as totally and completely in every word that exists of the subjects i'm writing about. and every subject that i choose has written a lot of words. and that's quite with me, because i add that, that those words become my world. well, i'm not totally immersed in it, but i'm partly immersed in it. jefferson was a great wordsmith, of course he was over and over again to by his colleagues, the congress and political world, to

draft documents and and of course, the the most famous of all the declaration. and but jefferson also a very prolific private writer. and he wrote, i don't know what the number is now, but we have at least 100,000 extant jefferson published by the library of congress, published by the rotunda of the university of virginia in digital form jefferson is to me extremely interesting, all sorts of ways and. the way he expresses himself, because when he expresses himself in writing he defines himself or how he is at that moment in his life. and so. 1794 five yeah. jefferson a romantic experience it's let's say approximately 12

years after the death of his wife and he had been a bachelor, of course, thereafter a widower, probably celibate. we know much about jefferson's sexual though i make some comments about it, of course, because again, between the lines he does reveal himself to a degree. in paris, he fell in love with a married woman named maria causeway. well, fell in love is a very vague phrase, isn't it? we don't know even exactly. that means in our own lives, let alone in jefferson's lives, we live. but we know we have feelings about it and guesses about it. and so and we of causeway was married to an english man, a painter. marie a causeway was, the daughter of of of an englishman. and an italian wife. the englishman established

hotel, a hostel and in italy, mainly catered to traveling europeans, but traveling englishmen on the grand tour of the continent, maria was immensely talented and she still quite appreciated as a painter. she had other talents as well. jefferson was smitten by immediately and the fact that she was married was not a particular consideration because seemed to be no, no, no inclination on either of their part to have an actual physical. though scholars differ somewhat about that. my sense of it is they did not. but charged and they held hands and. they walked together. and one day jefferson in his comparative heels, thinking that he was still agile, young,

attempted jump over a fence near war, something or other, and fell and badly, badly hurt. his head. his hand and his right hand actually and his riding hand. and he learned to be ambidextrous. thereafter, and that had never healed. but his heart did heal. jefferson. jefferson, like the ladies and had a good sense and a good feel for certain aspects of exchanges. a sensitivity and in the case murray a causeway they corresponded after maria left paris to return to london with her husband. the first major piece of of correspondence is a very long letter from jefferson. usually long, quite complicated, quite fascinating, a quite dialectical because it's a dialect between the heart and the head.

my heart says this is my heart and had says that my head says this, which is to went out in this case and and it's characteristic of course of the the they genres of the period to to write in and in dialog. it's a genre form the way to show a story is today, for example so it's a beautiful piece of writing and it reveals a lot about jefferson not not only his brilliance as a writer, but the way tugs within himself back and forth a dialectic way in which he tries to be a gentleman a man of a virginia man who who who respects the codes and the conventions, but at the same time is in pain and in pain in the heart and is deeply longing to have the company of maria causeway and both mary a causeway and he know that that's not going to happen that there will be some further

correspondence and sentimental exchanges between them. but gradually over time that will disappear. however, in that heart and heart letter, again, very long i guessing about 6000 words. now the dialectic wonderful in which he tells how what it's hard to saying and what his head is saying. he fills in biographical information, how they met, what happened. he talks his body about pain, that he has a physical pain as well as emotional pain. so again, as i said, i'm a moment ago, this is a wonderfully complex and interesting man, and he has to be understood in terms of his. just as we all do. right. thank you for. it mary, your book is about eliza. harriet, in this moment after the american revolution, which educational opportunities seem to be up for women in eliza?

