AMERICAN HISTORY

FREDERICK DOUGLASS, IV, Frederick Douglass Organization, Inc. Founder, MARK E. MITCHELL, historian, and COLE GOODWIN, Temple Visitors Center of The Church of Jesus Christ Publicity Coordinator, March 12, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: Exhibits like yours are important as we all need to remember important historical events. Over time, I find encouragement in young people willing to explore historical events in greater detail, and discouragement in the reality that the passage of time requires teaching smaller glimpses of each historical event. Many young people have very limited knowledge of the history of slavery. Other than visiting exhibits such as yours, what would you recommend parents and teachers to do provide expanded teaching of slavery’s history?
DOUGLASS, MITCHELL, and GOODWIN: Parents and grandparents need to sit down with their children and grandchildren and tell them what they know and experienced. Much of Black history was passed on orally and we recommend getting out a video recorder and taping conversations for posterity. We mustn’t let Black history be forgotten! I myself have learned more in the last ten years than my textbooks ever told me.
There are some great documentaries on the History and Discovery Channels, and many new books have come out on parts of Black history. Shut off the video games and get the kids to pick up a biography of Frederick Douglass or some other person or event in Black history!

HARVEY FROMMER, author, and MYRNA KATZ FROMMER, author, May 13, 2002
CZIKOWSKY:As one who was born in Manhattan in the mid-20th century I look forward to your book (“It Happened in Manhattan”). How much did the Yankees dynasty of that period energize the city? To me, there must have been a great sense of pride to be in a city that was on top of the economic, cultural, and athletic spectrums. I realize this is subjective, yet how would you compare the “feel” of being a New Yorker then to being a New Yorker today?
HARVEY FROMMER: A great question. New York City today, especially after 9/11 and with the economy not what it was, has taken a hit and is somewhat sad. Mid-century New York with the Yankees winning year after year, with players like Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, and Elston Howard on the scene and Casey Stengel running the team was a time of great glow that also locked into the cresting economic, cultural, and social scenes.
But if New Yorkers are anything, they are resilient and tough. The Big Apple will come back; in fact, it is coming back as anyone who has been there lately can see. New York City has turned a corner for the better.
CZIKOWSKY: What are your thoughts on Robert Moses?
MYRNA KATZ FROMMER: Robert Moses was a complex man who accomplished much but every time I see the Cross Bronx Expressway I rue the day he got the power to change New York. We have a story about some women taking him on when he wanted to create a thoroughfare through Washington Square Park. He dismissed the group of women who came to a hearing on the proposal as “nothing but a bunch of mothers”. But those mothers’ efforts resulted in Washington Square Park being closed to traffic and a cross-town expressway that would have destroyed a lower Manhattan neighborhood being voted down.
The consequence of this last action was the creation of a new place: SoHo.
CZIKOWSKY: This may not be worthy of your book, yet Larry David has a good George Steinbrenner story. He was so angry over one of Steinbrenner’s trade, he lured Steinbrenner into taping an episode of “Seinfeld” which required him to miss opening day and then they never used the footage.
HARVEY FROMMER and MYRNA KATZ FROMMER You’re right. It’s not worthy of our book.

JOHN PEARCE. James Monroe Museum and Memorial Library Director, and DANIEL PRESTON, editor, July 17, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: Just for fun: what do you think the United States and the Louisiana Purchase area would be like today if the Louisiana Purchase was never completed?
PEARCE and PRESTON: Always delighted to have some fun with history! If the Louisiana Purchase had never been completed, then the Louisiana Territory might have been developed as French colonies---or even Spanish000and the whole of North America would look quite different. Among other things, that would mean less (or no) access to the raw materials of that area. Also, we would not be the great continent---wide republic---and its hard to imagine us as an example for other republics to emulate---although that may just be “narrow thinking” on my part.

PETER KRASS, author, October 3, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: Does your book (“Carnegie”) cover the Homestead strike? If so, have you found any new information on the events of this strike?
KRASS: I do cover Homestead and offer some new insights. First off, contrary to legend, Carnegie was not hiding in Scotland---perhaps more condemning, he actually helped direct the campaign against the union right up until July 4—violennce struck July 6. This is based on letters not available to prior Carnegie biographers.
Also, letters that have come to light in the last few years show that Frick and Carnegie were very unsure of themselves when it came to dealing with Homestead which only compounded problems.
Consider: the Homestead men struck over wage cuts but only 300 some men of almost 4,000 were affected. Why did all the other workers join the fight then? For the answer you’ll need to read the book.
BILL MINUTAGLIO, author, February 12, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: Have you discovered any new documents or information regarding the relationship between Andrew Jackson and Lafitte? Or, are you providing a new interpretation on new documents?
MINUTAGLIO: Thanks for asking—I’m doing both. Have you read Stephen Harrigan’s “Gates of the Alamo”? It’s an interesting exercise in revisiting existing documents but adding some new interpretations, approaches.

WALTER ISAACSON, author, July 9, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: Benjamin Franklin proposed the colonies create a Governor General to coordinate their activities. It is interesting that Benjamin Franklin saw the need for federalist cooperation long before all the states could realize this need. What were some of the debates over Benjamin Franklin’s proposal for a Governor General?
ISAACSON: Franklin came up with the first plan for a federal union in 1954, when he went to Albany with representatives of the other colonies to deal with the Indians. His plan—a shared sovereignty between the states and a national government—became the model for what we have today. But the colonies did not agree back in 1754, because they were jealous of their rights, so it went nowhere until the 1770s.
CZIKOWSKY: Benjamin Franklin, the father of the University of Pennsylvania, among others, was quite a notable scientist. How would the world view him if it had to consider him only for his scientific endeavors?
ISAACSON: He was the best scientist of his century. He came up with the most important discovery that lightning was a flow of a single fluid, not different fluids. And he showed that lightning was an electric discharge and invented a rod to tame it. That was the most important invention of the century.

