Locations here at the union market. If you would like a full list of our Upcoming Events please see our website. Or you can pick up a paper copy of our Events Calendar at the questions desk. Before the event tonight i do have a few short housekeeping items. First, please silence your cell phones so that we dont have any buzzing or ringing during the event. What is time for the q a session after the presentation, please come up to the microphone there as we are recording the event via audio. Please also make sure that your question is in fact a question. [laughter]. And if you have a dissertation, we do have a selfpublishing arm. [laughter]. We will have a signing for the book up at the front of the table here after the event. If you do not yet have a copy, we have plenty available for cell at the register. At the front of the store. Finally, at the end of the event, please hold the future and put into the side on one of the shelves. That would be a great help. Today im excited to welcome adam to the start celebrating his new book, rebels. The book tells the story of rose, woman famous in america during the golden age, but largely forgotten now. Having arrived from russia in 1990, and working in factories on page 11, she astonished American Society by marrying a blue blood to date new york together, the unusual couple joined the socialist party and work with figures such as emma waldman, eugene and others. As previous work on the spanish civil war and british have listened, he keeps diane into her life. Even as he died. He examines how historical figures responded to challenges than in some ways resemble our own. In revising figures like stokes, his work not only reminds us most political responsibility of citizens but also we should widen our political imagination. Once again in the other books includes the classics King Leopolds ghost, not only historian but also his mastery of narrative writer. And his account of the life and work, is just giving us an important tale for our own times. Please joining me and welcoming adam. Adam actually the music was supposed to be playing as you came in. Ive got to stop now because we have to get onto the rest of the show here. Anyway, it is great to be back here at the politics and prose. Its a wonderful store and i lived in washington, i would be here loitering all of the time. It is a pleasure to be or see so many of you here to hear about a book that is not the latest inside story from trumps white house. And it isnt even about the origin of the coronavirus. But its about Something Else entirely. Im really quite remarkable woman. And also about her very unusual marriage which i think shed some light on our countries was about a century and a quarter ago. And maybe by reflection, a little bit on the country today. So let me take and i want to tell the stories of both people in this marriage. But then we start with her. The woman who will become rose was born in russia in the town of herself. 1879 was when she was born. This is a small city and today is in the far northeastern corner of full it but at that time of course, there was no poland so is part of russia. Although she was jewish, the jews early some of them did not live in a shtetl because those father who was a cobbler lived above the shop on the main square of the town. In her mother separated. Soon after her birth. When she was born, the russian empire was under rule of czar alexander the second. He was a good guys czar. The man who freed the service and he also eased a few of the very harsh restrictions on russia students. He was by no means a believer and rights but he was shall we say, a little bit less antisemitic than many others members of the roman dynasty. However, the wifes of rose and her family millions of other people were offended something that happened two years after she was born in 1981. Hundreds of miles away when st. Petersburg empires capital. And he was assassinated. Alexander the second was predestined as he was dead, his successor impose very harsh new restrictions on the jews of russia. And encouraged essentially quietly and unofficially yes, a series of rules over the next 25 years pretty hundreds of People Killed and often jewish homes and shops were burned. Leaving their owners homeless. This of course was an enormous exodus minut millions of jews fe empire. For most of them onto the United States. Among them was rose, and three years old. In her divorced mother. They stayed first for seven years london, they begin great poverty in cities east end. It was there arose had the only schooling that she ever received. Less than two years. What was enough for her to learn to read and write english and she spoke yiddish at home and to acquire a great love for english poetry. Then in 1990, when she was 11 years old, she and her mother came to the United States like somebody other immigrants, unaffected ship like this one. And they immediately settled in cleveland, ohio. There, at the age of 11, rose had to go to work right away. In a factory making cigars. This photograph is from a few years later, that is her in the middle of the back row. Age 16 and 1896. She worked as a cigar maker for a dozen years. By the end of that time, she was the sole support of herself, her mother, and six younger siblings who had been abandoned by the stepfather. For this work and she worked modeling days but often evenings as well. Shared 8 week, the equivalent of about 240 a week today. Working in cigar factories with the uneasy. The oil the tobacco leaves seep into your clothes, and your skin, into the wood surface you are working on. It was impossible to get rid of the smell. In order to not have heat dry out of it tobacco leaf, so they cannot be rolled around into the start of the year had to be kept very humid in these factories so the windows were nailed shut. And sometimes of that the brace wouldnt blow the humidity out. Very fine tobacco dust filled the air and filled the lines of people working in these places. Cigar workers had the second highest rate of