Just so dominant. We had a president ial on the republican side and democrat side, 80 percent go to president ial and yet the American People put in all the incumbents again, roughly in congress so theres an amazing power of the perking winning elections and on top of the money part, people are lying themselves up to be chairman of the committee. Thats a great idea but if you vote in lockstep with leadership in order to get that slot you can start looking both sides to this. Theyre not doing whats best for the country all the time afterwards airs on tv every saturday at 10 pm and sunday at 9 pm eastern. Watch all previous afterwards programs on our website, booktv. Org. Today book tv is live from the 16th annual National Book festival in washington dc. 2001 by then first lady laura bush, the event is held at the Convention Center so we got a full lineup for you. Heres just a few of the authors you will hear from. Santos lamarr, john meacham, Doug Brinkley and several more life from the history and biography room and from the book tv steps on the Convention Center bob woodward, representative can birds also sit down to discuss their books and answer your questions. Now for a complete schedule of the days events you can visit our website at booktv. Org. You can also follow us on twitter at book tv, on instagram at bookotv and on facebook, facebook. Com book tv. Through the day will be we will be posting behindthescenes pictures of all platforms and you can also watch exclusive videos on facebook alive. Now we talked to National Book festival with sarah vowell. Her most recent book on history is lafayette in the somewhat United States. This is live coverage of the National Book festival on book tv on cspan2. [inaudible conversation]. [inaudible conversation] good afternoon everyone. My name is david mao and its my pleasure to welcome all of you to the 16th, 2016 16 annual book festival and of course we are on the history and biography stage which is sponsored by wells fargo. We have a library of congress are thrilled to be presenting this National Book festival for the 16th time. This terrific event would not be possible without the friends that we have supporting us, generously supporting like wells fargo and we are very consistent but moreover we would not be here but for all of you who support the authors, are interested in them and come out in droves, thank you very much for being here today. Thank you. [applause] this years festival is inspired by journeys. And the ideathat the book is a voyage unto itself. Picking at the places we might not be able to see in person but we can visit by reading about it. And it gives us the opportunity to better understand our world and in particular way we are here today celebrating history and biography so reading to us is an ideal form of travel and its really the best way for us to develop and encourage and grow our minds. In addition to the author presentations we have here on this stage today, we have other events i hope you will take the opportunity to visit. The lower level of the Convention Center where we have family activities. We have our sponsors, aarp, wells fargo, also the library of congress, i encourage you to visit us and learn more about your National Library. Learn more about the wonderful things we are doing at the library of congress to make our treasures available whether you visit us in person or online. So we have a great lineup. I dont want to take up too much time so i hope you will welcome our first presenter who will kick things off for us. Mister Carlos Lozada who is the associate editor and Nonfiction Book critic for the Washington Post. I invite him to come up and introduce our first reader, thank you very much. [applause] good afternoon, welcome to the 2016 National Book festival. As david mentioned, my name is Carlos Lozada. I review nonfiction for the Washington Post which is the charter sponsor of the festival. Thanks again to the library of congress which has supported the festival for 16 years as well as the chairman David Rubenstein and many sponsors that make the event possible. Ive never met sarah vowell personally until right now but maybe like a lot of you, i feel like ive known her forever. Whether through her work on this american life, her delightful books into the side alleys of American History and in the role of that most excites my moody sixyearold daughter, as the voice of violet from the incredibles. Sarah can basically do anything and make it seem effortless and funny and profound all at once and if youve not read her obituaries of genre andare , you are missing out. But im here to talk about her books. Shes written a history of hawaii, of president ial assassination sites and most recently a book on americas revolutionary bff, the marquis de lafayette in her 2015 book, lafayette in the somewhat United States. There will be time for questions after her speech and cspan is covering the history and biography session so be on your best behavior. Tara will be signing books so please get one. It is my huge pleasure to introduce sarah vowell. [applause] hello, book lovers. People of cspan. Recently i travel around the country so much and i only meet people who read books and i dont know if youve watched the news like the last year or so but id like to say that im cool with that. [laughter] thank you. That i like my little vision of america that i get from meeting all of you. So im feeling very contemplative today, if youre watching television or here in washington dc and for me, i arrived in this city precisely half my life ago, 23 years ago. I wait for you to do the math. I know thats not your strong suit. Or mine. You have other nice qualities. 