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submitted to the fda came from hundreds of patients. if you had used ten patients, it's like studying twins in a way because it's all the same disease. so if they had used ten patients and given a kind of conditional approval, then everyone would have gotten the drug a lot faster possibly. so things like that, you know, could be in the -- are in the works. but it's difficult to get them working. >> jessica, you've outlined the fda is coming up with a new designation, a breakthrough designation status which really fast tracks drugs perfectly. it puts the companies in contact with the data and helps them shepherd it through very quickly. but these breakthrough status are for these targeted drugs meaning with cml the package actually is about a thousand patients. but the response we got in the first hundred was the same we got in the last hundred. and so the reality is if we could have taken that first hundred and had a breakthrough designation status, we could have had this on the market in a year, not two and a half years. and it still holds the record for the fastest fda approval. so things are changing, and the fda actually is willing to learn, willing to listen and willing to move when there's an unmet medical need in a disease as devastating as cancer. >> so i think, okay, one last question and then we'll wrap it up. is there -- >> so in the future are there going to be incredible vaccines against specific cancers, you could take the vaccine and avoid the possibility of getting it in your old age? >> tsa the hope. [laughter] -- that's the hope. >> there already is a vaccine for human papillomavirus that prevents cervical cancer. there's also been some brief and incredible successes with a couple of immune still la story drugs that attack cancers, particular activity in melanoma. it was recently reported at a conference. so i think we take the same approach we did with infectious disease which was abilities which i -- antibiotics which i see as targeted therapy, vaccinations, and we also have to think about early diagnosis and prevention. and if we take that approach in this century, i'm extremely optimistic that we can make a huge impact on cancer in our lifetime. >> and i'll just add briefly that, you know, i said earlier that one of the reasons why i wanted to where this book is because it's like the origin story for this current time, right? it's like it's the foothills of this mountain that researchers are now climbing where cancer is concerned. and definitely that's the hope. i mean, we've all been touched by cancer in some way. i mean, there's, i think, 14 million people in the united states living with -- who now have a history of cancer in their lives. and when i asked brian, you know, will there be a -- [inaudible] for every cancer? like, because who doesn't want that? and his response to me, at least a year ago -- [laughter] was that the next, the current vision, the short-term version is genome sequencing, right? so rather than not personalized genome, so not like the 23 and me, find out everything about your dna, but when somebody has a cancer to look at the genetics of that cancer and try to screen it for the mutations and rapidly screen compounds that could work against those mutations. and that's like the 20-year vision. alongside many other efforts going on. so thank you so much. thank you. thanks for all the great questions. [applause] >> we'd like to hear from you. tweet us your feedback, twitter.com/booktv. >> after losing the apple of her eye, joe jr. in world war -- >> and kick too, rights? >> and kick has been taken in a plane crash in 1948, so rose has literally seen her children almost in birth order disappear from the scene. not only that, but in 1964 in the summer of '64 rose wrote in her journal about what it's like at hyannis that summer, and she says gone are the presidential helicopters that we would so look forward to every weekend bringing my son, the president, and i would see his children run out to him. gone are those days. >> she missed some of that. >> she missed that, and she even wistfully says gone are the days when we were said to be the most powerful family in the world. >> author barbara perry uses information from newly-released diaries and letters as she talks about rose kennedy tonight at 10 ian, part of -- eastern, part of booktv this weekend on c-span2. >> a little bit about rogers, and it also tells you about his father who was a prominent freedom fighter who spent many, many years in jail. a cousin of his told me when i was in calcutta interviewing her in 2011 she said jail was like a house to him. so i'm going start with that. ever since he was born, roger was like his father. he was as handson as his father -- handsome as his father, a sense they belonged to a secret world of privilege. in a society where skin color was a defining force, both roger and his father were fair-skinned, a clear advantage that afforded them a natural superiority. both were known for their generosity of spirit and obliging way that over the course of their lives would win them steadfast friends and loyal followers. but beneath the surface, the similarities ended. unlike his son, the father came of age in an occupied country seeming i facilitated -- seeming ingly fated to live in an imperial power. he was also ironically one of the chosen ones. he would be tapped and trained to deny his indianness and perform like a faux englishman all in the service of india's emperor, her imagine the city, the king. -- her majesty, the king. while he would receive a proper education, he rejected intellectual servitude. on the morning of thursday, november the 5th, 1964, his eldest son, 15-year-old roger carefully dreaded himself. grow -- dressed himself. growing up in a closely-knit family, he was accustomed to shouldering responsibility. he and his older sister were always looking after their younger siblings. by economic necessity his parents were a two-career