harriet is one of the champions of that. but also somebody named benjamin rush in and there seems to be a debate between eliza harriet and her vision of the future and benjamin rushes and his vision. i don't know if you could tell us a little bit about that debate and how would you see it panning out time yeah. so eliza harriet represents and brings basically across the ocean with her in 1783 and idea that people at the time referred to as female genius, the belief that women equal capacity and therefore deserve to be similarly educated and politically represented. and this is something we historians have really rediscovered because we think time moves in one direction but we might just know, for example, women vote in new jersey this period and then that gets locked down. so eliza, harriet, a view on both sides. the atlantic held by some people that as new constitutions are

being written as people understand greater representation, women should be allowed to participate. that and what they think the sort of first step in that participation is being able to get an education. and so eliza harriet has a very ambitious plan for an education. one of the things she does in philadelphia summer is she proposes academy of letters and says that there will always be a woman at the head of that who will lecture weekly to 300 people and the board will be made up of equal men and women but a woman will also be the head of it. and there will be a majority vote, which would mean it would be a woman controlled institution, and she propose this, this and the constitutional convention meeting and drafting the constitution. and benjamin rush, who's a very liberal person, but he did not think women should be educated equally to men, and he thought that women should subordinate to men, although should have

education. and so he that summer a very he gives a speech, then he writes it up in a pamphlet. he's very proud of himself and it's a pamphlet about how american women ought to be educated. and he says they shouldn't educated like british women and they should be educated be the wives and mothers of american citizens. and eliza harriet was married to an irish lawyer and there was enormous prejudice against the irish. her last name was o'connor. in this period. and so that word when he says you should be the wife of an american citizen. he's implicitly you shouldn't be somebody like eliza harriet. and he says this whole notion of education for women that is ambitious that imagines eliza. harriet writes, women should join the college and the forum, the newspapers that summer, he says, a terrible idea. and eliza harriet's idea, which is of this equal ambitious

education session. she goes on to found schools in many cities in up and down the eastern seaboard. she actually found a school that washington quietly supports. but that idea fades in the 1790s, and this sort of moment in the 1770s and eighties, when it looks like women might be able to be educated and politically represented, loses out. but that idea of being educated, being politically speaking in public becomes the next wave of women who in the 19th century become early suffrage activists. and so that's the sort of arc of the story and the debate that the book follows yeah, it's great. and mauricio, at the core of your book, as i read your book after threads, is this idea of a dialectic had that in my mind after friends because so much of what you show about washington is almost this ying in this yang he could be a person of incredible violence but also compassion he could be somebody that was filled with rage who

was also often more a stoic somebody with a great who, you know, took stepped away from power this incredible tension within him and i couldn't i wanted to know if you could figure out who was the real washington. they say both, but also what you just underscored is so interesting, important the way you may agree with me washington had skill to stay right now to lose temper and then he proved that during the revolution when congress did in the by by his request to provide weapons and food and money for the sometimes congress can be a little bit withdrawn or in 92 when he had to manage alexander hamilton and thomas and so then hated their

guts but he stayed calm and also because valley forge of course again which is probably the best in creation of violence that he had to engage with because war this is what it's all about to to being effective, to to hate your target to so to act like a soldier. and yet at the same time be a fabian general, someone who was able to wait out the right circumstance, would present itself so. there's a washington's ability to jostle between what had to be done in a sometimes violent, direct way, but also being able to to to wait, say karl has a bearing on the 18th century ideal about masculinity because we think about rage as an

expression of strength. but that's just a form of overcompensation it's a weakness by all accounts. and washington was aware of that. he never gave in to rage because that would have meant to, you know, to to to just a tunnel vision to lose sight of the many facets of reality, sometimes you had to to acts in a bold way. sometimes you have wait some time. you have to, you know, to to be gentle and kind to be compassionate. and at other time, as 18th century slave owner, he also had to deal with that brutal reality that was part of 18th century virginia. so, yeah, i think who is the washington? i would say both man who was able to jostle among these opposite emotions and say karl

never giving in to rage. it's great that stacie emotion is that. oh, yeah. oh, yeah. i'm just see that i mean that's so you bring me back to fred's document which is kind of jealous making because i mean what we're all trying to do is basically resurrect people who we did not know who left behind mutilated or a nonexistent records from different using different means and involving time travel as well because we are evaluating by with vision that is of the 21st century rather than their own century. but to have a document where you have an individual struggling with his own soul or struggling with ambivalence, honestly and candidly on the page like that, i mean, that's just that is the beating heart of this business, right? i mean, it's so rare that you have that. i mean, it's just like, you know, that's sort of worth the price of admission. have a document like that because it really cracks open a personage in a way that so other things do. so you just kind of you kind of get to the vitality of the human being. but you were saying, i know,

