>> From the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. >> Ladies and Gentleman, please welcome the 14th Librarian of Congress, Dr. Carla Hayden. ^M00:00:14 [ Applause ] ^M00:00:23 >> Carla Hayden: Thank you! ^M00:00:24 [ Applause ] ^M00:00:30 >> Carla Hayden: Good evening! And welcome to the 2017 National Book Festival Gala Celebration, the opening of the festival. It is my great honor to be part of the institution that organizes, and presents this wonderful public event. Every year, for 17 years, the Library of Congress, has brought the nations greatest Authors, Poets, and Illustrators, to the Nation's Capitol, and put them together with book lovers who come from as far away as North Carolina, and Michigan, to hear them talk about their work. Everyone here tonight is part of that extraordinary effort, and I thank you for joining us this year. I want to say a few words about a number of people who can't be with us here, because of the devastating floods in Texas. Children's author, Tim Tingle, who's house was in the hurricanes path. And our interviewers, Keven Sullivan, and Mary Jordan, who are in the very thick of things, getting the news out for the Washington Post. Our thoughts are with them, and with all who have been affected. Now, you would not be here if you did not love books. And we wouldn't be here if the United States Congress did not love books. The members of Congress are the benefactors, and overseers of this Library, the largest cultural institution in the world, and we thank those members who are with us today. ^M00:02:06 [ Applause ] ^M00:02:15 We have a number of diplomats in the audience, who are also book lovers too. Welcome, to the Ambassadors of Peru, India, Ladia, Lafia, and also the Cultural Counselor of Mexico. ^M00:02:33 [ Applause ] ^M00:02:38 And thank you Mexican Cultural Institute, the Embassy of Columbia, the Embassy of Arland, and the Embassy of Sweden, for helping us bring superb talent from your countries, to our shores. Our audience tonight, also includes the many sponsors who have contributed to making this event possible. Mr. David Rubenstein, the festival's Co-Chair. ^M00:03:05 [ Applause ] ^M00:03:12 Charter sponsors, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, IMLS, The Washington Post, and Wells Fargo. You may clap. ^M00:03:23 [ Applause ] ^M00:03:28 And also, patrons and contributors, the James Madison Counsel of the Library of Congress, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment of the Humanities, Scholastic Inc., and many others. Because of their generosity, the festival remains completely free, and thank you for that. ^M00:03:48 [ Applause ] ^M00:03:53 And there's more. There are more than a thousand volunteers who give of their time. Library of Congress Staff, the general public, the Junior League of Washington, and our Introducers from the Washington Post, National Public Radio, and numerous other media organizations. And speaking of Library staff, a team of more than a dozen, have worked on planning tomorrows event, which will offer the most impressive line up of Authors in the 17 year history of the festival. And so I'd like to especially acknowledge our Festival organizers, Director Jared McNeil [assumed spelling], Literary Director, Maria Arana [assumed spelling]. ^M00:04:38 [ Applause ] ^M00:04:46 And of course, a big thank you to Sue Seagle [assumed spelling], of our Development Office. ^M00:04:51 [ Applause ] ^M00:04:55 Now, the lively image you see here, is from our Festival poster, and it was designed by the delightfully talented artist, RosChes. [applause] And she wanted to convey the idea, one that we all recognize, and know, that books are fun! And they're shared experiences, personal and communal. Books ask questions, and they aspire answers. They are essential to the human experience, and they open us to possibilities we might otherwise never see. Our theme tonight is the American Story, and I can't think of a better subject to relay the energy and diversity, that all of the story tellers here tonight, and at the festival, will bring. In fact, I must take a moment to recognize some of our newest, and youngest contributors to the American Story. We have with us tonight, the newly pinned, and recognized, 2017 National Student Poets. Would you please stand up? These five young people-- ^M00:06:14 [ Applause ] ^M00:06:37 These five young people will be spending the next year bringing words and the magic of words, to young people all over throughout the country. They represent the five regions of the country. And they are, I think, are the embodiment of what this festival is about. One of the great traditions of the festival has always been to bestow the Library Of Congress prize for American Fiction, on festival day. This years winner, Denis Johnson, to whom I offered the prize in March of this year, died tragically a few months later, in May. We are honoring this great figure in Contemporary American Fiction tomorrow with a posthumous conferral of the prize. It will be presented at the very top of our Fiction Stage, and relayed to his Widow, Cindy Johnson [assumed spelling], along with the citations about Denis we have gathered from more than a dozen literary figures from around the world. And since we always feature our winner at this Gala evening, we offer you now a very brief video on the life, and work of Denis Johnson. >> English words are like prisons, empty, nothing inside, and still they make rainbows. So says a character in "Already Dead", a Novel by the late, great American writer, Denis Johnson. Johnson's stories, as legions of his fans know, are also prisons. They are hard, merciless, flinty, and yet they too, make rainbows. He's been called a writer's writer's writer, and for all the indigma of that string of words, they hold a simple truth. Those who bring language to life, recognize Johnson's gifts instantly. Louise Erdrich calls his work profound, and transcendent. Jonathan Franzen finds his sentences miracles of transparency and tone. Phillip Roth, calls him daring, terrifying, and an emissary for tortured, broken souls. Marilyn Robinson marvels that a writer's personal passions, and energies, can be so inextricably wedded to his words. All agree, Denis Johnson has managed to give us minimalist, yet distinctly ecstatic, and hallucinatory rainbow probes. He is an American original. He was born in 1949, in Munich, Germany, and raised in Tokyo, and Manila, the child of American diplomats. As a teenager, moving back to Washington D.C., during the tumultuous 60's, he came to know the country, and the restless characters he would capture so vividly in his fiction. He graduated in English Literature, from University of Iowa, and earned a MFA, from the Iowa Writers Workshop, where he returned as a teacher. He has also taught at Texas University, and the University of Texas, at Austin. In the course of his favorite career, he published novels, short stories, journalism, and poetry. Among with his best works are those about the Flotsam and Jetsam of American Life, The Laughing Monsters, Nobody Move, Tree of Smoke, Already Dead, Jesus' Son, Resuscitation of a Hanged Man, The Stars at Noon, Fiskadora, Angels. He's received numerous awards for these, including a national book award, a Lannan Fellowship in fiction, a writing writers award, and in 2008, he was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Throughout, he has chronicled an America that has gone unobserved, unrecorded, here are our drug addicts, our war veterans, our disaffected, our used up and left behind, and yet the most affecting, and rewarding aspect of Denis Johnson's fiction is that in work, after work, he has proved that beauty often lurks in unexpected places, that strength can be found in failure, that the human spirit is a fragile, but resilient vessel. His is a very American Story. He once described his works as pressure cookers of language, his characters as those who inhabit life's perilous edge. As time wore on, he found that he himself was all too vulnerable to these human frailties. When the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, offered Denis Johnson the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, in March of 2017, he wrote in an email message, "My head is spinning