couple long before it was envogue. his mother taught school, and upon his release from prison, the father took up journalism as a means to support himself and his family. his old revolutionary ties to the leaders of the newly-free india helped him rise. after india's independence, he was dispatched to start the standard. he was a frequent visitor to the official residence of the president of india, and it was well known among the delhi press corps that the country's first minister called him by his first be name. so trusted was gupta that they would often seek his counsel on how to deal with the press. born as a british subject, gupta through hard work and sacrifice became an insider in modern india. roger steeled himself and walked into the anteroom of his uncle's calcutta home to say farewell. shrouded with heaps of roses, marigolds and fragrant jasmine, his father lay in a coffin. as was customary, the body was washed in purified water and dress inside a loose-fitting shirt. when he's arrived at the hospital the previous day, he was told that his father was dead, but as he stood at the entrance to his father's room, he saw a plastic bag still attached bibling with air from -- bubbling with air from his father's last gasps. for a moment he thought the doctors had made a mistake, but the years of struggle and incarceration had taken their toll. at 56, gupta was dead of kidney failure n. the months leading up to his father's death, roger spent a lot of time with his father, accompanying him on long walks and listening to his stories of time in the freedom movement. he learned that his father had been intentionally exposed to tb in prison. the ragged 2-foot-long scar on his back came from his skin being split open over and over again during one particularly brutal interrogation. yet in spite of it all, the father he knew was kind and to bligeing to everyone. he would later recall he never spoke ill of anybody, and i would have thought he would have had a lot of resentment built into him, but it wasn't true. this attitude was true of most of my father's generation. they were quite extraordinary in terms of simple living and high thinking and not thinking ill of other people. this morning in front of roger's uncle's house, a crowd gathered. neighbors, friends and admirers descended like pilgrims on a sorrowful journey. a coffin was placed into a glass-topped hearse. in tribute, they marched their donkeys away from the mourners. at 9 a.m., the hearse, closely followed by cars carrying the immediate family, departed. roger could make out a small shrine. after a stop at the offices of his father's employers, he led the crowd to white towns. on the other side of town, gupta's former jailer, raced to catch one final glimpse of the man. he ran to a crematorium then south to the funeral parlor to no avail. on his last guess, he found the right destination. clenching a fist full of flowers, he elbowed through a crowd of hundreds of friends, family and admiring strangers and made his way beyond the row of bodies stacked in a line to be cremated. at last, after pushing his way past gupta's brother, the former prison guard made it to the coffin. his teenage son was just completing the final death rite. in the silence that followed, he was able to place what was left of his bunch of lotus flowers on the feet of his fallen friend. gupta rolled his beloved father's body into the flames. overcome with grief, he muttered a prayer to his dead friend. praying not a grain of hatred remains mingled in your ashes, i try to atone for my sin. he might have heard another voice, the tender voice of roger quietly beseeching a higher power, who will show me the way in the world? >> you know, this is an incredible amount of rich detail. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> here's a look at some books that are being published this week. in the passage to europe: how a continent became a union, luke van middelaar provid an inside look at the politics of the european union. kenneth pew wit, public affairs professor at columbia university, presents his thoughts on race and the census in "what is your race: the census and our flawed efforts to classify americans." jesse james, the northfield raid and the wild west greatest escape, mark lee gardener details the rob toly of north feerld's first national bank. a reporter for bloomberg nudes in berlin recounts the career of germany's first female chancellor in "angola merkel." look for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for the authors in the fear future on booktv and on booktv.org. >> host: joining us on booktv to preview his upcoming new book, best selling author bill bryson. one summer america 1927 is the name of the book. mr. bryson, why 1927? >> well, i just stumbled into it really. i had always been fascinated by the fact that babe ruth hit 60 home runs and charles lend burg flew the public in the same summer. i had it in mind that that in itself made it an interesting summer. iconic events were happening in exact parallel, and i just had it in mind maybe it would be interesting to try and do a dual biography of these two guys with the their ty arc sort of meeting in 1927. but then when i began looking into what else happened in the summer, i found those were only two tiny parts of a much greater -- there was all kinds of other stuff happening in that summer. you had the great mississippi flood which have the biggest natural disaster in american history. you had, you had al capone, the beginning of the end of al capone, the downfall and, indeed, of prohibition, prohibition was coming to an end. you had they started building mount rushmore. calvin coolidge astounding the world by announcing that he didn't want to run for re-election as president. he could have won in a landslide, and he decided he didn't want to do it. for reasons that are still slightly mystifying. henry ford, the summer that he had this mad idea to build an american city in am sonya. so just sort of one thing after