that's great. i don't like i said it rude in interrupting, you know, i'm glad you did. but i would actually emotion is also a big part of your book because. one of the things that comes out about sam adams is he is somebody who has incredible we we call it we might call iq today he understands the crowd and how to manipulate it and here is boston the most you know the most radical city in the coming the american revolution there's all these debates about the future a leader could be a conciliator or they could be somebody like sam adams. so i don't know if you talk a little bit more about sam and his role in the coming the american revolution, something that isn't really well known not at all and i think explains much. if you put him back into the picture, i think you see a totally different revolution. in fact. but but i think that i came to the to the whole idea of writing about him thinking of him as the firebrand of legend. and one of the great revelations for me and this is especially from the pages of john adams, his cousin was how little he is a firebrand, how much he, in fact, is a man of patience and

temperance and affability. he's he's very much a coalition. he's extremely careful, he's very prudent. he's slowing things down more often than he is speeding things up, in fact. and that ability to assume different guises, different personality is what makes him such a tremendously protean presence on the page. he can speak in so many voices to so many different constituencies and adapt himself to different at different times. so he's he's little bit chameleonic, which makes him harder to pin to the page. as we were saying. but that to me is the joy of doing we do because the contradictions in the characters, the complexity of the character is so much the richness that you get on the page. yeah. and actually before maurizio is just jumping in very quickly. i think you are on to something very important because what we perceive as a contradiction you know what, is a real one and how can they stay in between different emotions but, i think

that was that may be generalize made as a case for many upper class individuals the 18th century that was precisely their ability to stay in between emotions. it's probably also nice, but for them it was the goal they pursued and it applies to jefferson and to and to washington and to many other figures. and to be little bit of a firebrand myself. i see you union revised to some extent. my view of sam adams because taught me a lot about sam adams that. i didn't know. but you didn't. i haven't completely revised it. i've always had a sense of sam adams and followers in the sons of liberty as being what, shall i say, savvy terrorists, a very

strong phrase. i know. oh, so you didn't finish the book. well, no, i did. and he was dead. the end. yes. there was a biography. you get to kill your subject. yeah, i actually took a personal note. i at the death of some of the writers i wrote about i did shed some tears because i had become so invested in in their lives that was the case with say dickens particularly and even with henry james writing not all that frequently today, but one of our great american writers of fiction. but i want to get to just for a moment, conflict and the revolution and a few words about sam adams and then about the jefferson and washington relationship. so being i'm exaggerating. i'm saying, of course, that that adams seems to me to sam adams

seems to me and still to me a little bit then a a but a again i'm i'm struggling the right word i know is a here somewhat of what we call it a controlled and restrained terrorist with a specific mission in mind. you know and and it made and and i the complexity that and the uneasiness that and the one thing i wish i knew more about and regard sam adams as his personal his inner feelings and that that that's the challenge that we all face is how do we to know what's going on in the hearts and minds of people who are living complicated lives and have good motives, good reasons for not revealing themselves and all that multiple facets.

the washington jefferson relationship is a fascinating one, and it's important to the book that i've written and you know, in the general haze of american, a lack of information about history, it seems to be generally understood that somehow they got very well. it's not it's not true at all. of course and and jefferson served two years as washington secretary of state. it was a very painful for jefferson because it was always almost always on the losing side of the major decision that were creating the the new country and washington almost always sided with hamilton and the majority of the cabinet but washington very much wanted jefferson stay in that cabinet. and when jefferson resigned the end of 1793, washington felt