GWENDOLYN WRIGHT and ELYSE LURAY, filmmakers, July 15, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: Harrisburg is gathering a rather large collection of historic artifacts from Western states. Do you think there would be a large demand for tourists to come to Harrisburg to see artifacts from another part of the country? Does this open an opportunity to people who might not be able to travel so far? After all, we see objects from around the world in American museums. Will the public accept museums of pieces from other parts of the nation?
LURAY: Absolutely, I would travel anywhere in the country to see artifacts from other countries.
Harrisburg has great artifacts in itself—they already have wonderful history, furniture, quilts, Americana and I would encourage them to continue to preserve their early Americana antiques and collectibles.
As an appraiser and collect, I would travel anywhere for a good collection and when you are into collecting, you will find it normal to find things that are not indicative to that area.
WRIGHT: People would travel across the country for interesting collections. People are drawn to interesting collections that tell stories.
CZIKOWSKY: During the Revolutionary War, the Americans were so certain the British would attack the Connecticut River that they fortified it so heavily the British never attacked. There is a sign on the river banks reading “On this spot in 1776, absolutely nothing happened.” Still, there are many historical artifacts showing how people lived. What types of things more interest historians: furniture, paintings, documents, what?
LURAY: Historians are interested in any type of history regardless if it is an artifacts, book, etc. and not one is more important than another. Each object has a story to tell even if the values are different, the history isn’t.

EDWARD KLEIN, author, July 15, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: John Kennedy, Jr. wanted to be an actor, and even dated an actress Daryl Hannah for awhile. How good an actor was he, according to people who saw him? Obviously, his name had drawing power. Did he have talent, or the potential to develop talent?
KLEIN: Yes, he did. In fact, one director described him as one of the most talented young actors of his generation. I think John would have made a brilliant actor and that it was a shame his mother didn’t allow him to follow his star.
CZIKOWSKY: You mention in your book that John Kennedy, Jr. was seeking marriage counseling. Unfortunately, he did not live long enough to learn if it would be successful. Based on your knowledge of the parties, could the marriage have been saved through counseling?
KLEIN: I think it might have been. In addition, John Cardinal O’Connor, the Archbishop of New York, was acting as a counselor to try to save this famous Catholic marriage. Furthermore, John had political ambitions and he surely would have preferred to stay married. It is impossible to predict these things, but I think there is a possibility that these two young people, despite all their difficulties, might have worked things out.
CZIKOWSKY: One Bush gets caught conducting illegal behavior with savings and loans. One Bush is arrested due to a drug habit. Two Bush daughters engage in underage drinking. Is this the beginnings of a curse on the Bush Dynasty? KLEIN: You’ll have to wait for the publication of Kitty Kelley’s forthcoming family biography of the Bushes, which I’m confident will answer your questions.
CZIKOWSKY: It is easy to speculate about what could have been. Yet, do you believe John Kennedy, Jr. would have run for Governor? If he did, how do you think he would have done? How would Governor Pataki have responded to a Kennedy campaign, and who have been the likely winner of a Pataki-Kennedy race?
KLEIN: I know from my sources that Sen. Ted Kennedy and John, Jr. were seriously discussing his running for the Democratic nomination of Governor of New York state. Gov. Pataki heard about this and was known to have remarked that John Kennedy, Jr. was the only potential Democratic opponent he really feared. Despite his lack of political experience, John would have made a formidable candidate, not only thanks to his good looks and famous name, but also because of his charm and public poise. I think he would have given Mr. Pataki a real run for his money and could well have won the Governorship thanks to his almost universal popularity.

LAUREN KESSLER, author, August 25, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: How did you find research material (regarding KGB spy Elizabeth Bentley)? What sources did you find? Are there many people still living who knew her and, if so, were you able to conduct many interviews?
KESSLER: Elizabeth Bentley has an enormous FBI file that like many of the files for the Cold War period is now quite accessible. You no longer need to file a FOIA request from the FBI. That is a very big file—maybe 200,000 documents, so that’s one major source. Another major source is the Venona material—which was probably the best kept counter-espionage document in U.S. history. It is a couple of thousand decrypted cablegrams sent between Soviet embassies in the U.S. to Moscow. This was started by Army intelligence in 1941 and kept secret to 1996. At any rate, these documents mention Bentley by her code name and a number of her sources and establish what was going on. Anyone can find these at www.nsa.gov. They’re right there.
There are also a number of other documents—including the files of the Rosenbergs, Nathan Gregory, who are part of this espionage network. And of course, Bentley testified at a very large number of Congressional hearings, criminal trials, and grand juries and all that is available.
Bentley died in 1963. She was an only child. Her parents died before her and she had no children. So very direct contracts these many years later was not possible. I was able to interview a lot of octogenarian communists who were contemporaries and knew of her or interacted with her. I believe I interviewed every FBI agent still alive who was involved with the case.