tuberculosis of any occupation in the United States. Only stone cutters had it worse. And rose would have lung problems for the rest of her life. When she was 20 years old or 21 years old, something happened that changed the course of her life. She saw a copy of a yiddish newspaper published in new york. Our jewish daily news. The paper ran one page in english and invited contributions from readers around the country. Was a new york paper but was trying to go national. So said everybody wherever your, send us your stories, practice letters and tell us what is going on there. Andras began writing to the paper. He gave her a call and an advice column. Under the heading of just between ourselves. To his amazement she received a check in the mail for 2. To learn they could actually get paid for writing. She wrote under the pen name of zelda. She was even more amazed and delighted when after two years of doing this living in cleveland, newspaper invited her to new york to work in his office and write for the english page of the paper fulltime. At double the salary that she was earning is a cigar worker. So she arrived in new york in 19 oh three. At the age of 23. Imagine how this city looked to somebody than sing it for the first time read on elevated tracks above the streets, the work seemed powered trains printed trolleys, propelled by underground cables on the streets themselves printed below ground, thousands of people were working in building subway systems which had not opened yet. And on the streets even a few of the new horseless carriages. And of course, skyscrapers and much else unlike any think that never seen before. And new york by the way of the time, is this city that would have terrified donald trump because it was a city of immigrants. More than half of the men in manhattan wrote 21 years old were foreignborn. New york would soon be the largest city in the world that is already the largest jewish city in the world. And this is a picture of the Lower East Side where rose lived and worked. Most of the people that she wrote about in the newspaper, worship assistance, street peddlers like these on the Lower East Side. She gathered their stories and then went back to the office and rode up reams and reams of copies everyday. One day in the summer of 19 oh three, the editor gave her a different assignments. It was to go and interview somebody who worked in a settlement house. You know what settlement houses where i think. These were places wellestablished and poor neighborhoods. Usually the poorest neighborhoods in every city. Drive northeast and they offered nutrition for children, they offered things like baths and showers, not just for kids but for adults because for millions of People Living in tents in new york and other cities. There were beds and showers there prayed they offered literacy classes and classes in many other things as well. Although, settlement houses served population that was almost entirely immigrant and very poor. The volunteers and staff settlement houses tended to be will to do college graduates. Owner roosevelt for example of this time worked on in a settlement house in the Lower East Side of new york. The settlement house where rose was sent to do her interview was called the University Settlement. On the lower side not very far from the office. And heres the man she was asked to interview. A volunteer working there. James Graham Phelps stokes. As you can tell from the name, very different background, anglo saxon protestant and his friends call him back home. And he rose fell in love. He came from the most different kind of background imaginable. Here for example, is his parents summer home. [laughter]. The house in the mountains in western massachusetts. The time it was built in the 1890s, it was for a time, the largest private home in the United States. One hundred rooms. And legend has it that one of grahams brothers was in the class of 1896 at yell, sent a telegram to his mother saying that he was bringing some 96, phyllis home for the weekend. His mother that the telegram and he got dropped from the telegram. And his mother replied, many guests are ready here, have room for only 50. [laughter]. And not in the summer later, some of the week in homes, the family lived in new york in this mansion at madison avenue and 37th street, a building that today as part of the morgan library. Here are grahams parents, each of them came from a family with a substantial fortune which they combined. The familys wealth rested on a number of things. Part of the phelps dodge running empire in new york City Real Estate especially luxury apartment buildings on the Upper East Side and a cluster of gold and silver mines in nevada on a railroad and ran to them. In the family is also very active philanthropic likely, good works of various kinds. Graham i think one or two members of the family serving the board of broker t washington institution. And there were other philanthropic adventures as well. Heres a picture of grahams parents surrounded by nine children and some of the spouses and offspring of those children. And, it was in terms of the country at the time, and immensely distractible family. The boys were expected to place prominent roles and they did in one of them became an undistinguished architect one became editorial writer for the new york times. One became what today would be called yellow university and later dean of the National Cathedral here in washington. The grandson became a bishop. The girls were expected to very well and they did. In one of them. No woman in europe became the baroness and another married into the family of former secretary of state. Budget Graham Stokes talk a quite different path in life. After he graduated from college, he went to medical school at columbia university. Then he worked as a medical student on horsedrawn ambulance in new york. For the first time, came into contact with a very different side of the city where he had grown up pretty this was the new york of the tennis and he was chocked what