betrayed betrayed. he had gone out of his way to appoint jefferson, to have jefferson's point of view in the cabinet and it was a great disappointment to washington. there's quite a bit of interchange between washington and jefferson available. some of it is in the letters. in the published letters, of course in the washington letters and the jefferson letters. but much, much of it is in sort of diary or account. jefferson kept about summarizing the cabinet discussions very selectively and always, almost always in his own favor, which he was perfectly entitled to do. so jefferson retired as quit as secretary of state in december 1793. he back to monticello, claiming you're never going to hear from me again in american politics. and nobody believed him quite, quite for he his associates had

mind that the united was off in the wrong direction. the control of the federalists, washington and hamilton. et cetera. and that needed to be reversed. the revolution itself would be reversed. everything that jefferson believed the revolution about was being undermined by the federalists and the washington administration. and another very minor coda to this, since we're here at, mount vernon, the jefferson and washu, in turn, after jefferson resigned as secretary of state maintained somewhat of a correspondence that got increasingly it got cold in a gentlemanly way as only those people could do. and and but but the coldness is there easy to say and the and the correspondence eventually almost totally petered out.

however, master survived her husband and detested jefferson. she really him. she thought he had betrayed her husband and that his politics all wrong again my simply is, hey, these are people this is complicated. this is this is this is not old stuff. this is not new stuff. this is then this is now. and i think there's story in which martha says, when jefferson visited her after washington's death was, one of the worst days of her life. so she wrote and wrote a scathing letter to a third party about how almost on jefferson's said then to her as he was as he stopped at mount on his way down to washington, as he was about to assume the presidency i think this is a great time to open it up the audience for any questions. i have a slew that i can keep asking, but we really to hear

from all of you. and we've got some mikes on either side. so if you have a question, just raise your hand. oh, this for all four review. what was something that surprised you the most during your research. well, i'll start by saying i like to be alone a lot of the time. and one of the things about immersing oneself in research in writing is that this extraordinary sense of somehow being totally and fully yourself and being to focus and concentrate in ways that i can rarely do in the rest of my life. and so, you know, that's just one aspect of it. i'm sure we all different ways of and multiple ways of responding to that question so i think with this book my volume

now good i got an approval on that one. i think with this book, my just going to sit like this for the rest of the night and the fits and starts of 15 years previous to lexington and concord. the fact that there is such an irregular rhythm to those years, the fact of the cause really burns itself out at several points. boston goes calm, the rest of the colonies go after the boston massacre. everyone's exhausted and just wants to go back to life as they knew and forget about any of this opposition effort. i just think of that sort of wayward course, which i think we tend to forget when we think of the events of the revolution. you know, it wasn't a it wasn't preordained and it wasn't a direct line. and that really comes when you really look at what's going on in. new england, especially in those years, you really see the sort of zigzagging back and forth and the number of times where it almost didn't happen it almost got we almost became of pushing it out was arguably a good idea. right, mary i think for me, one of the great things about i, you

know, i worked on my last book was on james madison in his notes. and so this was something very different. and i think probably one of the great pleasures of writing something very different is you learn all this information. and so i think the one fact that amazed me much was that in the 7070s and 1780s, there were female debating societies in london who debated extent whether women should participate in politics and the question calls were reproduced in the newspapers. and i think, i have learned a history that. mary wollstonecraft was sort of the first person to ever have this idea. and she's actually like at end of this period, she's kind of the conclusion of this moment and i found it just incredibly eye opening at my books based on a lot of synthesizes, a lot of work that really remarkable scholars have done rediscovering the space and and i just found it incredible that, you know, women vote in new jersey.

i didn't know that very well that there are female debating societies so that when eliza, harriet a lecture and george washington attended the the newspaper is all up and down the east coast carried news of the fact that a lady had lectured at the university and george washington had attended. and so for me just recovering that space which is i think very much not something we know about in our culture, was just really surprising and rewarding. as well as, to me well, the surprise was just getting to know george washington and the way he differs from the stale old god like, you know emotional less portrayed that more than not surround us you know he doesn't it doesn't seem real just something that belongs to a i don't know another planet and