ZACHARY KARABELL, author, August 25, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: John Kennedy provided the vision on civil rights, yet it was left to Lyndon Johnson to get that vision enacted. How might President Kennedy, had he lived, have fared in getting the Civil Rights Act enacted?
KARABELL: I think that Kennedy might have accepted a more watered-down bill than Johnson did. There were so many powerful Southern Democratic Senators in 1964-1964 that getting a meaningful bill through Congress was a serious challenge, and Kennedy did not have the personal sway that Johnson did. LBJ also could use the mantle of the martyred President, and that helped him get the bill passed. So my best guess is that there would have been a civil rights bill, but not one as revolutionary as the one that LBJ got passed.
CZIKOWSKY: I The decision for John Kennedy to telephone Martin Luther King, who was imprisoned, in the middle of the 1960 elections was another telling moment in the development of Kennedy’s appreciation of the importance of civil rights. There were fears among some of his advisors that doing so could hurt him in the election. It was a Pennsylvanian, Harris Wofford, who pushed hard for the call to be made. What did Kennedy think of King in the time period between 1960 and the 1963 civil rights march?
KARABELL: In our book, which is coming out in late September and is called “Kennedy, Johnson, and the Quest for Justice”, we discuss that phone call and how it helped Kennedy win Black votes in the 1960 election. But after that, Kennedy kept his distance from King, and he and his advisers tended to view King as a nuisance who was pushing too hard for too much too fast. Only with the Birmingham protests in the spring of 1963 and then with the march did JFK come to accept King as a valuable ally on civil rights reform.

JOEL KOTKIN, Senior Fellow, Pepperdine University, September 9, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: Your comment regarding how one needs to consider what we call a city is very appropriate. Some cities, such as Indianapolis, are essentially the former inner city that has merged with its suburbs. Similarly, Los Angeles is a city with suburbs. New York City, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia are basically not included with their suburbs. How are city-suburbs such as Indianapolis and middle sized towns near them doing compared to the middle sized towns closer to traditional cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.?
KOTKIN: There is no one template. L.A. for example is becoming not a city with suburbs, but a multi-polared urban archipelago.
N.Y is more traditional and is doing much better than some other places, although not as well as in the late 1990s.
CZIKOWSKY: Do you have comments on the debate on height limits? An editorial in this month’s Governing magazine mentions how the low heights of buildings makes Paris an attractive city. On the other extreme, what would New York be without tall buildings? Do medium size cities lose their sense of community when they allow tall buildings, or do you think that tall buildings are an important part of their economic vitality?
KOTKIN: I think it’s a case by case issue.
Frankly, I think N.Y. would be better off if it had maintained more of its pre-1950s structures, particularly in lower Manhattan.

DAVID VON DREHLE, author, October 15, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: After the (Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in 1911), the public and officials were shocked. How did the press handle the story?
VON DREHLE: The press played a surprisingly minor role in the legislation that came out of the fire. I expected to see more than I found. In fact, as I say in the book, with a few weeks after the fire, the leading paper in the city—the New York World—ran a story in its back pages reporting that interest in the fire and in workplace safety was evaporating.
Likewise, coverage of the trial of the Triangle owners—they were indicted on a charge of manslaughter and stood trial in December 191100was amazingly brief and cursory.
The energy for reform came almost entirely from Tammany Hall, seeking to strengthen its connection to a new generation of immigrant workers.

FRANCES STEAD SELLERS, journalist, November 3, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: In American Studies, and many other scholarly studies related to race and ethnicity, there are raging debates between scholars (i.e. romantics) who seek to preserve identities and traditions and scholars (i.e. advocates of the melting pot theories) who believe we should concentrate on an evolving future that blends past experiences. Why can’t we do both: learn, respect, and honor our traditional pasts while allowing society to evolve?
SELLERS: You are absolutely right. We should both honour our past and build a common future. Our differing traditions benefit from borrowing from each other. But traditions should not be used to justify injustice. There’s where universal values are more important than tradition.
And, in my view, the fact that a raging debate exists about the balance between preserving identifies and evolving identities is a good thing.

TRACY TRAGOS, filmmaker, November 11, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: I understand the desire and interest to learn about our roots and who are ancestors were. Yet, often as people search for these connections, people always ask “why bother? How is knowing this going to change any part of your life?” Let me pose these questions to you: does your life change from better knowing your roots?
TRAGOS: Oh boy, that was a question asked by so many—my mother, my husband—even by me at real low times—“what’s the point? It’s not going to change the ending, so why go there?” But to me, in the end, there was a point. And in some small way I think I have changed the ending—it’s not that my father (a solider who died in the Viet Nam War) comes back to life, that he doesn’t die in the end—it’s that for the first time in my life, I have a sense of my father and he gets to live on in me, in a way that he never has before. All the quirky, small, silly stuff that made him human gives me a better sense of myself, and who I am, his daughter. Yes, my life changed in huge ways for having a deeper knowledge of my roots, my history, my father, and myself.
CZIKOWSKY: How did you pick the title ”Be Good, Smile Pretty?”
TRAGOS: “Be Good, Smile Pretty” came from the way my father sometimes signed his letters to my mother. It resonated with me, because it felt like his voice…and advice he might have given me if he had lived…
I also thought the phrase spoke to how my mother reacted to my father’s death—the way she shut-down and walled off the painful emotions of grief in an effort to survive.

ERROL MORRIS, director. December 15, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: There have been many who questioned the morality of bombing civilians during war. What were Mr. (Robert) McNamara’s moral questions about the war against Japan? Was it the bombing campaign, or something else?
MORRIS: McNamara’s moral questions involved “proportionality…”
I have read many accounts of the dropping of the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. None of them mention the fire-bombing of the sixty-seven Japanese cities which preceded the use of nuclear weapons.
Gen. Curtis LeMay (who McNamara reported to during the war) is one of the few military officers in 1945 who questioned the use of nuclear weapons. He realized that he had already effectively destroyed Japan.
To paraphrase McNamara, “why was it necessary to use nuclear weapons when we had already destroyed Japan…”
CZIKOWSKY: Who was the obscure State Department official who spoke up to President Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis? What did he say, and what implications did that have?
MORRIS: Llewelyn Thompson, ex-Ambassador to the Soviet Union. McNamara’s point: During a crucial moment in the Executive Committee discussions on the Cuban missile crisis, Thompson, based on his personal knowledge of Khruschev, urged Kennedy to continue to negotiate. It is a lesson in the film: EMPHATHIZE WITH YOUR ENEMY. That is, try to understand what your enemy’s underlying motivation might be. Try to see it through their eyes…A lesson that has obvious benefits for the current time.