from such great news". Two months later, tragically, he was dead. The Library is very proud to honor, posthumously, this extraordinary human being, and writer, who's contributions to the American can and have been been lasting and invaluable. As the Librarian wrote, when the prize was announced in June of 2017, Denis Johnson was a writer for our times, in prose that fused grace with wit, he spun tale after tale about our walking wounded, the demons that haunt, the salvation we seek. We emerge from his imagined world, with profound empathy, a different perspective, a little changed. We're very proud to count Denis Johnson among the distinguished winners of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. ^M00:12:14 [ Applause ] ^M00:12:25 >> Carla Hayden: Thank you! The National Book Festival is not only a celebration of books and reading, but also of literacy itself. Life, in these demanding times, can be very difficult for those who have never learned to read, and unfortunately, there are too many people in that number, in this country, and around the world. The latest estimate, is that 65 percent of adults in the world, are functionally illiterate. At the Library, it is an important part of our mission to comet illiteracy, and promote a culture of reading, and one of the most generous supporters of American Culture, History, and the Arts in this country is Mr. David Rubenstein, Co-Chair of the National Book Festival, and is primary donor. His patriotic philanthropy can be seen all across Washington, at the Kennedy Center, the National Zoo, the Washington Monument, and at the new National Museum of African American History and Culture. But his work can also be seen all across the country, and the world. He is a tireless promoter of literacy, and he believes in books, libraries, and the opportunity, and success that are [inaudible] linked, and I trust they are for all of us here tonight. His dedication to increasing literacy across the world, let to his creation and support of the Library of Congress Literacy Awards. And I now invite you to watch another video we have prepared, about the Literacy awards, and David's involvement in them. ^M00:14:14 [ Music ] ^M00:14:24 >> People who can read, and do, are healthier, happier, and live longer than people who can't. They are more likely to get preventative health care, and are less likely to go to an emergency room. Women and girls who are educated, have fewer children, and those they do have, are twice as likely to survive. Everyone benefits from literacy. For every one percent increase in a country's literacy rate, there is a permanent 1.5 percent increase in it's gross domestic product. But illiteracy is widespread, worldwide 758 million adults, most of them women, cannot read or write a simple sentence. Illiteracy contributes to poverty, and crime. 43 percent of adults with the lowest literacy levels, live in poverty. 70 percent of adult welfare recipients have trouble reading. 75 percent of state prison inmates did not complete high school. Illiteracy is expensive, low literacy cost the U.S. 225 billion dollars each year in lost work force productivity, crime, and unemployment. And illiteracy cost the global economy 1.19 trillion each year. Launched with the creative vision, and generosity of David M. Rubenstein, the Library of Congress Literacy Awards recognize, and promote the achievements of organizations, who's innovative, research based practices, are improving literacy, worldwide. Since 2013, these awards have provided more than one million dollars to 77 institutions, in 24 countries. This year, a committee of Literacy Experts, evaluated 59 nominations, and presented their findings to the Librarian of Congress who selected winners in three categories. The 50 thousand dollar international prize, recognizes significant, and measurable contributions to increasing literacy levels, by an organization based outside the United States. The 50 thousand dollar American prize recognizes significant, and measurable contributions to increasing literacy levels, on a national level. The 150 thousand dollar David M. Rubenstein prize, recognizes a domestic, or international organization that is demonstrated exceptional, and sustained depth, in it's commitment to the advancement of literacy. Please join Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, and Literacy Awards founder, David M. Rubenstein, in recognizing the achievements, and innovations of the three organizations selected as winners of the 2017 Library of Congress Literacy Awards. ^M00:17:41 [ Applause ] ^M00:17:52 >> Ladies and Gentleman, please welcome David M. Rubenstein, Co-Chairman of the National Book Festival, and the originator, and sponsor of the Library of Congress Literacy Awards. >> David Rubenstein: Carla, thank you very much for your kind words, and thank you for your dedication to the National Book Festival, and the cause of literacy. We are thrilled that you are the Librarian of Congress, I am particular thrilled that you came here from Baltimore, my home town, where you headed the library, for some 20 years there. It is hard to believe, you saw that film, that it's not just a global problem, it's an American problem. 45 million Americans are functionally illiterate, 45 million. We have about 330 million Americans, 45 million are functionally illiterate, which means that they can't read beyond a fifth grade level. If you can't read beyond a fifth grade level your chance of having economic success in life is reduced dramatically. People who don't have the ability to read earn, on average, 40 percent less than people who can read, and that is a real tragic situation. In our Country, we talk about the income gap, and the growing income gap, but it's really a growing literacy gap, and the income gap it's directly related to the literacy gap. Unless we can do something about closing literacy gap, we have no chance of closing the income gap. We also have no chance of dealing with some of the side effects of literacy that were mentioned. For example, if you are illiterate, functionally illiterate, your chance of being a juvenile delinquent is dramatically increased, in fact 85 percent of all juvenile delinquents are functionally illiterate, and as our statistics showed, roughly two thirds of people who are in our prison system, are functionally illiterate. It's a sad situation, and we have not made as much progress as we should. Think about this in your case, suppose in your case, every body here, I presume, is literate, I hope everybody is. [laughter] But suppose you couldn't read, think about your life, how would your life be different if you couldn't read? You'd gone through you entire life, and you couldn't read. Not only would you, probably be more likely to be part of our criminal justice system, not only would you likely have a much lower income for your family, but the pleasure that you get from reading would be gone. To me, one of the great pleasures of my life is reading, and I just can't imagine my life without the ability to read. But think about your own lives, how would your life be so different if you couldn't read? That's the problem we have with some 45 million Americans, and it's growing. And let me just mention one other problem, not just illiteracy, as great as that problem is, but the problem of a-literacy. Their are people who can read, but don't read. It's hard to believe. But 31 percent of American males, last year, who are literate, did not read a single book. In fact, 26 percent of all Americans who can read, didn't read a book at all last year, and 40 percent of all high school graduates who can read, did not read a book at all last year. Now as we all know, reading is very important, but reading books is a special pleasure. The National Book Festival emphasizes, not just literacy, but the value of books, and the importance of reading books. So, I hope all of you, when you leave here tonight, and when you finish the Book Festival tomorrow, for those who are going, think about how privileged you are to be able to read, and how sad your life would be if you couldn't read. And so all of us should be thrilled wit our parents, our teachers who taught us us how to read, and we should really be sad that there are so many people in