layer after to discover that that man put a lot of energy and effort in order to becoming the man that he eventually became not in terms of a sense of entitlement or the conviction that he was born greatness or anything like that. but just the energy the self observed nation that you see in facet of washington life. and that was for me the real surprise how washington the man is so totally different from the emotional, less untouchable demigod that we had been educated with. you know there is a there are episodes just to give you a one just a two 2 seconds governor morris the touching that was a hamilton the bath the two of

them had about should you be spunky to touch to dinner on the shoulder and that they did that and in washington this kind of reaction that was totally wacky but that's precisely the problem the ongoing depiction of george washington as a emotionless and real person. a statue that's so odd and surprising thing was about, you know, branching out and discovering layer after layer of how this myths affair washington in a negative way. i question please wait for my.

oh thank you all very this has been an incredible presentation i actually just finished mr. kaplan's book about john quincy and visited quincy to see the beautiful homes of our places in quincy massachusetts and the conclusion after spending such a significant time with these characters. and my question is about my primary research and imagine all the authors on spent a significant amount of time in research libraries coming through to tons of documents and states and conditions. my question for you all is how much time do you spend visiting the specific sites like mr. kaplan, did you visit pittsfield? did you spend time in any of those locations in quincy to try and get a better time a better

understanding of these characters? did you visit university of pennsylvania to learn more about the audience that women may have spoken to? so thank you. i would like to have. so can i. i'll just start so the place that she spoke at, which was the college was burned down? sadly, that's that's a sad thing. but i did. she eventually ends up in charleston and she speaks in the largest hall in charleston. and so i forced my poor husband, when were in charleston that we went to the tavern and we went and they were lovely. and i sat because it's actually recreated a tavern and the second floor is recreated to exactly what it was. and and i went there. and your question so appropriate because it was at moment that i think it really sunk in how

courageous must have been for her in the summer of 1787 to repeat deadly get up in front of a huge room as a woman and speak and i until i sort of i mean i couldn't do it in in that the hall at arch streets gone but in this even smaller space and i i thought about that and when i was a baby law professor very early in my life, i, i worked for amistad with steven spielberg. and one of the things that was obsessed with that, like the reason nobody wears wigs in that movie is because of me, like my big contribution. but as a judge, but, but one of the things he was obsessed with was like, what would it feel like. and i think, that piece of the little bitty part, i worked with him, has stayed with me i don't write where i can really the

thing but sort of to imagine like what did feel like in that way and then how do you communicate that to a modern audience who's under standing of that is just completely was really a wonderful thing it's a really astute question i think i think you need to be able to translate that kind of color onto the page and you can't do that even without the angle of the sun. i mean, you just you need to have gone there. you need to know it feels and smells and tastes like and. just for a quick example, when i worked a book about salem witchcraft a few years ago, i kept coming across this idea that things worse at the beginning of the year, the witchcraft breaks out at the beginning of 1692. and i want to know what felt like to be in those houses indoors all winter, especially for the young girls who didn't go outside, who were indoors, just weighed down with chores at a very dark, particularly bitter time year. and i asked a local historian what the houses would have smelled like. and he said, why don't you go to plymouth plantation and ask the re-enactors? it's like and of course, what did they say the worst months of

the year were january, february? so, you know, it really just it was vital to know what that feeling of just lack of visual stimulation, drudgery and oppression, how that weighed upon you if you were living in these tiny little spaces with your not necessarily functional family. yeah, well, if may what i think archives are such a treasure trove but don't just because they are a warehouse where stacks of documents just sit there but they are made of people who have an expertise and interacting with them for me so interacting with archivist and starting with the people who work at mount vernon, they do a great job providing life to documents whether material sources or written sources. when you dig into the archive in this sense, which means when you interact with other people and you ask them questions, you get

the sense that you really belong to in a commune city. and that's for me, that's very fulfilling so other than another, it was a fun when i had to trace down dentures up. but that may be a detail. you know, you bump into something that it hasn't materiality to it and you read a letter that belongs and actually did that was touched by your subject's hands and that's a part but also dealing with and creating connections with other people. that's one of the archive for me is so fascinating. yeah there are there are critics of the various who think kind it and write about was generally called a theory of biography. what is a biography and of course there are lots of different answers to that question and we each each of the four of us here overlap in our

