Mark also worked with ben cramer on joe dimaggio, published in 2000. Since 1989, he produced, directed, and has written many awardwinning programs for pbs spanning a rich friday of subjects such as battle of the bulge, the pilgrimage of jesse theon, mount rushmore, Transcontinental Railroad, and jesse james. He has received the dupont columbia award, the George Foster peabody award, the Writers Guild award, and the prize from the japan foundation. Was producer and writer for the four hour pbs history of the United States supreme court, which was awarded the International Documentary associations award for Outstanding Limited series. Also the American Bar Association and the Parents Choice gold award. Mark was also nominated for a primetime emmys in the category of Outstanding Achievement, in nonfiction filmmaking and Outstanding Achievement in writing for his pbs program on walt whitman. Hes also the author of will you miss me when im gone . , which came out in 2002. It was one of the notable books of the year, and American Library association booklist list editors choice. This evening, he will be building into marks second book, the statesman and the storyteller, which brings us here tonight. I like to thank you very much for being with us and sharing with us this book on the day of its release to the public. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. [applause] start asking, if you would, giving the audience an idea of how you came to these two individuals together, interestrly since your in your past work is so wideranging. How did you strike on these individuals in the idea of pairing them together . Im going to give you a threepart answer on this. The idea for this book happened in stages, and the first stage was that i was working with then sender joe biden on a separate editorial project, and senator biden was at the time the Ranking Member of the foreign laterons committee, and the chairman of the Foreign Relations committee. In the three years i was working with him, he was almost constantly working to try to make a better outcome in iraq. This was from 20042007. And it struck me that he was working, he was hemmed in by history in some way. I was talking to him a little bit about when it was this they could the idea have good outcomes anywhere in the world, and it led me back to the spanishamerican war. I wanted a character to be able to tell that story, and the first when i struck on was john hay. Lincolns been one of lincolns private secretaries when he was young man. He was the ambassador to the court of st. James in london, and later secretary of state to wont mckinley and roosevelt. He was at the center of the events that happened around the years leading up to and just after the spanishamerican war. Him,ore research i did on sam clemens keeps popping up, as he does. He was always on the others the issue from a not always, but often on the others the issue, and it made me realize i could tell these events from a couple different perspectives, and i thought the whole then became bigger of the sum of the parts. But when i really decided to was when i read about a Birthday Party that mark twain had, sam clemens had in 1902. He was secretary of state and not traveling much but he agreed to come up to new york and to be at that dinner, and if you know anything about what sam clemens was talking about in those days, he was a big antiimperialist, very much opposed to what the administration was doing. There were many people in the audience who thought sam clemens make take the hide off john harry that night. He did not. I was curious about why he didnt do that, why he tempered himself. I think this story has a lot to do with the difficulty of dissent in this country, especially when it is in a war setting. Thats a long answer to how i ended up with those two guys. They were not close friends, but they had Great Respect and admiration for one another, and that helped at the end of their lives. In your bookout there an Important Foundation they come from the same region of the country, central Mississippi River valley, and i was wondering if you could take a minute or two to comment on may haveluences that forged that friendship from their common experience and that cultural heritage. They grew up about 50 or so miles apart on that river, so they would never have seen or known one another, but they had whereommon experiences, they met probably in the late 60s. They were both already Fairly Famous young men. When clemens moved to buffalo after he got married, he asked tate to be his partner in that paper. Clemensars later, when was doing his research for the trip down the mississippi, life on the mississippi, he asked him to come along. They had very common experiences, and when he wrote his early poems, clemens was the first to congratulate him on those poems. They met in pike county and the western, and few people had written that way before. Was quick to credit him as the man who popularized the western vernacular. He was happy to give him a nudge anytime. The civil war, thats going to change everything for both men. Clemson went out west seeking his fortune but eventually cultivates a writing career. Hey, maybe you can talk a little bit more about what takes him out of his hometown, and eventually they both converge and meet each other in new york city, postcivil war new york city. The Media Capital of the print revolution in america. If you can flesh out a little bit about those young bachelor journalists enjoying their days together in new york and how that would have contributed to their friendship. He had a Great Fortune of reading law just from abraham lincoln, and he ended up in his white house. Europe as aly in young diplomat, came back to the states then landed at the new york tribune about the time clemens came to new york, very much on the make. This was a guy who was out to make a name for himself and a little money, and the new york city media world was full of young men like ja john hay, like henry waterson. They were all around the city together, having as much fun as they had work. Edwin booth used to hang out with them. It was almost a nightly round of fun and good cheer and it was like early networking, i guess becameld say, and they pretty fast friends. Probably the most time they ever spent together in the late 60s and early 70s when clemens would come into new york and try to the dustup a little interest in his own self. Out and takes a tour of europe, traveling innocents abroad. Hay does some interesting things as well, but that leads us to marriage. Thatyour book, it is clear they both married well in a number of ways, but also those marriages were pretty influential, and also with the relationship can you talk a little bit about that . They both married up, as we all know. John hay married a woman whose father was spectacularly wealthy. Was one of the wealthy industrialists. He made his money and the good old fashion american way, he married it. He never had to worry about working for money again. Himself,id well for but he was always worried about making more money. After hey married and clemens married, they grew apart, and part of the reason was that misses hey was apprehensive about having sam clemens in the house. He was not the easiest guy to have around the house, and they didnt altogether trust him. It could be said that john hay possibly used misses hey as an through theelf, but 1870s and 1880s, they wrote to one another and kept contact through mutual friends, but they were never much in one anothers company in that time period. Door its literally and figuratively closed when she catches the two of them in their up and probably inviting a little bit andhey were yakking about, that marks the end game. Clear clemens describes the scene and it shot them both up. Talk a little bit more about the personalities of the men youve talked about, how they were always one of the great lines in your book is unlike sam clemens, john hay never appeared to be selling. If you could talk a little bit personas, perhaps privately versus publicly, maybe give the audience the sense for the mens compatibility, but also a friendship that is going to be conducted henceforth at arms length. Ways, the two men were opposites and personality. Boy was is a young plucked out as the special kid in the family he had an older brother but john hay was sent to was sental school, who to Brown University by his uncle milton. Hay never really had to do anything but be himself and show himself, and there were people willing to help push him downstream. He was an incredibly talented, gifted man, great with languages, very funny, easy to seemednd, and he never to be making any effort, it came effortlessly. To be alwayseemed thrashing for the next thing. He thought of himself as a guy who had to paddle his own canoe and he paddled very hard. In that way they were temperamentally very different. They were also different in terms of their, for lack of better word, politics. Hay was a very old line republican in the sense that he believed the best government was well bred, wellrespected, intelligent, men of means leading the nation. Clemens was a little more of a small d democrat, had a good bit more confidence in the general decency of the wider American People. The other thing i found really fascinating is how different they were in terms of how they treated the people who worked for them. I dont write a lot about this in the book, but in reading almost every letter and diary that both those men wrote in this 10 year period, i noticed that john hay never once mentioned the surf and staff who worked for him, nobody by name. Occasionally i would pop up in a note the best we can expect for a butler this season is another drunk. Whereas the people who served him they were basically family. Leary, they would be in europe and they would say, we have to take katie to such and such place in switzerland, shes never been there. Katie was the maid. George griffin, who worked here in the house, was obviously a great great friend of sam clemens, and he wrote a good bit about him after he died. Especially after the loss of george, which was very difficult for him. An africanamerican butler. I was one of the biggest differences that i noticed, sort of surprising and interesting. You develop their characters through the book, their maturation process. It may beshare in their own personal way and maybe you can comment on it, but they seem to share the core towardof duty and honor everything they did, their public conduct and personal duty andtheir sense of honor comes through could you talk about that . One of the things that fascinated me, ive read more and more about these people, not just in their personal lives, but in the life of the nation. Duty, theyabout spoke about honor, and they spoke about patriotism. They approach it from different perspectives, but they took it very seriously. His entireoperated public career what he saw as his chief duty, from the time he was serving abraham lincoln, through his ambassadorship, through his years as secretary of state. His duty was to make the burden on the president a little bit easier. Youve seen the president operate at the moment of greatest burden during the civil war. He understood the enormity of that office and he worked very ,ard to serve that president whatever president he was serving, take a little bit off his plate. Time ino it at the same a way that was honorable not only to the administration he was serving but to him personally thats a pretty tough line to walk. Clemens was he talked a lot about duty and honor, selflessness, but he was always pretty skeptical that the human with trued operate selflessness. He used himself as exhibit a. I recall that he had great Financial Difficulties and he felt and honor and duty to pay back the debts that he owed, although they had something to do with that i think, not to accept offers from creditors to discount his debt burden. Maybe he might have accepted t, but thats the thing you explore the later years of each mans life, that is something that weighs on clemens as he is going to comment on the issues of the day, the fact that he is trying to dig himself out of the financial hole. He was determined to do so. He hold his tone on a number of issues for the day. He was in a terrible financial pickle in 1895 when the story begins. They had worked out as they do in Bankruptcy Court a settlement with his creditor, . 50 on the dollar, and really thought he was honor bound to pay back every cent. She pushed him to do that. He sort of made a crusade out of it. He made a public crusade out of it. And it turned out to be much more difficult and much more personally costly than he ever could have expected. He pushed right through to the end. He did end up paying off that debt to the dollar pretty much. He didnt do it as he would have, paddling his own canoe and by himself. He had a lot of help from his friend, henry rogers. This idea of one bold individual taking care of himself it was a hard idea to hold onto when he had such help in clearing those debts. There were many times in the years it took him to clear the debts when he was looking for an easier way out and really wanted an easier way out. He might have had it had he not way, throughout their marriage, she called him use, which i always found him interesting. That was her name for him. He was ungovernable. The subtitle of the book is rise of american imperialism, a period in which the United States, transitioning from a former colony that establishes its National Identity in a revolution, to throw off the ,ontrol of a colonial overlord very rapidly after the civil war becomes the very thing it had revolted against in several instances around the globe, defeating european powers of i, the colonial empire would like to talk a little bit because twainue is on the inside, and both their sense of duty and honor compel them to react to this major transformation could you talk a little bit first about hawaii is central to both men a placet of reasons but that had its own queen, its own government, a strong american president for a long time which establishes a bit of spain with his fellow savages of the sandwich islands. Hawaii becomesof an early issue of imperialism you talk a little bit about the two men in their thoughts about hawaii and its relationship to the United States. Yeah, and im actually going to skip ahead basically, the u. S. Marines helped run a cu in hawaii in 1893. Regime change. Right. And immediately there was a treaty of annexation, which they did not get through the senate. 1898 for the United States to grab hawaii. It was only done as a war measure they never could get the treaty through for the annexation of hawaii. It ended up being a joint resolution, a war measure, because hawaii was so important to being able to hold the philly liens the philippines, thats the only reason the main reason we ended up with hawaii. Im going to jump ahead to the spanishamerican war. The idea was we were going to free the cubans and the philippines, and john hale was all for it, but so is sam clemens. Sam clemens, when the spanishamerican war first past and he was very excited about this war this was a war unlike any other. We were spending blood and treasure to free another people. Wrote that hehe was so excited about this he joined up to fight, himself if it werent for the danger. That changed over time as it became clear that we werent about freeing the cubans and buting the philippines about controlling those places. Hay was the guy who had to basically execute the plan as secretary of state. Clemens was a guy who grew angrier and angrier as he saw what was happening. The annexation of hawaii, we dont annex cuba but establish control we will annex the philippines and guam as well. To be named later. In theere proponents senate, although the treaty of annexation for hawaii doesnt pass. Theere proponents rhetoric to justify doing what had been done to us in the revolution might today be recognized in the phrase american exceptionalism. Notion that their god has bestowed upon the United States andduty to christianize bring civilization to backwards people around the world. Could you talk a little bit about john hayes thoughts about imperialism as the active imposing authority on the native clemens,d likewise sam and in particular that it is a charge from god to do it . Rhetoric got hotter and hotter in the aftermath of the spanishamerican war, the idea that this was gods plan. Tourley went on a public and said he wanted to tap into the wisdom of the American People and see what they want. After that he started talking about how this is what god wants. In my observation of the years of American History, when politicians and leaders Start Talking about doing things because of the Public Opinion and because of god, the rest of the world should hope they dont succeed and duck. Hay didnt think of this as imposing authority, but imposing civilization, making places better. He didnt have a lot of doubts about what was happening. Clemens did. Clemens was not a big fan of white civilization. If clemens thought of american exceptionalism, it was the breath of people, the breath of ideaht and ideas, and one of white man exceptionalism was not his cup of tea. Hay was very comfortable with that. Hay was not very comfortable about the idea of god. They seemed modern to me. They were not talking about gods plan and what god wanted for the American People. God didnt really enter the equation much. The most john hay would talk about was the cosmic de pendency. That was as close as he got to god talk. Clemens was quite angry about the use of religion and race in ur foreign policy. President mckinley was sort of a rustic imperialist at first. To the inspiration of god as well, but hes assassinated. Teddy roosevelt, by some interesting circumstances, some of