this country who can't get the pleasure out of reading that all of us have. So, to the extent that you can think about, one thing you might be able to do after you leave the festival, it is something that I hope you might be able to do, to contribute to somebody with your time, your energy ideas, your money, to help support the effort to eradicate, and dramatically reduce illiteracy, and hopefully reduce and erratically, and dramatically produce a-literacy. It's a tragic situation that we have to all deal with, and again, the income gap in this country is not going away until the literacy gap goes away. Thank you! ^M00:22:11 [ Applause ] ^M00:22:20 >> Ladies and Gentleman, the winner of the 2017 International Prize of the Library of Congress Literacy Awards, is Prothom Books, creator of Story Reader, an online digital repository, that offers stories in mother tongue languages, free of charge, to children in India. Accepting the award for Prothom books is Chairperson, Miss Suzanne Sink [assumed spelling]. ^M00:22:49 [ Applause ] ^M00:23:15 Ladies and Gentleman, the winner of the 2017 American Prize of the Library of Congress Literacy Awards, is the National Center for Families Learning, which works with community partners to develop model programs, and innovative laboratories that advance family literacy. Accepting the award for the National Center for Families Learning is President and Founder, Miss Sharon Darling [assumed spelling]. ^M00:23:42 [ Applause ] ^M00:23:54 Ladies and Gentleman, the winner of the 2017 David M. Rubenstein Prize of the Library of Congress Literacy Awards, is the Children's Literary Initiative, which delivers content focused coaching to educators, who work in under resourced schools, with lagging literacy achievement, equipping them with high impact strategies, and techniques for literacy instruction, and providing their classrooms with high quality children's literature. Accepting the award for the Children's Literary Initiative is Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Joel Zaro [assumed spelling]. ^M00:24:30 [ Applause ] ^M00:24:43 >> Carla Hayden: And David, and thank you to all the winners, but we have something for you. >> David Rubenstein: Uh-oh! [laughter] >> Carla Hayden: It's okay. We'd like to present you with a token of our appreciation for all you have done to make the Literacy Awards, and the National Book Festival a success. So, here is a specially framed facsimile of the book lovers map of the United States. And you'll see that it has portraits of great American writers including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe, Baltimore, [laughter], Walt Wickman, and Mark Twain, and all the places they're from. But thank you David! >> David Rubenstein: Thank you very much! >> Carla Hayden: Really, thank you! ^M00:25:30 [ Applause ] ^M00:25:40 And now, ladies and gentleman, our terrific lineup of Authors will give us their views on what the American Story means to them. >> Ladies and gentleman, please welcome Margot Lee Shetterly. ^M00:25:57 [ Applause ] ^M00:26:09 >> Margot Lee Shetterly: Wow! It is such an honor for me to be here in a room full of writers. So many of my literary hero's here tonight. America may be the only country in the world founded by a bunch of writers. Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Franklin, their pro's and their lucid ideas, about the nature of humanity, and freedom, is some of the most admired, and influential writing in the history of the world. America's essentially a work of imagination, so it's no surprise that we, as citizens, devote so much our lives to pursuing an American dream, and to telling an American Story. Growing up in Virginia, in the 1970's 80's however, I could never seem to find my story in American history. I remember elementary school, and junior high school, and dreading those few days when the Social Studies Curriculum turned it's eyes to Black History. There was slavery, Martin Luther King, and that was about it. Black History in the classroom was always a discussion of racial violence, and disenfranchisement, and shame. The idea that simply by virtue of the color of their skin, my fore-bearers were considered legally, socially, and economically, less than full citizens of this country, and less than fully human. The textbooks offered cursory information about the state of blacks, in America, but virtually nothing about Black Americans, as individuals, who, as I knew firsthand were as engaged in the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, as any other citizen in of country. Where were the stories of the protagonists? I grew up in a world where robust families, and members of a dynamic community dreamed of a better future, and they found ways, great and small, to fight against injustice. They did all they could to help people do their best work, whether that work was cleaning other people's houses, as my grandmother did, or calculating orbital trajectories, as did the women that I write about, in Hidden Figures. Where in those History books were, for example, the business people who pooled their resources to provide mortgages to black home owners? Or the teachers, like my mother, or the scientists, like my father. Well there was the Chemist, George Washington Carver, and he was the black scientist that everybody heard about during class. And they had that poor guy working overtime during Black History month. [laughter]. In general however, I could not square the textbooks narrow and degraded presentation of the past with my present, and I certainly had problems attaching that past to my future. I was an ambitious handful of a whippersnapper, ready to take on the world, and as far as I was concerned, history was simply ballaced, it was something meant to be off loaded if I was going to be able to rise, and pursue my version of the American dream. So it's no surprise that when I graduated from the University of Virginia, I chose a career that seemed to meet the perfect opposite of history, Investment Banking. [laughter] but as hard as I tried, I simply could not outrun the history. After decades of living and working outside of Virginia, and in fact, outside of the United States, I recently moved to Charlottesville, Virginia. So today, not only am I working as a writer, and a historian, I am living history, in a way that is terrifying and fascinating, and that I never thought would occur in my lifetime. The recent White Supremacists March happened on the grounds of the school where I spent four years of my life. The counter protests and the attack took place in Downtown Charolettesville, the confederate statues that ignited the firestorm, are a 20 minute walk from where I currently live. Now there's been a lot of talk around Charolettesville, and around the country, about how what happened there three weeks ago, doesn't represent Charolettesville, or America, as we currently believe it to be. I love my country passionately, I love my native state, and I love my adopted city, but I also know the painful history, and what happened on August 12th, that to Charolettesville, and America. It's an America that has battled the betters angels of our nature from the beginning. For example, from the 1930's to the 1950's, my Alma mater, and other Virginia Universities, payed qualified black students to attend Graduate School out of state, rather than to allow them to continue their educations at home, in Virginia. Virginia closed schools, rather than complying with the Supreme Court's Brown versus Board of Education decision, and allowing the blacks of the hidden figures generation, to learn alongside whites. And that was nearly a century after the end of the Civil War. My father is a retired NASA Scientist. His name is Robert Lee, and his family roots are in West Marlin County, Virginia, which also happens to be the birthplace of the confederate, General Robert E. Lee. America is about both the slavery, and racial terror associated with the confederate monument, and it is also about those beautiful, revolutionary ideals of progress, and freedom that were written into existence by our founding documents. But it's also about so very much more. As James Baldwin said, "American History is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it. I