another. there was lots and lots and lots going on. so the whole nature of the book changed to looking not just at these two iconic figures, ruth and lindbergh -- who are still central to the story -- but looking at all of the stuff that was happening. jazz singer was filmed, the first talking picture was filmed the same summer. so it was this frenetic amount of activity, a great deal of which changed the world, you know, changed the way we perceive popular entertainment and so on. so it was a consequential summer, but it was also a really, interesting and lively one. >> host: is there any reason all these events happened in the summer of 1927? >> guest: they just happened. that's what's kind of interesting about it. you know, sometimes these things just happen, you know? and all of these happened, and there wasn't -- by and large, there wasn't any particular reason. they weren't there because they had to happen in the summer of 1927: mostly they just happened then. there were connections. i mean, the reason that lindbergh flew, was able to fly first to europe was because of the same storm system that was, that caused the flooding in the midwest that caused the great mississippi flood. the same weather system had all of the other aviators pinned down in new york and allowed charles lindbergh to fly from san diego to new york and get away ahead of the others. if it hadn't been for the weather system that was causing havoc over the middle part of the country, almost certainly richard evelyn byrd would have been the first to cross the ocean, and that would have changed popular history a great deal. >> host: so there was a contest going on at that point. >> guest: there was a contest. i mean, i didn't realize this before i started doing the book. i'd always just assumed that charles lindbergh kind of got it into his head that he would fly the ocean, got a plane and did it. it wasn't as simple as that. there was a prize which was named after a french hotellier who just loved aviation. he'd been, he'd become very excited by aviation during the first world war with all of the dog fights and everything. and he put up a very generous prize, $25,000. it was a lot of money in those days for the first person or team of people who could fly between new york and paris. in either direction. and so there were lots and lots of teams that were all getting ready to fly and take off that summer. and every single one of them was better prepared and better funded than charles lindbergh. lindbergh was this kid, i mean, really just a kid, 25-year-old kid from the midwest who flies into, drives to new york, roosevelt field in new york with a plane with one engine, no navigator, no copilot, just him and a simple small plane. essentially, a flying gas tank. everything thought it was suicide, that he would crash in the water and. of course, he was the one who beat with everybody because he had -- his plane was so much simpler, and this was so much less necessary to get it ready to take off. >> host: now, you open the book, though, talking about a fire in new york city and how people would gather for events. >> guest: yeah, it's amazing. i mean, and this happened again and again. i don't know what it was, i don't know that anybody could possibly explain what it was, but there was just this impulse by people to gather in huge crowds for almost everything. the fire you're referring to is the netherlands hotel in new york on fifth avenue which was under construction, nearly finished. there was a whole lot of wooden scaffolding around the top of it because they were just finishing off the summit of this building, and somehow it caught fire, and all the wooden scaffolding went up in the blaze. and as i say in the book, it was a little bit like a matchhead, this great flame at the top of the building. and within a couple of hours a crowd estimated of 100,000 people had spontaneously turned up. imagine what it would take to get 100,000 people in new york to gather in one space now. i mean, it would have to be something quite dramatic. then just a big fire did it. and lots and lots of other things. the same summer you had ship wreck kelly who was the great flag pole sitter, he went up on a hotel flag pole until newark, new jersey, and tens of thousands of people came to watch that. people would turn out for anything. you know, it's just strange. they just -- partly, i suppose, it was in the way of popular entertainment, other diversions. but there was something going on. great crowds would turn out for it. >> host: well, bill bryson, on the macro level when it comes to politics, calvin coolidge not running, al capone, the economy, was there something happening on the macro level as well? >> guest: well, yeah. i mean, the economy -- it was a very interesting summer from the point of view of the economy because the economy was booming, and america was just -- it was motoring along. i mean, it was overheating, if anything. and this was really a kind of a matter of some concern to some people, herbert hoover in particular who was the commerce secretary at the time, was worried it was overheating. he was right to be worried about it, because it was overheating. and the federal reserve, four central bankers -- federal reserve bank of new york and central bankers from britain, france and germany -- all met in a secret meeting on long eye hand no far from where -- long island not far from where lend berg had taken off. and they decided to cut the interest rates anywhere which is what lit the fire that really led to the stock market crash in the following year and then the great depression that followed after that. >> host: that's just a quick preview of bill bryson's upcoming book, "one summer: america, 1927." you're watching booktv on c-span2. >> visit booktv.org to watch any of the programs you see here online. type the author or book title in the search bar on the upper left side of the page and click search. you can also share anything you see on booktv.org easily by clicking