ELIZABETH DEANE, producer, January 13, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: What were the differences in being a slave versus being a tenant farmer? Obviously, a tenant farmer had the freedom to seek economic opportunity elsewhere. Yet, in terms of everyday life, weren’t most tenant farmers just as poor and had to struggle just as much as before?
DEANE: At first sharecropping looked like an ok deal—a reasonable solution to a big problem. But over time, it evolved into something much as you describe.

HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR., Harvard University Humanities Professor, February 4, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: Do you see any major regional differences in racial attitudes? I ask because there is a perception in speaking to Southerners that the attitudes are vastly different than, say, here in Pennsylvania. Is there any documentation to this, or is it primarily myth?
GATES: During my travels around the country to make the film series it seemed to me that attitudes toward race were remarkably similar. I did not encounter major regional differences. The legacy of racism in the South, because of the history of slavery, makes racial progress more dramatic than in the north.

MICHAEL DOBBS, Washington Post Staff Writer, March 5, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: I haven’t read your book (“Saboteurs”), yet I remember reading about this. My recollection and impression is that, fortunately for us, the Germans (in World War II) did a poor job training the saboteurs for life on their own. Is it true they spent too much time enjoying the life of freedom away from war and drank so heavily that one of them gave the mission away in a drunker stupor?
DOBBS: The saboteurs received about three weeks’ basic training in the handling of explosives, detonators, etc. I think this was a story of dual incompetence. The Germans were certainly incompetent, but so were the Americans. The Coast Guard let the saboteurs get away from Amagansett beach, after running into them the night they landed. The FBI failed to follow up obvious leads. In the end, the Germans turned out to be more incompetent than the Americans.
CZIKOWSKY: Does international law say anything about such cases involving saboteurs? If so, what does it say?
DOBBS: Saboteurs do not benefit from the normal rights accorded to uniformed soldiers under the Geneva Convention. They are not considered prisoners of war. That said, however, the Geneva conventions still ban inhumane and degrading treatment of any prisoners. After these saboteurs were arrested, The German government protested their executions, but the protest was brushed aside by Roosevelt.

DAVID HACKETT FISCHER, author, March 30, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: Did you ever see any of the reenactments of Washington’s Crossing? If so, what did you think of them?
FISCHER: Yes, I was present in 2000 at a very large reenactment and have formed high respect for reactors for their close and serious respect for history. Very interesting to me were the Hessian and British reenactors as well as those in American uniforms.

WALTER A. McDOUGALL, University of Pennsylvania History Professor, April 26, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: Would you say one of the great American ideals was that we learned to settle religious differences peacefully? Instead of going to battle over theological differences, (Lyme, Ct.) is a perfect example of the new American way. When part of the community disagreed with the town’s dominant religious teachings, they left to form Lyme, N.H. or to form Lyme, Ohio. Under the old European example, they would have taken up arms.
McDOUGALL: The American experiment in “free exercise of religion” is indeed one of the most important sources of what made American exceptional, at least in the 18th and 19th centuries (Europe eventually drifted into tolerance as faith itself declined there). I cite Bob Dylan’s line; “I heard the Sermon on the Mount and knew it was too complex. It didn’t amount to anything more than what the broken glass reflects.” That is a stunning poetic inversion, because of course the Sermon on the Mount is chilling in its
* simplicity *, whereas the reflections of a broken glass are wild and kaleidoscopic. So are the effects of religious liberty in America: effects that are psychological, social, economic, and political as well as spiritual. Robert Fogel of the University of Chicago has traced all America’s great reform movements to religious revivals or “Great Awakenings”. I think he exaggerates somewhat, but the first revival in the 1730-40s did help sow the seeds for independence from Britain, the second in the 1830-40s certainly drove the abolitionist movement, and the third from around 1880-1920 inspired the Social Gospel, Progressive Era reforms, and (I must say) that crusading foreign policy culminating in Woodrow Wilson.

BERNARDINE DOHRN, Former Weather Underground Member, April 28, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: What were your personal thoughts on September 11, 2001? I know you never did or contemplated something at that scale. Yet, did you think what the terrorists might have been thinking, and what was your personal reaction to the horrific results?
DOHRN: My response was, I am guessing, like yours. Stunned, horrified, racing to try to take in the implications, the reality, the violation on such a massive scale.
Since we were not terrorists and killed no one, and the apparent perpetrators of September 11 were right wing, religious zealots, I don’t feel qualified to even imagine what they were thinking.
What astounds me is that our Administration appears, unlike the rest of us who were in mourning for weeks, to have been racing to put out every piece of reactionary legislation and military aggression they ever dreamed of. Yikes.

RON CHERNOW, author, May 10, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: What was the closest opportunity that might have brought Alexander Hamilton to the Presidency, and where did events go wrong for Mr. Hamilton?
CHERNOW: Excellent question. Let me start by saying that all of the founders came out of the Revolution with deservedly large egos and reputations. And there was a kind of hierarchy based on age. Washington was unanimously elected the first President and there was never any question about that. It was assumed at the time of Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. In terms of age and stature, John Adams was next in line and Hamilton made no attempt to enter the 1796 election. His first real chance would have been in the 1800 election, but he marred—nay, ruined—his chances through two events. He published a scathing open letter about John Adams that split the Federalist Party and damaged Hamilton more than Adams. He had also published the 95 page pamphlet about the Maria Reynolds affairs, which led people to question his judgement. In other words, Hamilton had committed political suicide once too often. By the 1804 election, he was dead.