he saw. A tiny apartment, immigrants were living packed six and seven and eight people to a room. Tenements were often the only toilets were outdoor outhouses like these. And of course, they mislead the tenants of new york city also doubled as a sweatshop for the garment industry. Graham was outraged by what he saw. That was what made him become part of the Settlement House Movement and actually go and live in the University Settlement that we saw on the Lower East Side. That was where of course rose met him for the first time. They courted secretly for two years. Over the strenuous, well concealed opposition of grahams family. And then finally the news leaked out. Probably because a newspaper reporter had bribed a telegraph operator to tip them off of anything of interest that came over the wires. And when it broke it was front page news. This headline, jg phelps stokes to wed young jewish and it ran on page one and was recorded all of world. Europe and australia. And received immense attention. It was the lead story on page one of the new york evening world. As you can see, im not sure if you can read in the back, jg stokes engaged to marry port jewish girl. What attracted peoples interest was that it was not just a marriage of someone extremely rich in someone extremely poor but a jew and gentile. Interactive marriages were very unusual at the time. Supposboth a class and an ethnic difference. But were still interested in such things today. It makes people fascinated with prince. Megan marshall. Megan markle. The same newspapers and the sun rose up to sign up calling her the genius of the ghetto. Then they were married. On july 18th, 1905. Roses 26th birthday. Graham was seven years older. The press remained fascinated by this couple and they lived in a blaze of publicity for the next 20 years. And i think the core of the publics fascination was that here there seem be this cinderella story. Prince charming rescued poor virtuous some cinderella and her humble heart and brought her to limit his counsel. And i think what fascinates us all, and has so many print centuries about the cinderella story, is we are curious about the possibility for transformation. Will prince charming be somehow softened by his new bride. Will she be transformed and flourish and thrive in the castle and the way she cannot be before. And i think this is what curiosity about this is what caused people to follow so closely for so many years exactly what happened to this couple. Heres a picture of rose taken the year after they married. Their lives did not fit the cinderella script because Graham Stokes had some degree left cancel and rose had no desire to live in one. Even though they often stayed in one or another of his parents homes, and always made her uncomfortable. She and graham were acutely conscious they lived in a country with enormous disparities of wealth. Some people lived as grahams family did others were desperately poor and often worked in dangerous conditions as well these child homeowners in west virginia. In 1906, the year after they married, rosen graham both joined the group that the thought had the best solution to these problems. To the injustices of the time. The socialist party. And the time, the parties leader as he was for many years, was eugene, and noble man charismatic, much be limited, five times a candidate for president. He had began life as a Railway Worker and then became head of the raleigh workers union. And when he campaign for president in 1908, he traveled around the country in a special train old the red special. [laughter]. And a few red flags and was draped with red bunting and engineers of passing locomotives on the next track always recognized when they came along and gave loan toots and the whistles when they saw the red special ruling by. When he came to new york, Graham Stokes was on the platform with him because graham was running as a socialist candidate for the new York State Legislature from the Lower East Side. And rose went out and campaigned for both of them. Neither graham nor eugene one their elections. But people remained fascinated by this couple. Everyone still saw it as the cinderella story. The marriages fired two novels. Heres one of them. Salome of the tenements. And it was turned into a silent film. Unfortunate, the film was lost as with many films did not survive of that era. But we still have promotional photos from it of the actors playing rose and friend. And heres one of them. What they are saying to each other in the film, your guess is as good as mine. This was a time when many people even those who are not involved in the socialist movement or other progressive movements became acutely conscious of some of the injustices of American Life. The terrible Labor Conditions of the time involved clothing workers printed workers who worked in the triangle Shirt Company in new york city, just f washington square. There was a terrible fire. The workers on the upper floor were trapped and most of them were unable to get out and it was an inadequate escape the collapse under the weight of everybody on it in a stairwell which couldve allowed the workers to escape from this factory, was locked to keep out union organizers. 146 people burned to death, or left out the windows to the death to escape the flames. Almost all of them were women. Half of them were teenagers and almost all were immigrants, jewish and italian. 120,000 people marched in a morning procession through new york city and more than 300,000 people lined the sidewalks. This essay, this was something seem to crystallize and dramatize the awareness that people had began to have at that time as being for the enormous disparities of wealth. Rose continued her journalism but now issues of labor and social injustices is what she was writing about and also womens rights printed she got very involved in one case that had echoes of some of the kinds of battles that are still going on in the me to parrot today. One case that drew her attention was that of a woman called sar