series of biography but also differ in a series of biography what a biography should be. and for the biographer, of course it's a personal decision because, it's based on what the biographer is interested in what the biography, his or her talents, what sources available to you. i tend on the whole to a narrative biographer i like to tell stories and that's. there are biographers who approach their subjects very differently and there are those theories of biography who say a special school of biographers who are writing semi and there are some who say they're writing all fiction and some would say they're writing of fact and this is the important thing. and the other is the important thing. so the biographer goes his her

own way based upon what the biographer who the relevant biographers to the subject like, my colleagues here, of course, as a biographer, i want very much to to feel, taste and smell as best can to walk in the places, to feel the feelings, to pretend that i am that person even you say, to walk through the cemetery in quincy, massachusetts, and see those headstones and suddenly feel my heart beating faster and saying, i know that person, so to speak. i have words that that person wrote in my head and i can look at that tombstone and i can recite those words as if i as if my voice is his voice or her voice. and that's just, you know, the way i go about doing it is nothing better than anybody. that's not better than people's

ways of going about doing it. they're just different kinds, biographers and different biographies for different people. and what we all hope for that we can we can learn and appreciate what of what all do, what scholars do, what critics do, and so on, whatever there is, that's there that can enrich our own lives lives. a lot of, oh, how did you get. oh, i just wanted ask. i love history and i've been catching on tv. kelsey oh i think that's how to pronounce his name. his shows our historical founders. i don't know whether it's on cnn or fox or one of the other stations, but it's later at night and he will have in our

show much it is on george washington and how he was able to win the revolutionary war how difficult that was and we all know that so i wanted to know how much what you thought of these shows if any of you have had a chance to notice and watch them. but i will respond by definitively, dismissing myself from the conversation. well, actually, bye bye bye. confess saying that i may be the only person this room who has not seen hamilton hamilton. one person just raised, but i don't know how to use the remote. so i'm going to also dismiss myself from conversation. i'll ask, what about media or different? you all have written books, but

you've certainly involved involved in documentaries, and i wanted to know maybe a way to take this question is to think about different ways, you know, having biographies not just by if you've worked in documentaries, the pluses and minuses of documentaries because, you might be able to reach more people through that medium or through other mediums. my are on tik tok and all these other things, but you know how biographies might translate to different mediums. years ago i was teaching a course columbia on nonfiction writing, and i kept using david mccullough as an example. and the students looked at blankly and i said, you know, john, i said, i just started naming titles, you know, panama canal, zip that. but then as as i said, john adams, the miniseries i why didn't you say so. so i think that answers your question yeah well i'm not familiar with the show you pointed out but what i can say is that there are certainly in this country a need to get back to the 18th century and the 18th century to matters a great deal to this country for obvious

reasons. and that's coming from europe, coming from italy. i see that as as unique to this country, which is so wonderful because hamilton, the musical is just one example among many others, documentaries or fiction or whatever made based on 18th century characters. i mean that provides that continuity which is amazing and not not other countries do not that but being able to recognize with warts and all. don't get me wrong not not everything from the 18th century as were to be saved quite the opposite. but there is a moment which opens up and you have that as that foundational moment which you still resonate with and you connect with and that's great. so the more they might not be historically accurate and no

documentaries are good not all fiction is good. but the more debate about the 18th century as they as as the basic moment this nation, the better. so right. thank you, mauricio. thank you all for a great conversation. i want to invite everybody afterwards you all have a chance to do what i did in june which is read all these books. there available for sale in. the order outside the auditorium. i believe everyone will be signing their books. they are again the revolutionary sam adams by stacy schiff his masterly pen a biography of jefferson, the writer by fred kaplan, a female genius. eliza harriet and george washington. at the dawn of the constitution by mary sarah bilder and first among men, which i think is a great title mauricio. mauricio volz honor first among men george washington the myth of american masculinity. thank you all.

congratulations.