believe that one of the reasons why the push to remove these statues is so strong right now, is because the statues symbolize, not just the presence of the racial that tie that marks our history, but it also signals an absence, the absence of tails of people who live, not just Black lives, but American lives. People who pushed our country to live up to it's founding ideals, not in-spite of their history, but because of it. That absence has created a powerful vacuum, one that is urgently trying to absorb the stories of people like Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden, the woman that I write about in Hidden Figures. Hidden figures is a Black story, and it's a Virginian story, it's a Woman's story, and it's a Mathematician story, but most fundamentally it's an American Story. In the time since my classroom days, I've come to understand that learning History isn't just an encounter with oppression or with pain, it's a necessary condition for progress, and for social change. And now I know that storytelling, that most human of activities, storytelling determines both the meaning of our past, and also the trajectory of our future. No one knew that better than our founding writers. They wrote our Country into existence, and for those of us who's history here began with a bill of sale, not the bill of rights. It is our job to be the protagonists of our own stories, and to write our lives into the great ethic of America. Thank you! ^M00:33:31 [ Applause ] ^M00:33:59 >> Ladies and Gentleman, please welcome Scott Turow! ^M00:34:04 [ Applause ] ^M00:34:16 >> Scott Turow: Tough act to follow. I'm going to start off script for one second, because I was lucky enough to be at the first National Book Festival, I've returned from time to time, and it is certainly my favorite event of it's kind. And that is for two reasons. One, is because, to me, writers remain the true rock-stars, and I love being able to breathe the same air as so many great writers as are going to be here this weekend, and are here tonight. And secondly, if you think about it, this is the only official National Celebration that we have of books, and authors, and readers, and it's a great thing that we do that. So I need to thank the Library of Congress, Dr. Hayden, David Rubenstein, who's head is shouldered to the wheel for several years now. Maria Rana, everybody else who has labored to bring this weekend into being, because it really is a peak moment for the American Literary Community. Anyway, now, of course, I will talk about myself. [laughter] As a kid, I watched too much TV. That, at least, was the opinion of my aunt and uncle from California, which they expressed tirelessly to my mother whenever they came to stay with us in Chicago. The one eyed monster, as my aunt called it, was going to gnaw through my brains, dull me permanently, and prevent me from reading. Much to my dismay, my mother took their warning seriously, because both my aunt and uncle were, yes, psychoanalysts, which to my mother, made them truth tellers on the level of oracles. I do have to add that that did not prevent my mother, years later, when my aunt and uncle finally had a family of their own, didn't prevent my mom, occasionally from observing how much easier it was to give other people high minded advice about their children, rather than follow it with their own. [laughter] More important, my aunt and uncle, much as I adored each of them, had somewhat missed the point. Yes, I weaseled my way in front of the TV, and spent hours there in a trans state, but I read a great deal too. I was, in fact, one of those kids recklessly absorbed with fantasies, novels, TV, movies, and above all the stories running in my own brain. I was, I guess, accommodating reality only in very small doses. If I were my own psychoanalyst required to explain this, I would highlight the stark fears, and vulnerability I felt in a house dominated by my father, a man of harsh and mercurial temper. But whatever the reason, certain TV shows felt as essentially to my well being as food and water. Like so many others, I worshiped Superman, Defender, to quote the prologue of the show, of "Truth, Justice, and the American Way". A little less typically, I also couldn't wait to see Mighty Mouse on Saturday mornings, probably on some level, I equated him with a child with superpowers. Also, by the time I was nine or ten, I made sure to save an hour or two of my limited TV time, thanks to my aunt and uncle, for Perry Mason, on Saturday night. Perry always discovered the truth, and made sure that power was used fairly, so that the guilty were punished, and the innocent freed. As passionately as I gave myself to these American Stories, I began to notice a problem as I got older, they were not true. Meaning, they did not offer the clues about surviving in the world, which I apparently expected from them. It is of course, a given of every childhood, that there are no Santa Clauses, or superheros, but in real life, I realized, there couldn't even be a Perry Mason. In time, I grew savvy enough to realize that Hamilton Burger, the Hapless District Attorney couldn't possibly have kept his job if every week he lost to Perry Mason. This struggle between hope and reality, child and adult, led to an internal dialogue that went on inside me for many years, which I ultimately ended up incorporating in my second novel, The Burden of Proof. My hero, the defense lawyer, Sandy Stern, my own answer, I suppose, to Perry Mason, is long past his child rearing years, when Stern unexpectedly finds himself babysitting for Sam, a precocious five year old, who sits down in Stern's lap as they study the night sky. "Sandy? Sam said subtly, " Does good always win?" Stern nearly asked what Sam was referring to, but restrained himself with the thought that is was unseemly to be evasive with a five year old. "No", Stern said finally, "not always". It does on TV, the boy said. This was offered in part as refutation. Well it should win, Stern said, That is what television is showing you. Why doesn't it win? It does not always lose, it wins often, but it does not win every time, why not? Sometimes the other side is stronger, sometimes both sides are good in part, sometimes neither, Stern thought. How much does good win, Sam asked, a lot? A lot, said Stern. He had meant to answer, as many times as it loses, but he felt this was inappropriate, and perhaps not even correct. There was no place for brutal honesty with a child. The questions, implicit in this conversation have been the obsessions of my adult years. Deciding what is good in the first place, and defining the circumstances in which it is entitled to triumph, how to deal fairly with the bad, and how to survive as a human, when those efforts founder. They were, I realize now, the themes I was writing about when I made my first serious efforts at fiction in college, and they remain my core emotional concerns, and drove me from academic life, to law school in my late 20's. Furthermore, like all of my beloved fellow writers at this wonderful festival, I have had the extraordinary good fortune of finding out that these questions, and the stories I have written about them, preoccupy, not only me, but many other Americans. No surprise really, [inaudible] told us, that from the start, the law has been the binding fabric of America. That is because we are not simply a country, a group of people drawn together by the common places of geography, or even language. Our fellowship in the United States is based on a larger mutual adherence to central ideas. The government must be subordination to law, and what I've always regarded as the greatest American ideal of all, the one that Thomas Jefferson, and his coworkers borrow from John Lach, namely, that all persons are created equal. Our biggest idea is that government must treat every citizen with the same concern, and respect, and guarantee to each citizen, an equal voice in the governments of the nation we have formed together. So my story, as I understand it, is part of that much larger story, the one we tell together everyday, and the one that we must always strive to make ever truer. Thank you! ^M00:42:43 [ Applause ] ^M00:42:59 >> Ladies and gentleman, please welcome Reshma Saujani. ^M00:43:05 [ Applause ] ^M00:43:12 >> Reshma Saujani: Thank you so much! It's a huge honor to be here today. So when I think about American Story, I think about one word, opportunity. I am, first and foremost, the daughter of refugees. My parents came here in the 1970's, after being expelled by the dictator, Idi Amin, in Uganda. They were lucky for one reason, and one reason alone, both of my parents were engineers. And this country, in the 1970's, was desperately seeking engineers, so my parents because two of a thousand refugees who got status to come to this country. And even though they were engineers, my father worked as a machinist in a plant, and my mother sold cosmetics. My father would send his resume out day, after day, after day, and get rejection, after rejection, after rejection. Til one day, a recruiter told him, you know what, why don't you change your name? Why don't you change your name from Mogoon [assumed spelling], to Mike, and my father did, and he got a job. Every night, no matter how tired my dad was, he would sit me on his lap, he would read to me about Dr. Kenning, Mahaf Magandy [assumed spelling], and Eleanor Roosevelt. And I knew then, that why I grew up, I wanted to give back to this nation, this nation that had literally saved my parents life. So at age 33, I decided to do that, and I ran for Congress, in a New York City Democratic Primary, against a 18 year incumbent, because I thought that that was a great idea. [laughter] I had like a one percent chance of winning, a thousand page policy book. I remember the only thing my friends and I knew how to do was build a website, and we built one, and we raised like 50 thousand dollars from Indian Aunties that were just so happy the Indian girl was running. And it was the best experience of my life. And I lost, miserably, I was broke, humiliated, I had pissed off everybody in the democratic establishment, but when I went to bed that night, and my victory party that never ended up happening, the faces that I kept seeing over, and over, and over again, were actually the ones that I had never met on the campaign trail. Because as you see, as the member of Congress who are in this room understand, when you run for office, you end up going into a lot of schools. And I would go into Computer Science classes, and Robotics Labs, and I'd see hundreds of boys, clamoring to be the next Steve Jobs, or Mark Zuckerberg, and I thought to myself, where are the girls? And this question of where are the girls became my obsession, because it didn't make sense to me. At a time where women are the majority in college, the majority in the labor force, where are we in this industry that is literally shaping our collective future. And it also didn't make sense to me, as a daughter of immigrants, as someone who has benefited from opportunity, because I knew that there are 500 thousand open jobs in Computer MTEC, and that we had only graduated 40 thousand Computer Science graduates, compared to China, which graduated 350 thousand Engineers. And I also knew that our families are changing. That 45 percent of the breadwinners in our country, were women, and that it's woman in towns and perishes that put food on the table, and pay for the mortgage. So why were they disappearing from this industry? And I realized, well, it wasn't always this way. In the 1980's, almost 40 percent of Computer Science majors were women, and today that number is less than 18 percent. If you were a cynic you would think that an industry becomes more powerful, we push women out. So the failed politician, the non coder, oh yeah, I don't code, decided to do something about it. And I started an organization called, Girls Who Code. To offer free programs for girls, over the summer and after school, to teach them to get a shot at the American dream. And five years later, we've reached 40 thousand girls, in all 50 states. And as much as I'm a feminist, with a capital 'F', I do not believe in gender parody, for the sake of gender parody, I believe that when we teach girls to code, we give them a shot to march up into the middle class, and we make sure that there is no innovation that will ever be left on the sidelines. And I see this everyday, I see this in Jasmine, who lives in California, Oakland. Her mother works at Burger King, single mom, family of four. Everyday Jasmine would take two buses and trains to go from her house to Facebook to learn how to code. And in our program, you can build whatever you want. Jasmine decided to build an app called Wacky Words, to teach kids SAT words, because too may kids in her community, they wanted a shot at the American story, but they didn't have money for fancy tutors, or the SAT classes. She built an app, not for herself, but to help others. I think about Courtney, from Carlton Ohio, father drives an oil rig. Carlton has been decimated by the heroin epidemic. There's no WiFi in the homes, no WiFi in the schools, but still every week, 40 girls meet in the local library to learn how to code, to get a shot at the American dream. The same look that I see in Courtney's father's eyes, is the look I saw in my fathers eye. He would do anything, and everything for me to have a shot at the American dream. This is possible. I feel blessed that we've had an opportunity to write a book, because year, after year, after year, we have to turn girls away, and I want to make sure that girls across the country have a shot to march up into the middle class. I also believe that in the moment where we feel that diversity is under attack. We just recently learned about Katherine Johnson, and the tremendous contribution that she had made to the History of Computer Science, and that most of you don't who Ada Lovelace, or Grace Hopper, or any other the other women are, is it important now, more than ever before to set the record straight, to make sure that girls see themselves in these future jobs, which is why I'm so proud in this book, that not only do we talk about Katherine, and Ada, and Grace, we talk about Lela, and Sofia. Lela, who wears a hijab, Sofia, who is Latina, that has an Abuela, Lucy, who has braids, and loves games. Every American girl can see themselves in the stories in our book, and I truly believe that through this, we can change the world, one book, and one girl at a time. Thank you! ^M00:51:01 [ Applause ] ^M00:51:18 >> Ladies and gentleman, please welcome Diana Gabaldon. ^M00:51:24 [ Applause ] ^M00:51:33 >> Diana Gabaldon: Thank you very much for being here tonight, and thanks for having me. Be relaxed they said, be casual they said. [laughter] Do it in seven minutes they said. [laughter] Okay! Guten Abend, which some of you may know, means good evening, in German, and the reason I say that, is because most of you have no idea how close we came to having everyone in this room know what that meant. Which is to say, at the time of the American Revolution, once it had succeeded, and we had become a nation, Benjamin Franklin, who was one of the sages of the revolution at that point, suggested that since so many of the citizens at that point were German, German should be the official language of the new United States. That motion went Congress, it was voted on, it lost, by one vote, and here we all are, and from a variety of different places. My story sort of became the American Story, other than the obvious, about who my parents grandparents, etc. etc., were. That's much to long of a story to tell you. The short form is that when I once went to Germany to do a book tour, I was having lunch with the Germans, and they said, well how did you come to write these books, and I told them, and they were shocked, SHOCKED, you know, to hear that I had thrown away a perfectly good PhD in Science, I have a PhD in Quantitative Behavioral Ecology, which is just animal behavior with a lot of statistics, don't worry about it. [laughter] My dissertation was entitled [inaudible], or as my husband says, why birds build nests where they do, and who cares anyways. [laughter] Well, the Germans were still more shocked even more, when they found out that not only did I throw away a PhD and 12 years of career as a successful Scientist, but that I had not then go back to school and learn how to write a novel. And as they said to me, they said, no one in Germany would