share on the upper left side of the page and selecting the format. booktv streams live online for 48 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. booktv.org. >> what we do teach here at the museum on a typical tour is we do start with how the music industry started weedson and the cylinder machine, and then we go forward with the invention of the flat disc machine. and then we go ahead throughout that story and tell about johnson's very important inventions to improve this machine. >> mr. johnson and his engineers went to work to try to keep the customers very happy. and what they did, they came out with a style referred to as a vick troll la. now, the word actually was coined when the horn was actually removed, and it was put in a concealed area within the cabinet itself. now they also decided, which was a very clever idea, to put doors on the front which allowed you to modify the sound. so now you had volume control door cans. you also could take the lid and close the lid which would give you the ability to soften the sound, but also sometimes if you had a very scratchy record, that would also hide that sound as well. ♪ ♪ >> learn more about the founder of the victrola company as booktv looks at the literary life of dover, delaware, today at 10:30 eastern on c-span2's booktv and sunday at 5 on c-span3's american history tv. >> this summer booktv's been asking washingtonians, legislators and viewers what they're reading, and here's what some of you had to say. >> several panels discussed the themes of the book, and you can check that out on booktv.org. and leo writes: >> c-span's covered several eventin which edward snowden's come up. watch those by searching for edward snowden on c-span.org. courtney brooks also posted on facebook: >> and ann and jim rhoades mention- >> a few years ago booktv covered an event with robert edsel, and you can watch that online at booktv.org. what are you reading this summer? post on our facebook wall, tweet us or send us an e-mail to let us know what's on your reading list. visit our social media sites to see what others are reading, and we might even share your posts here on booktv. you're watching booktv, 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend on c-span2. here are some programs to look out for this weekend. this afternoon we are live from new york city with the 15th annual harlem book fair. after each panel you'll have the opportunity to participate in the conversation by calling, tweeting, e-mailing and posting your questions on our facebook wall. our live coverage are end around 7:30 p.m. eastern time, and the event will reair tonight at midnight. you can visit booktv.org for a complete schedule. at 1 p.m. eastern on sunday we'll bring you a couple of interviews from booktv's college series. from the hoover institution, we talk to john taylor. he's the author of five principles: five keys to restoring america's prosperity. he's followed by peter berkovitz, author of "constitutional conservativism: liberty, self-government and political moderation." then on sunday at 6 p.m. eastern, the final two interviews from booktv's recent visit to london. we sat down with authors anthony beevor and judith flander ors. you can watch these programs all weekend long on booktv and for a complete schedule, visit booktv.org. >> welcome to dover, best delaware, on booktv. with the help of our comcast cable partners, for the next hour we'll explore the history and literary scene of the capital of the first state. we'll learn about the educational history of african-americans in delaware -- >> the challenges to african-american education in delaware have been from, essentially, the very beginning. >> -- and meet others who help us understand the roots of the first state in the union. >> and we do reprints of classicsment this is one of my favorites. this is called delaware: a guide to the fist state. >> we begin our special look as we sit down with dr. jane calvert and learn about john dickenson. >> quaker constitutionalism and the political thought of john dickenson published by cambridge university press. it's the first comprehensive analysis of the political thought of john dickenson as it was rooted in quaker constitutional theory. my interest came out of american tierly and religion. i started out studying quakers in the colonial period, and when i got to the revolution, his name kept coming up. and when i tried to research him, i couldn't find anything about him or very little, and what was there was very conflicted, and nobody seemed to really be able to understand his actions. very few people have heard of dickenson today, and that's in sharp contrast to his reputation during his lifetime. he came pretty close to a household name n. the years immediately leading up to the revolution, his name was better known than washington or franklin. john dickenson wrote many of america's state papers and many of the highest level documents, constitutions, legislation. but he also wrote many more things for ordinary american people. and spoke to them in a way that very few other leaders did. and these include newspaper articles, poems and america's first patriotic song. dickinson first entered the national political scene during the stamp act controversy, and he was the nominal leader of the stamp act congress and wrote the declaration of the stamp act congress, and then he became famous when he wrote his letters from a farmer in pennsylvania against the townsend act in 1868, and these letters made him america's first popular idol. he was known around the colonies and the atlantic world. the french loved him, the british considered him the spokesman for the american cause. he was really the leader up until about 1775 when the tone of the revolution changed. dickinson always advocated peaceful resistance and, in fact, he was the very first american to advocate a national program of civil disobedience. so breaking unjust laws peacefully and protesting those laws to get change. and so he advocated