GORDON S. WOOD, author, June 1, 2003
CZIKOWSKY: How do you think religious differences affected Benjamin Franklin opposed to other revolutionary leaders? There have been scholars who have placed great emphasis pm the Quaker background of Philadelphia in general as opposed to the more activist Protestantism found in Boston. Do you have any thoughts on how religious differences affected Franklin and his cohorts?
WOOD: Franklin was not a Quaker but he lived a good part of his life in the Quaker dominated city of Philadelphia. I think Franklin found the great diversity of religions to lead him to believe that no one of them was all-important. He was not an emotionally religious man. He valued religion for its usefulness in keeping moral.

ART SPIEGELMAN, author, October 26, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: A friend evacuated one of the Towers on September 11 and he distributed some of the most disturbing photographs he took of what it was like to evacuate with people jumping to their deaths and smoke and debris all around you, We all have memories of where were at 9 am, September 11, 2001. Where were you, and what are your memories and thoughts from that day?
SPIEGELMAN: It really is the narrative of the book “”In the Shadow of the Towers”. Early on the morning of September 11, my wife Francois and I were heading out to vote in a New York primary when The Plane roared over our heads and smashied into the Trade Towers, ten blocks from ourselves. We ran down just as various people were running out of Ground Zero to find our 14 year old daughter, who had just started going to Stuyvesant High School three days before, virtually next door to the towers. It took awhile to find her amongst 3,000 students in the panicked building. While we were inside, the first tower fell. We got out just in time for the second tower to fall just behind us, and outran the toxic cloud of rubble, then went uptown to pick up our son.
And then a 9/11 that lasted six months for me before turning into September 12 began, I got stuck in September 11. Other people started turning calendar pages. During that period, I started thinking about how to find the bits of brain I’d left in the rubble, by starting the series of pages that became this book.

ROBERT McNEIL, author, January 13, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: Do regional dialects exist? Ayep.
McNEIL: Yes, they certainly survive despite the general impression that our immersion in broadcast media is homogenizing the language. Not only do dialects survive, some are growing more distinctive, for instance in the cities around the Great Lakes, in California, and among African Americans in the inner cities. Some dialects are dying out, due not to medial but the movement of people. Some examples of disappearing dialects are Gullah, the “Hillbilly” dialect of Appalachia and in the Sea Islands off the Carolinas.
CZIKOWSKY: Why do regional dialects remain? We move around, we communicate with others more, and yet our distinct language differences remain. What prevents people from blending towards a uniform way of pronouncing words?
McNEIL: Regional dialects remain because they are deeply embedded in our psyches and our identities. They may also be an unconscious way of defending ourselves against the forces of globalization and uniformity in our clothing, food chains, and media. This local sense of identity is a powerful force and is connected to our desire to be like the people we live among. One linguist, Carmen Fought, says: “We want to talk like the people we want to be like.”

MARTIN SHERWIN, author, April 12, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: There were some physicists who, before the first atomic bomb was ever exploded, theorized that the nuclear chair reaction would continue indefinitely until the entire world and perhaps the entire universe was destroyed. Obviously, this theory was wrong and obviously Mr. (Robert) Oppenheimer discounted this theory. Yet, how confident and on what basis was Mr. Oppenheimer able to ascertain that a nuclear reaction indeed would fade out over a certain space and, indeed, did he think afterwards it was a mistake to place so many people close to the initial tests after radiation illnesses resulted?
SHERWIN: There are two stories that we tell in “American Prometheus” that are relevant. In 1942 Teller did some calculations indicating that an atomic bomb might lead to a chain reaction in the atmosphere. Oppenheimer immediately took this news to Arthur Compton at Chicago and they discussed it. Hans Bethe redid Teller’s calculations and proved that he had made errors (which was not unusual as it turns out). Then before the Los Alamos tests (allegedly) Fermi took side bets that New Mexico would be incinerated. (Frankly, I don’t believe that story despite the fact that it has been told and retold.) I don’t believe that anyone was so close to the test of July 16 that they were affected by radiation.

COURTLAND MILLOY, Washington Post Columnist, May 31, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: Often, cities tear down things to enhance economic development and to improve our lives. Yet, cherishes memories are replaced. Are there any particular buildings and places you recall, even though insignificant to others, that you miss most?
MILLOY: There have been so many buildings torn down that it’s hard to remember what used to be where. I do remember that the Pick Lee Hotel was located next door to the Washington Post when I came here in May 1975. It had a nice bar, and it was okay for reporters to tie on a few after work back in those days. Fine watering hoe, it was. I also miss a barbeque joint that used to be up on 14th Street called Pig in the Pit; ribs tasted much better than the name sounds. Also, there were lots of strip joints on 14th Street—not that I went to any of them, but they did add a certain flavor to the area. That was before the FBI building was constructed nearby and those places had to go.

EDWARD J. RENEHAN, JR., author, June 21, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: Jay Gould lived in a period before some of what he did became illegal. Thus, it may be difficult for us to judge him based on our sense of legality. Yet, isn’t it fair to still consider many of his business practices unethical? Even if they were permitted or were more common, wasn’t he aware that there were many ethical questions involved in what he was doing?
RENEHAN: Of course Jay was aware that there were many ethical questions involved in what he was doing; but he also knew that EVERYONE against whom he competed—the Daniel Drews and Cornelius Vanderbilts—were engaged in EXACTLY the same types of stock pools, bear-raids, etc. with which he involved himself. There was absolutely no percentage in being a Boy Scout on Wall Street in Jay’s day; to behave ethically in all matters was to lose. I do not make the case in my book that Jay was a saint, only that he was not the over-arching villain, the financial vampire, that has been rumored for so long. The ruses and gambits of Wall Street that occupied Jay were not ones that he exercised alone, although he may well have exercised them much more expertly than most of his rivals.

TUKUFU ZUBERI, University of Pennsylvania Sociology Professor, July 26, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: There were some deep family divisions regarding supporting the Revolutionary War, especially at the beginning when even some later pro-war leaders were still arguing for negotiations with England. I know it pained Benjamin Frankly that his son became a loyalist Governor of New Jersey. How brutal did the infighting get?
ZUBERI: You are correct, many families were split regarding support for the Revolutionary War or continued loyalty to the British Empire. Tens of thousands of the North American population actually fought for the British.

JOSEPH ELLIS, author, September 19, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: There have been so many books written about George Washington, and I have read several of them. What new ground does your book (“His Excellency”) cover or explore?
ELLIS: My access to the modern edition of the Washington papers added much to my scholarship, particular a fresh interpretation of the formative years of Washington’s life, especially the French and Indian War. It also offers a different explanation to the reasons why Washington is committed to American independence—why he loses so many battles but wins the war and his strategic insights.
Also, the book offers the fullest explanation of his position on two important issues---slavery and the issues surrounding Native Americans.
LAUREN WILCOX, freelance author, September 19, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: As someone interested in history, I found the comment that everything in Las Vegas is torn down before it can become historic. Which historic buildings, if any, did you find? (would the Golden Nugget be the closest, which means it will soon be torn down?)
WILCOX: Thanks for the question. I thought it was an interesting comment, too. It made me think about what made something historic---that a building would have been part of a town’s daily life long enough to be associated with an era that maybe isn’t there anymore, or is disappearing. I visited an official historic structure, the old Mormon Fort, built by the town’s first settlers on the site of an old spring (which is no longer there). The fort was interesting because it was such a drab, unassuming, utilitarian piece of architecture in a town full of buildings that are just the opposite, but it feels very remove from the Las Vegas you or I would recognize. I did feel that the buildings I liked the best and responded to the most---like the Golden Nugget or other iconic old structures---are not, on the whole, what Las Vegas focuses on, and the whole thrust of the city’s development is not about the past at all. Obviously, there are some drawbacks to this, from a preservation perspective, but it does give the city’s growth a real (if sort of manic) energy, too.

JAMES W. LOEWEN, author, October 25, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: There is definite economic segregation with zoning and building laws to create de facto racial segregation. It is interesting that this was literally stated policy during the past century. How were you able to document all this? Were was information about these practices kept?
LOEWEN: There is half a chapter in “Sundown Towns” telling how. Briefly, I often had to rely on oral history. This is a topic where oral history can be more accurate than written. Anna, Il., for example, drove out its Black population in 1909 and has been known from that day to this as “Ain’t No Niggers Allowed—ANNA”. In 1954 it published a fat coffee table history, “Anna. Il., A Century of Progress”, 450 pages, a paragraph on every single local business, even the Dairy Queen. But not one word on 1909, on the origin of the slang meaning for “Anna”, not one word on Anna as a sundown town. Conversely, people will TELL you about it, with details, verbally, face-to-face.
CZIKOWSKY: Have you looked at the subject of racial segregation within communities? For instance, I recall researchers claiming that Philadelphia was one of the most racially segregated cities in America even though, in total, it appeared to be an ethnically diverse city. There were whole blocks that were not only racially segregated yet often 90 percent or more of its residents were ethnically segregated.
LOEWEN: Sometimes I treat “sundown neighborhoods”, especially when these are huge. West Lawn, Chicago, for example, depending on how it is bounded, has 25,000 to 101,000 residents. But there are other books, good ones, on the segregation within cities. What is amazing, and what I tried to remedy, is the complete lack of treatment of entire towns that excluded Blacks totally. Large cities like Appletom, Wisconsin, for gosh sakes!

JEROME KARABEL, University of California, Berkeley Sociology Professor, November 2, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: Although the Ivy League wasn’t created until the 1950s, didn’t some of the other Ivies have decent records towards accepting Jewish students, even if religious discrimination existed to some degree. Didn’t Penn have a high percent of Jewish students throughout most of the 20th century? KARABEL: You are correct about Penn, which did indeed have a high percentage of Jewish students throughout the 20th century. Among the Ivy League colleges, Penn is the only one that clearly never had a policy of discriminating against Jews. Scholars are not sure why this was so, but some have speculated that it had to do with the influence of Quakers on Penn’s Board of Trustees.

KARENNA GORE SCHIFF, author and daughter of former Vice President Al Gore, February 27, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: Which First Ladies do you admire, and why?
SCHIFF: I didn’t profile any First Ladies (in “Lighting the Way”) but can recommend a book to you—“Hidden Power” by Kati Marton—if you are interested in that subject in depth. However there is one First Lady who weaves throughout the stories in “Lighting the Way” and had a huge impact—Eleanor Roosevelt. Alice Hamilton was actually one of her role models and she was also close to Viginia Durr. She and Frances Perkins were allies but had a difficult friendship. E.R. was a real public servant in her own right—fighting segregation, working to alleviate poverty, giving voice to the less powerful. I admire her tremendously.
CZIKOWSKY: I know there are so many great women that to pick any few means that a lot of remarkable women are left off the list. As more women are going to college now than ever before, what do you think of the inspirations that people such as Margaret Mead, Jane Goodall, and so many others have brought to the world?
SCHIFF: I think that both Mead and Goodall are inspirational and fascinating. I’m afraid I’m not an expert on either one but would love to learn more about them. Certainly the fact that women have done such wonderful things in many different fields—science, arts, business—is great and can inspire young women choosing their own paths. This book is really about women who were political and I hope you enjoy it.
CZIKOWSKY: Who are some of the inspirational women of today who you believe are helping to change and improve the world?
SCHIFF: The last chapter of “Lighting the Way” is about Gretchen Buchenholz, a child advocate who is changing the world for the better. Her friend Marian Wright Edelman is another who is leading the charge to solve the day care crisis. And then there is Susan Solomon, a scientist who is working on global environmental issues.

WILLIAM BENNETT, former U.S. Education Secretary, June 13, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: You wrote the following; “Until the 1950s or so the Republican Party was a much greater hope for freedom and equality.” Do you concede that the Democratic Party has been the political party producing greater hope and equality since the 1950s?
BENNETT: Great question. Obviously, I don’t, however I do give credit to Kennedy and Johnson for important civil rights legislation and to great champions of equal rights such as Hubert Humphrey, and of course Dr. King. But civil rights legislation of the ‘60s would not have passed without Republicans like Dirksen, and of course was opposed by Democrats like Robert Byrd and William Fulbright. And today equality and color blindness is championed by conservatives with many liberals want to apportion, admit, and reward using racial preference.

SALLY QUINN, Washington Post Staff Writer, November 22, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: Have you considered the origins of Thanksgiving from the perspective of the Native Americans who heard the celebratory noise and came to inquire what the commotion was amongst the Pilgrims, and then assisted in the gathering of additional food when they saw the Pilgrims had meager food? What attachments did the natives attach to the first Thanksgiving, and how do they feel about subsequent celebrations of what would lead to the loss of their lands? Have there been surveys as to how current descendants fell as to how Thanksgiving is represented?
QUINN: I think most of us do understand that the Native Americans came to help out the Pilgrims and I refer you to Chief Lyons who talks about Thanksgiving from his point of view. None of us feels good about the things that happened to the Indians after that first Thanksgiving. That’s why it is appropriate to remember them and their kindness toward the settlers there. It’s also a good time to ponder how people can learn to understand each other and respect their differences, not just here but all over the world.

MICHAEL K. HONEY., author, January 16, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: Had Martin Luther King, Jr. lived, what was next on his activist agenda after the Memphis sanitation strike? HONEY: King was in the midst of his Poor People’s Campaign. He went to Memphis because he was called there by the local movement. If he had lived, his next stop was Washington, D.C., where he hoped to encamp thousands of poor people to lobby the government. The demand was to redirect military spending to housing, health care, job training, and a living income for those who did not have jobs. He proposed to abolish poverty directly. This was a form of income redistribution—away from the military, to the people.

HEATHER EWING, author, April 24, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: Why did James Smithson leave his collection to a country he had never visited?
EWING: That’s the big question! I hope that my book shows that by uncovering the story of Smithson’s life—and placing him back in the context of the English Enlightenment, in the coffeehouses of London and in Paris during the French Revolution—that it’s possible to begin to understand the ideals behind such an extraordinary bequest.
Also, I get the sense that Smithson would have come to the U.S.A. if he could have…it turns out that he loather sea travel, since it made him so ill. In the early 1800s he waited four whole years on the continent, hoping for a break in the Napoleonic Wars so he could go home to England via the Channel rather than what he called the “wild and endlessly circuitous” route of the North Sea.
CZIKOWSKY: I understand most of Mr. Smithson’s works were destroyed in a fire. Did most of his rocks survive, or was the fire so bad they were destroyed?
EWING: That’s right. Smithson’s effects—his personal possessions like his tea set and his umbrella, his chemistry equipment, and his huge mineral collection (which was considered one of the finest in the U.S. in the 1840s)—were all kept in the Regents’ Room of the Castle. Everything in that room was destroyed, except for a safe that contained some of the institution’s financial records. The mineral specimens were all very small, so they were lost entirely.
His library of books, however, along with some notes of his mineral catalogues, were saved, since they were in a different part of the building. So we have a sense of what was in his mineral collection from these notes. The library was very helpful to me in my work—he annotated some of the books, so I studied those notes very carefully for clues about his thinking.

BENJAMIN WOOLLEY, author, May 9, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: I have heard the allegations of cannibalism (at the James settlement. What exactly is the evidence that someone engaged in cannibalism?
WOOLLEY: During what’s known as the ‘Starving Time’, the English were, according to one account, reduced to eating the corpse buried in a makeshift grave, and one of the settlers apparently murdered his wife, salted her flesh, and stored it in barrels, though he was found out and ‘burned’.

JOHN FERLING, author, August 14, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: Many soldiers signed for the military (during the Revolutionary War) for a set term and when the term was up they left and went back to their families and their jobs. Often this was necessary as their families needed them. How did the Revolution impact families and how did the military work with the problem of rotating soldiers?
FERLING: In the first two years of the war, men enlisted for only one year. That was no way to wage a war, as General Washington repeatedly told Congress in 1775 and 1776. Indeed, few of these men reenlisted, leaving Washington to recruit a new army in the fact of the enemy army. After the string of defeats in the New York campaign, Congress finally awakened to reality and, beginning in 1777, men were asked to enlist for three years or the duration of the war. The evidence suggests that the composition of the army changed dramatically once Congress went over to a standing arm concept. Previously, the men in the army had represented a reasonably good cross section of America’s male inhabitants. But from 1777 onward a far greater percentage of the men tended to be single, property-less, and from the lower socio-economic strata of society. A substantial percentage (up to twenty-five percent in some states) were immigrants.
As there men were in the service for the long haul, they were separated from loved ones for extended periods. During the winter months, however, when fighting slowed or stopped altogether, the Continental army was generous with furloughs (if for no other reason than it meant fewer mouths to feed during times of scarcity.)

JAY WINIK, author, November 1, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: What perspectives or facts does your book (“The Great Upheaval”) present that have not been explored in previous works?
WINKI: What I wanted to do was to bring alive the world as the Founders themselves actually saw it—and that wasn’t just the thirteen colonies or the young United States, it was a global world. As a result, “The Great Upheaval” presents an entirely fresh take on this period. Conventional scholarship has long isolated the story of America’s founding decade from the rest of the globe, but this misses a key part of the picture. Our Founding Fathers were all-consumed, and rightly so, by events in Europe and on the global stage—from the increasing anarchy and bloodshed of the French Revolution that swept the continent, to Russia’s dismemberment of the ancient Kingdom of Poland. I’ve come to believe that the best way to understand the events in the young America, e.g. the Whiskey Rebellion, the Alien and Sedition Act, is to see them in this larger context. I sought to restore this lost part of the historical story; it’s an extraordinary tale.

RICK PERLSTEIN. Campaign for America’s Future Senior Fellow, February 4, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: Did you examine the general values of the generations (in his book “Nixonland”)? I have read commentary where the youth of the 1960s rebelled against the fear of their parents who went through the Depression and World War II and how ironically many of the children of couples who got married in the 1960s have taken the message of the 1960s and more freedom and openness and become more conservative in attitudes than their parents.
PERLSTEIN: The main factor, I think, was economic. The economy was prosperous and unflappable like it had been probably in no other society in human history. Many young people could afford personal experimentation in a way unimaginable to today’s students, saddled as they are with massive student debt (remember that at Berkely, one of the epicenters of the student uprising, tuition was free!).
By the same token, this increased the resentment of the less-privileged young people for the dalliances of counterculture and antiwar folks who were seen, accurately, as for the most part more financially comfortable than “traditional” young people. It wasn’t uncommon for working class youth to hear “come back when you have that draft thing out of the way”, they heard at the factory gates, while richer kids had no problems getting out of the military obligations.
A lot of the resentments were class resentments. Fortune magazine did a huge poll of college students’ attitudes in 1969 (like I said, the society worshipped youth, can you imagine a business magazine devoting a whole issue to such a survey now) and the respondents from the more prestigious tier of schools were considerably more left-leaning than the lower tier.

STEVE WALDMAN, beliefnet.com editor-in-chief, March 11, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: I find it interesting that the founding fathers were so disrespectful of the Catholic religion when it was the mostly Catholic French who came to their assistance. Did the interactions with the French help redefine any of their beliefs regarding Catholicism?
WALDMAN: What happened was the Colonists were deeply disrespectful of Catholics going into the revolution. But some of the leaders—especially George Washington---came to the conclusion that this was very counterproductive, exactly for the reason you mentioned. They needed to attract France as an ally. So Washington banned the practice of burning effigies of the Pope (which he called “monstrous”) and cracked down on anti-Catholic activities in general. After that, the public denunciations of Catholics became less frequent.

SHIWANI SRIVASTAVA, The Root Contributor, September 3, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: I recall that after September 11 that anyone wearing a turban was suspect. People in government buildings wearing turbans were often questioned, and I had an American born friend who wore a turban who was questioned by police for taking a photograph in a garage. How does the Indian American population feel about the Patriot Act and Governor Jindal’s support of the Patriot Act?
SRIVASTAVA: I actually wrote a story on violence against the Siks (flowers of Sikhism, a South Asian religion in which men wear turbans) following 2/11, and the violence against this community was staggering. I’d also like to call attention to your point that Indian/South Asian Americans can be Hindu, Muslin, and a variety of other religions. Thanks for mentioning that. And yes, they have been unfairly profiled and taken into custody as a direct result of the Patriot Act, which Jindal supported making permanent. I think this is probably the biggest bone that the community would have to pick with Jindal.
But, as in important aside, it also shouldn’t dissolve into an us-versus-them mentality in terms of “oh, you should be racially profiling THOSE Muslims”. The point is, many of these people imprisoned under the Patriot Act (South Asian, Middle Eastern, whatever) were completely innocent and given no trial, which makes in inherently unconstitutional.

JULIE BECKMAN, Pentagon Memorial Designer, September 12, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: What were some of the designs you considered and rejected, and why were they rejected?
BECKMAN: Keith Kaseman and I always believed that the Memorial should be both individual and collective at the same time. We wanted to create a comfortable place where family members, friends—or even strangers—could come for 10 minutes or 2 hours. A place to sit, shade, and the sound of water were all criteria that we intended to incorporate. Very early in the design process, we considered one single water feature—like a large reflecting pool—with the individual markers surrounding it. We also, for only a brief moment, considered designing the Memorial units to be different from each other to emphasize their individuality—but quickly knew that it would be both logistically difficult to produce 184 uniquely designed pieces, but it also could be conceived as representing the individual which we never intended to do. We simply wanted to create a special place on the planet dedicated to each life lost.

RONALD KESSLER, former Washington Post Investigative Reporter, December 28, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: When did you learn Mark Felt was Deep Throat?
KESSLER: Of course, I could never be absolutely sure but I was convinced that Mark Felt was Deep Throat and I wrote that in my 2002 book called “The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI”, based primarily on the fact that I went to interview Felt in 2001 for the book and when I arrived at his home, his daughter Joan greeted me. She said “You know this guy Bob Woodward was out here about a year ago and he came in a white limousine and had the limousine park ten blocks away. He then walked to our house.”
She wasn’t quite sure who Woodward was but I knew that Woodward never would’ve taken that precaution unless he was still concealing his relationship with Felt.
In addition to that, Felt was in the perfect position to know the details of the FBI’s investigation. And another tip-off was that Felt’s instructions to Woodward on how they should meet were classic instructions used in spy work and I knew that Felt had spent more of his career in the FBI counterintelligence, which has to do with these signals that spooks give each other.