dare to right a novel before first getting PhD in Literature, and I said, that's probably why two thirds of your catalog are American Authors. Actually I didn't say that because I have better manners than that, but it's true. The thing is, is I was talking to Scott Turow before dinner, and we were agreeing that the only way to learn to write, is to write, and that's what I thought when I started writing a novel. So the question was, what was I going to write? And after I thought about it for a while, I thought, the easiest thing to write seems to be Historical Fiction. Because I was a Research Professor, I knew my way around a library, I said it seems easier to look things up than to make them up, and if I turn up to have no imagination, I can steal things from the historical record. So, when I began, I said, where shall I set this book? I've got no background in anything particular, one time will do as well as another, I have to look it up anyway. So I was looking for a particular place, and I happened to see a really old Dr. Who rerun on television. I gather some of you are familiar with Dr. Who. Yes well, he is a time lord from the planet galfray who travels through space in time, having adventures, and picks up companions over different periods of History. Well, in this particular he has picked up a young Scotsman, from 1745, this was a nice 19 or 20 year old man, who appeared in his kilt., I said, well that's kind of fetching, and I found myself still thinking about this the next day, in church, and I said, well you know, it doesn't really matter where you set this book, okay so you need to start somewhere, why not Scotland, 18th century? So that's where I began, knowing nothing about Scotland, or the 18th century, having no plot, no outline, and no characters, nothing but the rather vague images conjured up by the notion of a man in kilt. [laughter] Which, of course, is a very powerful and compelling image, as all of the ladies here could tell you. Going back to the Germans, one of my later books was quite lucky, and I won the Korena National Prize for Fiction, and had to go to Germany to accept it, which was very cool, but the German Publisher had me interviewed during that week, by everybody, and the German media. And toward the end of this very tiring week, I was talking to a very gentleman about a literary magazine, they said, your work is terrific, your nerdy drive is perfect, your characters are so three dimensional, and I'm thinking yes, yes, go on. And instead, he stopped and say, there's just this one thing I wonder, can you explain to me, what is the appeal of a man in a kilt? [laughter] Well, I was very tired, or I might not have said it, but I suppose it's the idea that you could be up against a wall with him in a minute. [laughter] So, you may be wondering what this has to do with the American Story, but it actually has quite a lot to do with it. Which is to say, that in fact, not only did I not get a PhD in literature, the only thing I knew about books when I began to write this novel, was that they should have conflict. That was the sum total of what, 12 hours of English Literature in college. It seemed to be enough, anyways, I went to the library looking for conflict in Scotland, in the 18th century, but you don't do that for very long without running into Bonny Prince Charlie and the Jacobite. And so that became the material for my first book, and again for the second book. I was only going to write this book for practice, I wasn't going to show it to anyone, or tell anyone what I was doing, but things happened. And I had an agent before I finished it, and I told him, I think there's more to this story, but I think I should stop while I could still lift it, and he said, okay, and so he told them that, luckily several people did want to buy it. And they said, trilogies are very popular these days, do you think she could write three? Being a good agent, he said, oh I'm sure she could. So I got a three book contract, and proceeded with the Jacobite revolution, the rebellion. Well as you well know, the Highland Scots lost big time on that one, and as a result, many, many, many of them came to the Americas, most of them involuntarily, and here they rested. So at the time of the American Revolution, one colonist out of every three, was a Scot, and we have several of them as signers of the Declaration, and so forth. Now people reading my books, at the end of the second book, and now the third book, and people say, what is this, it's not Scotland, and I said, no, didn't you notice they lost at the end of the last book. Andy they said, well we want to read about Scotland, and I said, well tough the story went across the ocean, and now we're in America. So, that's where the story has developed over the next six books, and so forth, and became increasingly interested in how many different people contributed to the American story, at this point and time, we're working our way through the several years of the American Revolution, and we're dealing with Quakers, and [inaudible] Germans, non [inaudible] Germans, and with the gales from the Highlands, the low life Scots, also with the Africans who were there, most of them involuntarily as well. Interestingly enough, the Highlanders, and the Africans had things in common, both being involuntarily there, many of them being there in servitude, but there was quite a lot of cultural overlap in part to the music and songs they had. You will find something called [inaudible], singing in African American early music, which was contributed to American Jazz. What's interesting is that you will find that very same thing among-st Gaelic Highlanders who have never seen Africa, and evidently came up with it on their own, the other interesting thing is that as the gales came an indentured servitude, still they were white, which was kind of an advantage at the time, and therefore they were in some cases, made overseers of the other slaves, I count them as slaves as well, on plantations, and the like. And the interesting thing was, that many of the Black people there learned to speak Gaelic, because their overseers spoke Gaelic. And as newly people arrived from the Highlands, being mapped by black inhabitants on the docks, and there response was, my God man, what happened to you, the sun must be terrible. And the thing is, there is this cross fertilization always. From the very beginning, several members of my family fought in the American Revolution, on both sides, as well as being German mercenaries, my fathers side of the family had landed in Santa Fa in 1705, so they kind of sat that one out. But you know, I have always enjoyed what we call hybrid vigor, it means that we derive our gene pool, and our cultural fascination from all different kinds of places. And the languages too have contributed to this. I heard someone say that English is a language that chases other languages down a dark alley, knocks them over, a goes through their pockets for loose grammar. [laughter] And this is pretty much true. However, as Miss Shetterly said earlier, the roots of our revolution, of our language, of our culture, go back to England, and the elegant language of the 18th century, Washington and Jefferson, mad as much of an impact as they did, in part, because of what they said, as well as what they meant by it, and so we kind of beat Germany out by a bit, and became a nation of English speakers. The funny thing is that a lot of the philosophy of the American Revolution arose from English club men, and this is where they got their socialization, they all belonged to societies, some of which were philosophical, some of which studied literature, some of which had other views in mind, such as the Anacreondic society who's goal was drinking. And they had a particular song that they sang at each one of their meetings which ended with, Besides I'll instruct you, like meat and wine, [inaudible]. Which is the 18th century equivalent of, let's all get drunk and have sex. Most of you will be more familiar with it in it's later incarnation. Oh say does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave, ore the land of the free, and the home of the brave. And the moral of that is, the words matter. ^M01:02:57 [ Applause ] ^M01:03:11 >> Ladies and