23 years ago i arrived in this city on the train from montana. My parents drove me on to shelby montana where i caught the amtrak. I hitched across north dakota, that took a while. Change trains at chicago, so louise sold in, but i wanted to live here someday and i ended up doing that. Went across pennsylvania. I remember the conductor that we were crossing the susquehanna river and he said get a load of this scenic wonderland and i arrived here in dc for my smithsonian internship and i think it was the next day, yasir arafat shook my hand on the white house lawn. It was a great time in america. The library of congress is sponsoring this event. When i was an intern at the smithsonian the first works that i worked on that had the isbn number, the catalog number were aids to things like art in philadelphia and the archives of american art. Yeah, that was the main one. Italianamerican art history so i was saying earlier that for me as an author every time i get one of my books in the mail the first time, the first thing i do is look at that catalog number because we all know life is short in the library of congress. [applause] so take that, great britain. But anyway, being here thinking about when i was a young but leaving home to come here, i realized that is the story that ive been writing all these years through several books. Its always the story of the myth of leaving home. And that is the story of our country. I think earlier this year in the city, Tbone Burnett said this is the story of the United States. A kid walked away from home with an song and nothing else and gave a concert for the world. That is always the story im writing whether its Theodore Roosevelt leaving new york the more his wifes mother and head out to north dakota and be a cow man , as one of his biographers said, he was the only president who ever read Anna Karenina while on a threeday searchfor cattle feed. Or our friend Abraham Lincoln who when he left greenfield to come here as president and took the train to philadelphia to Independence Hall and he said that the sentiments i entertain have been drawn from the sentiments which were given to the world from this hall and he said the goal of the presidency was to save the country invented there and he added ominously, i would rather be a fascinated prominent spot than to endurance. Obviously that predates in. There was another misfit who left home from baltimore. And then ive written about new england, coming to hawaii like so many Church People of the early 19th century who lost maps from expeditions like that and result to spread the gospel to all the places where cooks tailors had spread the crap. Or to their forbearers the new England Patriots such as the massachusetts may cottage who unlike those hippies the claimants were trying to convince the english government they were not separating from the english and that they would remain as english as clotted cream and you can throw the letter to charles v in 1630 who said from whose which they said they wanted to remind the king that we shall be in our poor cottages in the wilderness whereas john winthrop, their leader, he was the opposite. We shall be the seat upon a hill. So its this leaving home. My latest misfitleaving home is a french teenager , marquis de lafayette and this book tells the story of him leaving home and his pregnant teenage wife to come to america to throw in with the George Washington and the Continental Army so i will read from it and i just wanted to read this section of his voyage to america, his early time and then ill read a little tangent about the heroic seller to the subject of the proceedings. So its 1777. Lafayette has absconded to america. Hes on his own ship to come here. The king of france is trying to keep them at home. His wifes family is trying to keep him at home because as i mentioned she is pregnant and once he makes it onto the ship he has purchased across the atlantic he starts sending his wife his writing, his wife gets his letters to try to explain why he has abandoned her and their forthcoming child. I believe i say in the book that while history may be full of great fathers, recorded father history is not kind to them. At sea, lafayette unveils the grandeur of his mission to his wife audrey and attempted to include her in it. He wrote, i hope that as a favor to me you will become a good american. She is a teenage french aristocrat from with what is one of the most illustrious families, she lives in a mansion in paris when she is living at the mansion in bursae so asking her to become an american is sort of baffling. He wasnt in a position to ask her any favors. Nevertheless he proclaimed to his wife, the welfare of america is intimately bound up with the happiness of humanity. She is going to become the deserving and assure refuge of virtue, of honesty, of tolerance, of the quality and of a tranquil liberty. And to establish such a forthright dreamland of decency, who wouldnt sign up to shoot the 2000 englishmen just as long as mister bean wasnt one of them . Alas, from my end of history, from our end of history, theres a big file cabinet blocking the view of the sweet natured republic lafayette foretold and it is where they keep the folders full of indian treaties, the chinese exclusion act and faa monitor electronic messages to National Security which is apparently all of them, including the one in which i asked my mom or advice on how to get a red sharpie stain out of couch upholstery. Lafayette confided in his wife i am coming as a friend to offer my services to this intriguing republic. I bringto it only my frankness and my goodwill. No ambition, no selfinterest , working for my glory i work for theirs. Disregarding the inherent contradictions of his lack of ambition and selfinterest, he revealed that attaining glory was one of his two stated goals. He was an only child. The phrase coming as a friend glows on the page. As it turned out to be the truth. Its appropriate caused lafayette for the casual cruelty