this for the stamp act, and it was repealed not only because of his actions, and he advocated the same course of action, peaceful resistance, to the townsend act. and he believed that the best measures were constitutional, were peaceful and that nobody, no persons or property should be damaged or destroyed. well, when the tone of the resistance changed in about the summer of 1775, his moderate stance fell out of favor. and his popularity waned. but even though he became less popular, he was no less respected. and so just a month, less than a month before the lek -- declaration of independence was issued, he was on the committee to write america's first constitution, the articles of confederation. and this was a remarkable document. the version he wrote was quite different from the one that was actually implemented in 1781. his 1776 version had several notable characteristics. one is that it established a strong central government for the new states. and it also had a religious liberty clause. and this clause was remarkable because it was the first clause, the first writing in an anglo american constitution that included gender-inclusive language. so dickinson actually provided for the religious liberty of women. his quaker background played a significant role in all of his writings and all of his actions. dickinson was not a quaker, but he was raised among quaker, he lived with quakers, his whole immediate family was quakers, very strong quaker women informed his political theory. and so when he advocated civil disobedience, he was advocating a quaker form of resistance. when he wrote the articles of confederation with the religious liberty clause and he included women, that was a very quakerly thing to do because quakers at the time were the only religious group who allowed their women to speak publicly and to preach. quaker women traveled around the country and even the world preaching, and so dickinson wrote this religious liberty clause, and he started out by saying no persons shall be molested in his or their practice of religion, but then he crossed out his or their and wrote his or her. and to signify that women should be able to practice their religion freely in quaker terms meant that women should be able to speak publicly. and women were not considered to have a public voice at this time. so in this way dickinson was very much sort of an early feminist. and wrote this language in a constitution and, of course, it wasn't adopted. none of the provisions of his articles of confederation were adopted. on july 1st there was a vote on the declaration. and dickinson was the first one to speak, and he gave an eloquent speech reiterating all of the concerns he had about declaring independence, and his was a very reasonable argument. he, he recognized that we didn't have a government, we didn't have a constitution, we didn't have a strong army. we had no foreign support, we had no factories to make munitions, we had no be common currency. we are in a very weak position. so there were these practical reasons why he thought independence was a bad idea. america was very safe under the protection of the british constitution, and he wanted to retain that. but there were also bigger philosophical questions, and he believed as other quakers did that a constitution was sacred. that didn't mean untouchable, it didn't mean unchangeable. but it meant that you should try to preserve the laws that are good and that are there and that protect people. and britain had a very long history of protecting rights. his career was quite illustrious after that he served again in the continental congress in '79 and then in 1781 he was elected president of delaware, and he served for a year and then was elected president of pennsylvania, and he held those two posts for a time simultaneously. he was the president of the annapolis convention that met to consider amending the articles of confederation, and it was his letter that went to congress that recommended a constitutional convention in 1787, and he played a very significant role in that body. he provided the foundation for the most important compromise on representation. he suggested that one branch of the government, of the legislature represent the people and the other branch represent the states. that was the groundwork for what late aer was -- later was called the connecticut compromise. he sacrificed his own reputation for the good of the country, and a refrain that he made throughout his life was that he would rather offend his countrymen by speaking the truth than see them injured by not choosing the right path. >> also from dover we sit down with richard carter, chairman at the heritage commission in delaware, to learn about the organization and what it does. >> the delaware heritage commission which arose out of the old american revolution bicentennial commission of the 1970s. and they kept it going because they felt there were a lot of other historical commemorations that might need to be attended to. so the heritage commission came into being. we've been publishing delaware books since about 1990 or 1991. we now have, i think, 26 or 27 books in print of which our newest one just came out in mid april. it's called "delaware's destiny determined by lewis." and it's a story of the great lawsuit between william penn and lord baltimore and the english courts which resulted in delaware being a separate state rather than being part of maryland. and some of our other books, we do a combination of new books on delaware history such as the one by dr. bradley skelcher about african-american education in delaware. and we do reprints of classics. this is one of my favors. this is called "delaware: a guide to the first state." and the original edition of this was published in 1938 as part of the old depression-era progress administration federal writers' project. and it's a guide to the state as it was at that time. it comes complete with a map of 1938 roads and all that. this this is a reprint of another classic, colonial delaware by dr. john a. monroe. when with i was attending the university of delaware back in the dark ages, everybody had to take a delaware history class, and dr. monroe was the professor of that course. and you'd walk into the lecture hall, and it was like you'd turn on a spigot, and all this stuff came pouring out of him. and then he'd turn it off at the end of the hour. but this is one of his many books on delaware history. this is one of five governors' books we've done. i'm the author of this just by accident, but we also have a process of trying to do oral history interviews with former delaware governors, and i'm presently working with a woman named dr. harriet windsor who's a former delaware secretary of state to do interviews with governor ruth ann minner who's our only female governor to date, and she served from 2000 to 2008, and we'll do, i hope, signature or ten taped interviews with her. and then those will be placed in the delaware archives for the use of future biographers. another interesting book we did in recent times was man and nature and delaware by dr. william h. williamss, and it's an environmental history of the first state which has changed substantially since the dutch landed at lewes in 1631. one of my favorite parts of the book is there's a couple of maps that show what is now delaware as it was 9,000 years ago and 15,000 years ago when the ocean coast extended out about another 30 or 40 miles out into the ocean. so you can see the beach erosion has been fairly steady over the last few thousand years. this is another one of our reprints of a classic. this is a book about delaware, delaware's role in world war ii. practically everybody who served in that war in any capacity is in here someplace. these are just a cross-section of some of the books that the delaware heritage press has done over the years. we have relatively limited funding, and we do a lot of this ourselves. i'm the person that lays out and designs the books, and then we have them printed as cheaply as possible, and we try to sell them as cheap hi as possible. cheaply as possible. these books are important because they represent as complete a cross-section as we're able to do of delaware's long history and heritage. we try to touch on as many of our communities as possible. we have a pamphlet about the italian-american history of delaware, we have books about the black heritage, we have a book about delaware's unusual boundaries called east of the mason dixon line, we have all sorts of other books that touch on various aspects of our history and culture. and we try to make these available to citizens of the state and others who are interested in our history as cheaply as possible. in fact, we give books away in some instances. it's something, we're now getting into doing e-books. we're converting several of our older publications into e-books which are available or will be available free of charge on the delaware heritage commission web site. and we're trying to find as many ways as possible to reach out to people and present our history to them. it's a nonpaying job. we have 17 members of the commission, none of whom get paid anything, and i think we all do it out of our love for the state of delaware. >> the help of comcast, booktv's local cable partner in dover, delaware, we bring you a few interviews throughout this weekend from our recent visit. next, we talk to stephen marz, archives director at the state of delaware's dover public archives. we take a look at some of the rare books contained in the archives and walk through the steps a publication goes through as it is archived. >> welcome the delaware public archives. we're one of the oldest public archives in the nation. we've been in existence since 1905, and we have the repository for te's history. and be -- delaware's history, and particularly its public history. if you were either born, if you went to school, if you married, if you owned property, and if you hit that last chapter in the book of that you might pass in delaware, we have records of you in this particular facility. but also we have a big repository of materials here, historic-related materials. we have over 10.4 million documents, over 800,000 photographs and over 6600 volumes that deal specifically with the economic, the political, the social history of delaware. i want to go and take a little bit look back into our vault. that's part of our rare collection. it's a book of poems by john loughlin, and he was a delaware author. and it's a beautiful selection of over 200 poems that are contained there. we're also very pleased to note that within this particular book we actually have a cdv of the author himself which is rare to have both together in one particular unit like that. our next book here is a book that's written in 1755, and it relates to the establishment of the swedes coming into delaware. they were one of the colonial peoples that actually came here to settle along with the dutch. in that particular part. of what's interesting to note here, you'll see a special type of binder or cover that we use. this is acid-free paper, and they're specially made by staff in the archive to precisely fit the book. you want the book to be able to fit into such a cover like that so that it's not loose, and you start messing with the binding that could happen at that time or loosening materials there. one of the more significant that i feel is a book in relationship to the underground railroad, and it's written by william still. and what makes this book so unique, it's the history and a story about the underground railroad, and it's written by an african-american. so we have that book here. it's in wonderful condition. and it's used very much by researchers as they relate and hook at stories as -- look at stories as it relates to the underground railroad. next book is a compendium of scenes on the delaware scene by jack lew byes. and you'll find some beautiful illustrations of his particular prints and paintings that he had for delaware. he was a famous delaware portrait artist and artist in general. be for delaware. and his works are displayed throughout many state buildings and private homes in delaware. and this was a very limited edition of the materials that he was going to be, that he painted. this document has a combination of a document with it and a book, it's a beautiful surveyor's guide as it relates to one of our cities in delaware. and it was in relationship, they were measuring property lines for the train service here. but what you'll notice here is the beautiful coloring that they have here and how this particular book was an actual foldout of a map at the time. so this is used a lot by individuals that are researching property or homes that someone had in that particular area. so this is one of the gems of our collection as well. and of particular or interest is the state bible. we may be the only state -- i can't say that for certainty -- that has a state bible. this bible was printed back in the 1530s in france, and it was a gift to delaware back in the early 1700s. and it's been used continuously since about 1847 where governors would take their oath of office. and it was last used in january of this year when governor jack markell became governor and swore his allegiance to the state. and it's brought into the ceremony with great pomp and circumstance because of its historical significance. and as i said, all governors since about 1847 have taken their oath of office on this expect one governor in 1901. he was a quaker, and he just only affirmed the oath. he did not swear on the bible. so those are some of our books that we have here that are in our rare book collection. again, these are noncirculating books for the simple reason because wear and tear on them could damage them, but they are available for individuals to look at by appointment. the care of these books and how books come in is the beginning -- is the beginning and ongoing process. when we get a donation, let's say, of a senate book of this nature, it dose through various -- goes through various processing steps. we'll make sure it's clean, we'll use certain types of materials to get out dust fragments and straighten any pages that might be folded, take out any material. sometimes people used to leave bookmarks in them or paper clips or something, and we'll remove all those things. and we'll dust the jackets off and the covers off, and we'll make primary types of boxes, acid-free boxes to put those in. we've talked about the rail volumes that we've had, we've also mentioned a little bit about documents that we conserve and preserve in the delaware public archives. but there's a means to that. there's certain tools that are specific to the archival profession that our curators and our processing archivists use in their daily taskings as they relate to conservation and preservation of these materials. i'd like to introduce you to one of our processing archivists, ms. sarah denison, who's going to describe some of the tools we use. >> here we are in the processing area. this is where we work with documents that are either new to the institution or things that we've had for a while that haven't been formally processed, organized, made accessible to the people who come here to do research. so this area's used to triage, to clean, to organize the documents and photographs and other things that we get here at the archives. often we work with cotton gloves, that's to protect the documents and photographs that we touch from our fingerprints and oils and any other fun things that live on our fingers. also for processing we use tools like this spatula, it helps us work with small folds and creases and other little things we need to fix before they are formally housed in acid-free materials. things can get a little dirty back here, as you might imagine, years and years of just dust and mold and any other creepy, crawly things that come in with documents that have lived in people's basements. so large brushes like this are great for cleaning big documents or even just cleaning up the table once we're done. we do make custom enclosures here at the archives, that means boxes that fit special-sized items, sometimes things will be oversized, undersized. you can't buy boxes that come in those dimensions, so we do make things in house. kind of fun. we use itemed like this bone folder to make creases, it's fancy name for cardboard. cellulose sponges we manually clean documents and other items. it creates a safe amount of friction that we can take dirt and other materials off of paper and other delicate items. >> our philosophy here is how do we best make our materials accessible to the individual based on what their learning requirements are and their needs are. >> author john alstadt is next on booktv. many alstadt, author of "with love to yourself and baby," spoke with us during our recent trip to dover, delaware. his book reports on the first murder case to involve a crime committed in two different states. >> this was the first murder by mail in the united states. there's no case law whatsoever about sending a box of candy and poisoning somebody because you have to be a fugitive from the other state in order for them to, the other state to extradite you to their jurisdiction. so now the case becomes even more involved because now you have case law. and this case actually does make case law in the united states. it's now common knowledge that you cannot murder by mail in the united states, but in 1898 you actually could. "with love yourself and baby" comes from the note and the box of poisoned chocolates that was received by mary elizabeth dunning on august 9, 1898. and she was very happy. it said with love to yourself and baby from mrs. c. she knew somebody named mrs. c. in san francisco because she had lived there from i believe it was 1895 until 1896. she had married a fellow by the name of john dunning, and he was with the associated press, and they had moved to california so that he could take a new job as the managing director of the associated press office out there. the case really was rather convoluted, also easy at the same time. the chocolates were sent from san francisco, there was a postmark on the box august 4, 1898. out arrived at the dover post office on august 9, 1898, and was picked up by the grand with son of john pennington, harry pennington, and brought home. that was one of his duties, was to pick up the mail every night. he brought it to the house, the family was sitting on the porch, and he gave a package to his aunt, said, aunt mary, here's a package for you. so she opened it up, and that's when she saw the note, with love to yourself and baby. from that point after the death on the 11th and 12th of august -- because mary elizabeth and ida henrietta both did pass away from what turned out to be arsenic poisoning, mr. pennington became very suspicious and just shortly before his daughter's death, he had asked where the box was. and she told him that she had put it, i believe, above a bureau in the dining room. and he went, and he retrieved that, and he looked at it, and he thought to himself there's something familiar about this. as i found out doing the research, certain points in the time that she was estranged from john dunning in california she had received letters. the first one she had opened up, and it was, it was a rather -- it was something that upset her because it told her that her husband was having an affair with this unknown woman in san francisco. so when the next couple of letters came, she -- she didn't open those letters, or but she left them, and her father took them into his, i guess, safekeeping and put them in his office across the green. so when he's looking at the box, john pennington goes across to his office and retrieves the letters and looks at them, they all have the same handwriting on them or what he thinks is the same handwriting. as the case moved forward and, obviously, she is going to be arrested for the crimes or the crime because she was only tried for one murder, and that was mary elizabeth dunning. she's taken into custody in stockton, california, brought back to san francisco. of she gets, she gets a legal team, and they fight extradition back to delaware. it goes all the way to the california supreme court, and the california supreme court rules in favor of the prosecution. that, in fact, she can be prosecuted. she can't be taken back to delaware. however, she can be prosecuted in california which is why the case that happened in delaware was prosecuted in san francisco, california. what happened cordelia -- another interesting aspect of the case because she goes to trial for the murder of mary elizabeth dunning in 1898. she's found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. there's a problem, however, because apparently when the defense appeals the case, the supreme court overturns the ruling because of the way the judge instructed the jury. so they had to retry the case. and they retried it in 1904. and in 1904 she again was found guilty of murder in the first degree. she was sentenced, much to the disdain of the prosecution who wanted her hung, she was sentenced to life imprism. and -- imprisonment. and on march 7th of 910, the poor lady dies of melancholy, end of story. >> next from dover we tour local independent bookstores. co-owner marie shane talks with us about being the only bookstore within 40 miles of dover and the challenges they face with chain stores and e-books. >> today we're at acorn books in dover, delaware, and we are one of the only full service retail bookstores in the county. acorn books has only been open for about ten months. we opened september of 2012. we opened the bookstore in dover because most of the other employees and myself worked together at atlantic books in dover for quite a number of years. and that owner retired. and when that happened, we realized that that was the last general bookstore in the county, and there was nothing left. and we figured why not? so we just didn't even stop. it closed, and we started planning acorn books, and a couple months later, here it is. anybody who comes into acorn books, we hope that they see a little bit of everything that they like. that's easier said than done though. in the beginning we went off of customer requests. it would have been real easy to just spend, spend, spend and full the store full of books but still not have anything that our customers wanted. so when it came to stocking, we really waited physical we got some feed beback -- until we got some feedback from customers in this area, and right now it seems like fiction, science fiction and fantasy are really the top drivers in this area, so that's what we try and focus on. we do try and keep up with the nonfiction here as well at acorn books, and that really gets interesting with the used books that get brought in by the customers, and we've started seeing a lot of really old books that at first we thought were a little outside of our expertise, but we've really tried learning how to handle those things, books that people might think of as antique. we really try and do our research and, you know, make sure we understand what we have and so we can give a book for our point, you know, the price that it needs to have but also the care that it needs to have so we can start passing those types of treasures on to our customers. the economics and the time period that we opened acorn books did make it a little bit difficult, and we didn't want the facts to deter us from doing something we felt dover really, really needed. the customers in the county, in dover and even outside of the dover area really said that, you know, this town has to have a bookstore. and if the customer base is going to be that strong and that outspoken and that supportive, we didn't want to put too much doubt in them, you know, over just some economic numbers. ..
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