gentleman, please welcome David McCullough. ^M01:03:16 [ Applause ] ^M01:03:32 >> David McCullough: What a wonderful night, and how privileged we all are to be here. I just look at these fabulous words up here, Library of Congress National Book Festival. Think of what is entailed in just those words, that we have a Library of Congress, that we have a National Book Festival, and to take part in it, as one of the writers, is for me, a very high privilege. And I am pleased to say that I've been involved with this event since it's beginning in 2001, and to prove, with all the enthusiasm that I can, of keeping it going, and keeping it going indefinitely. And I want to say thank you to Dr. Hayden, and all of those who work with you, for the marvelous contribution you make, you and the staff of the Library of Congress, to our country and to it's betterment in so many ways. I have been devoting my working life to the American story for over 50 years, and I'm ever grateful that I somehow hove the good fortune of having wandered into this way of life, this way of contributing what I can to the betterment of our country. I've done this on paper, I've done it in classrooms, I've done it on television, and on the stage, and in every way I can, to convey that history isn't about boring statistics and quotations, and memorizing dates. It isn't about just politics in the military, history is human, it is about people. When in the course of human events are declaration begins, and the operative word there is human. And I've had wonderful responses from readers, and television viewers, students I've lectures in colleges and universities all over the country. And the compliments I take very much to heart, including one that happened in the most unexpected way just two years ago. In Boston, where we had that horrendous blizzard series, nine feet of snow, in a matter of about a month or less, it was a blizzard every two or three days, with brief intervals, where we could try to get out to get food, to get provisions to survive. Rosy [assumed spelling] and I were living in Bat may at the time, and she would make a list, I would make a list, we would both go over it to get what we needed. In one particular bad series of storms, we got up a list of everything we needed, and I went over, when the break came, in the weather, and the Star Market [assumed spelling] back then was just a mad house of people trying to get stuff to get by, and it was as if the Russians were in Rhode Island, or something. And I got everything on the list, except the cashews. And as you know, you can't survive without cashews. [laughter] So I saw a fellow walking by with a Star Market label on his shirt, and I said, excuse me, could you please help me to find the cashews? He said, yes follow me. So I followed him, and we went around a few bends, the whole peanut, and nut department, and I got my cashews, and about seven minutes later I was checking out at the cash register. And the same fellow came up to me, and he said, excuse me, I don't mean to bother you, but that voice, your voice, were you by any chance the voice on Ken Burns Civil War series? And I said, yes I was. And he said, well I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart, because when that series first came on the air, I was suffering terribly from insomnia. ^M01:08:08 [ Laughter ] ^M01:08:14 He said, I'd hear your voice and go right out. So I hope very much, I won't have that effect on all of you tonight. I found my vocation here, in the Library of Congress. I had wanted to be a writer, I had gone through Vale University, and I majored in English, I thought maybe like to be like Carlton Wilder, who's been part of a faculty there, and write plays, or certainly not plays, novels. I had no expectation whatsoever of writing a biography, or history. When I got out of college, I couldn't make up my mind whether I wanted to be an actor, or an architect, or a writer, or a painter and thought, I know what I'll do, I'll go to New York and something will happen. So I went to New York, and I wound up working for Time and Life for six years, six and a half years, and learned a hell of a lot, about writing, and about getting work done, and getting it done on time. And then Kennedy was running for President, and when he called on people, his address to do something fro your country, I took that directly to heart, quit my job, came down here to Washington, and wound up working for the U.S. Information Agency under Edward R. Murrow. It was a very exciting time, not only because we were working for Murrow, but we were working on the new frontier. And I was put in charge of a magazine for the Arab world, and I had a very limited budget, which I had to keep--make work. And one of the ways I discovered that could be done was to search out the resources for free material, principally pictures, the magazine was called [inaudible], life in America, it was based on Life magazine, sold on the newsstands. And I came up to the Library of Congress, to try and find wonderful material that we could use in the magazine, it was free. And while I was here working one day, I passed the Department of Photographs, I went by a table, and on the table was this wonderful array of photographs, taken by a photographer that had gotten into Johnstown, Pennsylvania, within days after the terrible, disastrous flood of 1889. and I had grown up in Pittsburgh, and I had heard about the Johnstown flood all my life, but I didn't know anything about it. All I knew was that when we were kids, we used to put a lake of gravy in the mashed potatoes, and then we'd break the potatoes with our fork, and as they gravy came down into the peas, we'd say, the Johnstown flood. [laughter] And I looked at these photographs, and I said, what in the world happened? I couldn't believe the devastation. Now keep in mind, that was the worst man made disaster, and nature made disaster that had ever hit the country, until then. Over 2,500 people died, as many as died in the tower in New York, at 9/11. And I got interested in it, and I took a book out of the library, this library, and it wasn't very good, the author didn't seem to understand the geography of Western Pennsylvania, I at least knew that. So I took another book out, and it was a pot boiler at the time, it was very inaccurate, so I thought, no. So, when I was in college, Thornton Wilder was asked, how do you come up with the id--write the plays and novels you've written? And he said, I imagine a story that I would like to see produced on stage, or to read in a book, and if I can't find that, I write it so I can read it, or write it so I can see it performed on stage. So I said to myself, why don't you write, try to write, the book about the Johnstown flood how you would like to read. And in effect, that's what I've been doing with every subject that I've undertaken since I began this work. I had never done historic research, I had never taken anything more of history than what was required when I was an undergraduate, I have no graduate degrees, and I've never thought of myself as a Historian. I'm called a Historian, and I'm always complimented by that, but I'm a Writer. I'm a writer, writing what really happened, as best I can. And because of a lot of writing that I had done in college, in the courses I took, and writing that I had done at that time in life, I realized, you have to understand the people. Who was involved? What were they like? What were they thinking? How were they raised? Where did they come from? What were there problems, internally, or externally? And what were the adversities they faced? History is about people. And because I was in Washington, during the Kennedy years, Kennedy as many if you may remember, or know, was asked about what he was reading, and he was reading, Barbara Tuchmans, The Guns of August. So I went out right away and got Barbara Tuchmans, Guns of August, I thought, whoa, this is the kind of history book I'd like to read more of. So I began reading people like Bruce Caplan, and others, and I realized that writers can write history. And Barbara Tuchman, in one of her essays bout writing history, said, there's no secret to writing history, or teaching history, tell stories, the American Story, which has hardly, been