with which he abandoned his family, roll the eyes at his routine or envied his outlandish optimism but none of that negates the fact that he turned out to be the best friend america ever had and i am not only referring to his derringdo on battlefields up and down the eastern seaboard, am also referring to any number of his grownup things such as assisting thomas jefferson, the United States ministered to france in the 1980s and opening up french markets to american goods. Lafayette lobbying secured nantucket, the contract to supply the whale oil that lifted the street terra. Because of lafayette, the city of lights glows by new englands will blogger and to say thanks for getting them the gig, all nantucket rallied to send him a giant wheel of cheese. [laughter] thats gratitude. So american, lets send the cheese to france. Finally, after his two month voyage on his ship the victory when she called floating on this dreary plane, they came ashore in charleston around midnight on june 13, 1777, waking up the household of major Benjamin Huber of the South Carolina militia and thats the next page and lafayette wrote later, i retired to rest that night rejoicing that i last attained the haven of my dreams. The next morning was beautiful, everything around me was new to me. The room, the bed drapes , the delicate curtains, the black servants came to me quietly to ask my commands. The strange new beauty of the landscape outside my window. The luxuriant vegetation, all combined to produce that magical effect. In other words, it was like a swap for slaves. Lafayette so loved. So he and his men, they start out in carriages and end up in horses and by the end of it they are basically walking to philadelphia when hes going to what became Independence Hall to announce here i am and you know, he expected a warm welcome. The moment lafayette thought was peculiarly unfavorable. The americans were displeased with the pretensions and disgusted with the conduct of many frenchmen. Consequently he wrote, the Congress Finally adopted the plan of not listening so when lafayette and his friends called the house moniker Independence Hall, congressman james lovell of massachusetts steer them away snarling it seems that the french are too fancy to enter our Service Without being invited. But most of them including lafayette had been invited by american agents in france and the throngs of some frenchmen who went sloshing ashore for months expecting to be welcomed so also, i should mention that this moment europe is uncharacteristically at peace so all these europeanofficers especially frenchmen come over in droves wanting a job. And washington who is always in need of men wasnt excited about these particular men because he says they have no attachment nor ties to the country and bemoaned their ignorance of our language and pointed out that american officers should be disgusted of foreigners were put over their heads so thats exactly what happened right before lafayette arrived, this other frenchmen whose name was dubay and he was a veteran of the revolutionary war and he showed up as lafayette did, saying herei am , im a big wig and im paraphrasing, a big wig at the sixth court and i am the greatest renowned authority on artillery in france and what he was was on my wine merchants son who has purchased a few cannons but he shows up and says i deserve to be your artillery cheek and so it turns out that replacing the Continental Armys beloved chief officer henry knox was not an easy and arbitrary as a witch casting a second there because henry knox was the revolution. Born in boston in 1759 to irish immigrants, to support his other siblings after his fathers death, he had a bookbinder andeventually opened his own bookstore , the lenders bookstore and after the coercive acts of 1774, this was really hard on pretty much all the colonists but officially the book merchants and he couldnt get any of the books he was selling from england and you know, the colonists were plotting stuff from new england anyway so those acts, they were supposed to serve as a warning to all the other colonists and brought massachusetts into submission but what happened was it further radicalized an already radical massachusetts and rallied other colonies to come to material and political aide so caring up, meanwhile he had wooed the royal governors daughter wexler, great name and he had joined a local militia, the boston grenadier and shots fired in lexington and concorde in 1775 so despite his failing in the hands of his brother, throws in with the militias. Then when washington is appointed to commanderinchief of the Continental Army and shows up and hes telling the soldiers that we should have no more sectional rivalries between countries and privately hes writing to his cronies back in virginia, these people are stupid,especially the massachusetts men. Its still a work in progress. And at that time, boston was under siege. The british had occupied the peninsula of boston and their navy control the harbor and they were just resupplying the cities with provisions and ships down from canada. These are the maps im drawing in my mind. I just assumed them. So the patriots with their patriots had been surrounded but to break this stalemate they needed weapons and then they got the good news that ethan allen and Benedict Arnold and their people had kept to court ticonderoga where there were all these men artillery cannons and mortar. 300 miles away. And henry knox, the bookseller is like, i think at this point he goes up to washington and it says how about i go get all them . 300 miles away. And washington is like yes, sure. Go ahead. Bookstore owner. And he did it, he and his brother set off for new york. In november i think it was and by january they had returned with 43 cannons, 14 mortars and to howards ears dragged across trojan river