even half told so far. For one thing, too much attention has been focused on politics in the military, yes politics in the military are of the utmost importance, but they no means are the human story. That involves poetry, music, art, it involves science and medicine, and finance, and it involves luck, we never talk about what part luck has played in history, and it involves individual human beings who made a difference. And what began to interest me particularly, once I had gotten into writing, as soon as I started doing research for the Johnstown flood, much of which I did here. I've done research for every single one of my books here in the Library of Congress to a large degree or to a small, but to an important degree. My book on the Wright Brothers, was drawn almost entirely from the extraordinary, amazing collection of letters and diaries, kept by the Wright Brothers, and their mother and father, and sister, all right here. And, OH, could they write! Because their father raised them to express themselves in the English language as best possible. And he meant to express themselves on paper, and on their feet. They never had even completed high school, and yet you read those letters here, and you think, oh my goodness, the vocabulary, the use of the command of the language, and you realize, we've got a lot of catching up to the kind of high school and kind of bringing up those young men experienced. They lived in a house, they had no running water, no indoor plumbing, no central heat, no telephone, but it was a house full of books, because their father believed you had to read. You have to read above your level, so there were no children's books, they were all real books, and they read all their lives. I'm not, in any way demeaning children's books. [laughter] They stick with you side mazy lazy bird, hatching her eggs on tiles and on boards, with kinks in my leg from sitting here, sitting here, day after day, it's work how I hate it, I hate it, I'd much rather play. [laughter] [applause] When I first went, in grade school we were told we could visit the school library, and this was in kindergarten, and we went in, and oh boy, were we thrilled. And the Librarian, Miss Powell [assumed spelling], we all sat down at little tables, the librarian said, now did you all bring your library shoes? Meaning you couldn't be quiet, and I thought, my mother didn't tell me that you had to have library shoes, and I felt so awful, I felt so insecure about my library shoes. I can't come into any of these libraries now without wondering if I have my library shoes on. But the first book I got up and went over to the shelf to pick out was, Horton Hatches the Egg, the one I just quoted. It sticks with you, it's important, it's part of growing up, it's part of discovering. I often think that the book that influenced me more than anything was, The Little Engine That Could, which has two lesson, you persevere, but also, you work together, it's not just trying to do something alone. I-- I've often wondered about why I d o what I do, and whether I have some weird ways of going about it, and I've been reluctant to talk about it openly, until recently, and I thought, what the hell, admit it. I've never undertaken a subject I knew anything about. If I knew all about it, I wouldn't want to work on the book. To me, the writing, the research, the thinking that goes into the work, is an adventure. It's working on a detective case, it's stepping foot on a continent where I've never set foot in my life, and I love that part of the adventure. I also have felt very strongly that I wanted to give some people that don't get sufficient credit, credit for the first time, bring them back, bring them on stage, downstage, center stage, with the lighting on them, and bring some of these seemingly peripheral people up to the front, in center stage too, like Abigail Adams, or Emily Robling [assumed spelling], the wife of the great engineer, of the great Brooklyn Bridge, and to point out to all of us, we can't forget these people. John Adams, always upstage with by two tall Virginians on either side, but when you think of what John Adams did in his life, he was the only founding father, President, who never owned a slave, out of principal. He would not own a slave, nor would Abigail allow him to own a slave. And the first president after John Adams who never owned a slave, was their son, John Quincy Adams. Now, that's not a minor attribute. The oldest Constitution we have in our country is not our National Constitution, it's the Constitution of Massachusetts, and he wrote it. And in that Constitution there's a clause about education that applies as much today, as it ever did then, and hopefully will always apply. I felt very strongly, that the Wright Brothers, for example, we would learn in high school that the first airplanes, motor powered plane to be flown was flown by the Wright Brothers, but Kenny Hawkins was 19'3 and he changed the world. But what about them? How did they grow up? What were they like? How did they grow up? What did they believe? Well, one thing they believed is that they had purpose in life. Don't just go on thinking it's all about material acquisitions, or getting a lot of property, or becoming famous, or something. No! Have purpose, and modesty, you remember modesty? ^M01:20:56 [ Applause ] ^M01:21:05 The Wright Brothers never bragged a word about what they achieved. The Wright Brothers never said anything derogatory about their rivals, never, because that was the way they were raised. And to be loyal, and to be honest, to tell the truth, and it's the way many of us, most of us, I'd like to think, were raised. And we still like to believe that. And we also believe that our story, as a country, is a story of progress. It doesn't always come easily, it doesn't always come instantly, it isn't always apparent right away, but it is progress. When I was working on my book about Johnstown, I spent a lot of time in Johnstown, and I heard about the engineer who helped bring the Bessemer System to the Steel Mills, in Johnstown, very early, one of the earliest mills in the country to develop the Bessemer Process. And this fellow was always working to develop new machinery, new equipment, new devices, and his famous line was--after they'd been working for months and months on a new piece of machinery, he'd say, Alright boys, let's start her and see why she doesn't work. That's what we're about, it's call the Empirical Method. You do--you try something, and if it doesn't work you study why it doesn't work, and then you fix it, and then maybe eventually it will work. It's been true all along. And we are constantly making progress which we don't recognize as progress because we're in the thick of it, we're in the midst of it, as everybody always was. When you think for example, what's happened in our country, in our lifetime, in medicine, it's utterly phenomenal. I think that future historians may very well, while looking back on our time, say, well that's what real history was then, that was history being made. And it comes from ideas, it comes from education, it comes from imagination, and genius, yes. It does happen, because some people really have that touch of genius, and they should be part of History. Those doctors who's names we don't figure at all, we should know who they were, and what they did, just as is true about our painters and our writers. I thank my lucky stars that I quit my job in New York, and came to this city when I did. It not only changed my outlook, it changed my life, but it's given me ambitions to expand the experience of being alive, through the experience of history, the experience of our story in a way that probably would never have happened, had I not taken that step, taken that venture. And every time I come into this library, I thank goodness that we live in a society, in a country that out the library on a acropolis, right here with our Capital, because that's the way it should be, that's how we should feel about it. And I know we all have favorite libraries in our hometowns, or where we grew up, but this is one of the miracles of the American Story, this great Library of Congress. ^M01:24:42 [ Applause ] ^M01:25:10 This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov