How Historians Work: A History Lab Discussion with Dan Wang and Stephen Kotkin | Hoover Institution - Talks from the Hoover Institution

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(00:00):
[MUSIC]

>> Dan Wang (00:14):
My name is Dan Wang,
I'm sitting here withhistorian Stephen Kotkin.
Steve, today we're going to havea conversation about the practice of
history.
So you are a historian of power,a historian of communism,
a historian of the Soviet Union andmodern Russia.

(00:37):
You are exceptionally well known for yourtrilogy of biography of Joseph Stalin.
I also want to highlight that youhave received rapturous praise for
your very first book, the MagneticMountain, which I have right here.
This is a book that you wrotewhile being the first American

(01:00):
in five decades to live inthe Soviet Union's Steel City.
I think my favorite article writtenabout you was from the New Yorker
in 2017 when Keith Gessen calledyou a variety of adjectives,
my favorite of which weresharp-elbowed and opinionated.

(01:24):
Steve, I used to be atthe Yale Law School before you brought me
out to be a research fellow atthe Hoover Institution.- We're here,
sitting in your office in Hoover Tower,which is overlooking Stanford.
For those watching on video,you'll see that we're sitting amidst
shelves stuffed with books,some that are three layers deep,

(01:47):
in an office that someone hasdescribed as a historian's heaven.
Here we're sitting at your desk,and this is the space
where you'll finish the third volumeof your celebrated Stalin biography.
So today we're not going to have somuch of a discussion of Russia or
Stalin in particular.

(02:08):
Rather, we're going to have a conversationabout what it is that historians do.
So thank you forsitting down with me today.

>> Stephen Kotkin (02:16):
My pleasure.

>> Dan Wang (02:17):
I want to start by asking you about the varieties of the historian's
experience.
So in my conception, historians are peoplewho bury themselves in archives,
develop a really severe dust allergy, andtry to draw out a story from documents.
Now, something that I really appreciate,again from your first book,

(02:40):
Magnetic Stalinism as a civilization,was that you went to live in Magnitogorsk,
you went to read the localnewspapers as well as the archives.
You walked through tombstones,you talked to the people.
Can you tell us a little bit abouthow typical is that experience for

(03:00):
a historian?
How much are you in the archives?
What is it that historiansmostly do today?

Yeah, those are great questions.
Especially in the digital age, we assumethat most everything is digitized or
most everything worth spendingtime on is digitized.
And my world is only partially digitized.
Some of the old documentsare available in digitized form,

(03:27):
but the vast majority that I used forall the books that I've
published up till now were in paper form,sometimes microfilm,
which is an ancient technology thathas outlived its use in some ways,
but nonetheless, a lot of things weremicrofilmed before they were digitized.

(03:50):
And so between the paper andthe microfilm, that has been my life for
the past many decades.
So what I do is I posea series of questions and
then I look forevidence to answer those questions,
both to support hunches I might have, but
also to contradict hunches I might have.

(04:14):
It's very important to search not forconfirmatory evidence,
but also contradictory evidence,
evidence that doesn't fit what you mightthink to gain the full complexity.
If you're lucky,you can also travel to the destination,
the locale, the objects of your study.

(04:35):
You can't travel to the past itself,obviously, in time travel fashion.
That's what you do with the documentation.
But you can travel there in person andyou can see some of the legacies that
are still alive or that have beentransformed in interesting ways.
You can sometimes talk to someof the people who are alive,

(04:56):
depending on how deep intime your subject goes.
You can walk around those cemeteries andsee those tombstones of people
you recognize from the documentation,and you can just feel, not just see, but
feel something of the time period andthe place that you're interested in.

(05:18):
Marc Bloch once paidtribute to Lucien Fevre.
They were both French historiansof the great Annales School.
And Bloch said of Fev,who studied the early modern period,
Reformation, Counter Reformation,Renaissance.
He said Fevre knew how the flowerssmelled in the 16th century.

(05:44):
Of course, he didn't know exactly howthe flowers smelled in the 16th century,
but after a lifetime of study of thatepoch, he had come to understand,
feel the texture of the life andtimes there.
So that's what we do as historians.
We want to answer big questions,big questions about where we are now and

(06:05):
where we might be going basedon where we've come from.

>> Dan Wang (06:10):
Fevre knew how the flowers smelled in the 16th century
through the 1980s.
You went to Magnitogorsk andsmelled the coal smoke.

Yes. >> Dan Wang
Something that I really try to doin my annual letters from China
was to write not so much a formalistexplanation of what the top
level Communist Party documentsrevealed from Beijing.
I think that is often an easy perspectiveone can take often from Washington D.C.

(06:43):
to take a look at what are the highlevel central pronouncements,
which are no doubt important, butwhat I really tried to do was also
to integrate it with a little bit ofwhat the sparrow sounded like and
how the flowers smelled in Shanghai.

(07:03):
How typical is it that historians reallyare going over there to smell the flowers,
wherever they may be, and to extractthemselves out of the archives and
to dwell on stories that are notonly found in documentation.
Yeah, we can sometimes be tricked becauseof the bias towards historical records.

(07:27):
Now, you can't write really good history without evidence.
And sodocumentation is absolutely critical.
It comes in many different forms.
We usually focus on the State Archives,because the State Archives
are this convenient repository wherea huge number of documents are collected.

(07:48):
So that Annales School that Ireferred to earlier, Marc Bloch and
Lucien Febvre, later Fernand Braudel andmy favorite, Pierre Chaunu,
they would Often go to a French locality,a province, and
they would go straight into the judicialarchives and they would read

(08:09):
all of the ways that ordinary peoplewere caught up in the state machinery,
either because they were onthe receiving end of someone's ire,
or they themselves hadinitiated a process.
And so the state archive couldreveal daily life in this place

(08:29):
at the time chosen by these peoplecaught up in the state machinery.
And that's really, really valuable.
And you can write as the annalsschool people did a total history,
the culture, the society,the politics, the economy,
sometimes on the basis predominantlyof just the judicial archives.

(08:50):
And of course,
there's other aspects of statemachinery as well that they consider.
The problem with the state archivesis it's about the obsessions,
the preoccupations,the fears of the state.
If the state is worried about something,it begins to watch it,
monitor it deeply, and record everythingit can about that phenomenon.

(09:13):
But if the state is not worriedabout something or can't see it,
the traces left in the statearchives are minimal.
Let me give you a couple of examples.
I got to Tomsk, Siberia, many decades ago,and I went into the state archive there.
It's a 17th century fort in its origin.

(09:34):
Tomsk.
It became a great university town.
And then it fell into backwater statusbecause the Trans Siberian Railroad
passed it by.
Instead of Tomsk,it went through Novosibirsk.
And so Tomsk was off the main line,even though it had a richer and
deeper history, andit had the great university.

(09:56):
What I discovered in the Tomsk archiveswas a lot of documentation on Jews.
There were maybe enough Jews tocongregate in this office in Tomsk,
but yet the documentation on themwas really, really extensive.
And then documentation on heretics,people who didn't follow

(10:18):
the Orthodox Church as prescribed,but might have been what were known as
Old Believers who didn't take tothe reforms that the Church imposed.
Anyway, you could see the preoccupationsand obsessions of the state.
A lot was missing.
For example,

(10:39):
the corruption of the governor washard to find in the state archives.
You had the corruption of the governorin some references to documents of
travelers coming through Tomskat different periods of time.
But the state archive didn't revealthe corruption of the governor unless
the governor was brought in front ofthe judicial authorities, usually for

(11:01):
political purge reasons rather than forcorruption reasons, and
then the corruption was held against them.
The Soviet state archive is one ofthe most extensive archives ever,
records somany things you drown in documents.
You can barely assimilatethe documentation for one place.

(11:23):
And one time, let alone forthe whole thing.
But you're hard pressed to findsufficient documentation on the black
market economy because the black marketeconomy was not supposed to exist.
It did exist, it was extremely extensive.
But recording it was very hardbecause the goal of the black

(11:46):
marketeers was to avoid state scrutiny,often by paying bribes,
but just as often by being clever andevasive.
So if you were going towrite about Soviet history,
you might not have sufficientspace on the black market
economy if you reliancesolely on the state archives.

(12:10):
So therefore you need allsorts of other sources.
You need periodicals.
A lot of stuff can be found inperiodicals that's left out of the state.
The Soviet Union refused toacknowledge the poor harvest and
food deprivation,including starvation in 1936.

(12:30):
But there were articles in the newspaperabout fistfights in queues
at the bakeries because therewasn't enough bread to go around.
And so you could see indirectly,even though it was prohibited by censors
to talk about the shortages, the poorharvest, it nonetheless came out in

(12:51):
the periodicals that were supplementary tothe state archives that you might read.
Then, of course, there's memoirs, as Isaid, travel accounts, first person views.
Of course they are written fromthe point of view of someone, but so
are the state archives.
They're written from the pointof view of officials.

(13:12):
Sometimes the officials are competent andsometimes they're incompetent.
Sometimes the documentation istrustworthy and extensive, and sometimes
they just made it up so that it wouldappear they were doing their jobs and
they filed it as if they had done all thatwork when they hadn't done all that work.

(13:33):
So the state archives toocan be very deceptive.
No more, no less deceptive,just in different ways from memoirs.
So you try as much as you can tofind sources from different genre,
different agencies, institutions, people,
and you try to juxtaposethose different sources to

(13:56):
see where the preponderanceof evidence is driving.
So I would say that there'sno perfect way to do history.
It's an imperfect.
It's an art, not a science.
It's an imperfect way to go about things.
But the more sources, the better.

(14:16):
The more different kinds of sources,the better,
the more critical you are ofthe source material and its generation,
its origins, knowing why andhow it was produced.
And the more you cango there in person and
see those orange plumes of smokecoming out of the steel plant,
or the smell of burning coalgoing into people's lungs,

(14:40):
sure, it's maybea significant period of time
has elapsed since the timeperiod you're focused on.
But there are some of thesecontinuities amid the discontinuities
that give you that feel forthe life, for the mentality,
for the underlying driversof what's happening there.

(15:05):
And so I think most historianswould try to do that if they could.
Sometimes there are constraints.
Regimes don't want theircountries to be studied.
They don't want their countriesto be studied in depth.
They don't want certainthings to be revealed.
They live under censorship regimes fora reason.

(15:25):
But sometimes it's people insufficientlydriven to get to the truth.
In other words, historians can be good,but some historians
are just more thorough,more comprehensive, more searching.
Get that next one and that next one andthat extra one, and check this and

(15:48):
check that.
It's not dissimilar from journalism.
It's not dissimilar fromscientists when it's
practiced at the most rigorous,highest levels.

>> Dan Wang (16:01):
How do you make friends with an archivist?

You make friends with an archivist the same way you make friends
with anybody.
Empathy.
One of the great things abouthistory is it teaches you empathy.
Empathy in a strategic sense andempathy in a personal sense.
I often use this approach with students.

(16:28):
I tell them it's not thatdifficult to read memoirs
of Holocaust survivors in the sensethat there's a lot of them.
Six million people werekilled in the Holocaust.
Many others suffered near death,experience massive tragedy,

(16:49):
and needs to be called a genocide.
At the same time,there were survivors, and
those survivors often produced memoirs.
They're easy to read in the sensethat there's a lot of them.
They're difficult to read sometimesbecause of what the people went through.
What's not difficult is identifyingwith the writers of the memoirs.

(17:11):
It's very easy to beempathetic to someone solely
because of who they are,who their parents were,
what their beliefs were,were sent to death camps.
The hard part, the really hard part,is to read and

(17:33):
understand the camp commandant again,the victims.
You can be empathetic to them,but can you show empathy?
Can you find empathy forthe camp commandant?
Not to validate what the campcommandant did, it's murder,

(17:54):
but to understand,to appreciate what this person did,
to put yourself in that person's shoes andsay, how did this person commit genocide?
How did this person go home toa spouse and children after work?
From the ovens to the home frontto the garden, to the pet animals,

(18:16):
to the small children rompingaround in that garden?
How did that person think?
What did that person think he wasdoing in those circumstances?
How did he explain it,if at all, to others?
Showing empathy to the camp commandantagain is in no way to validate.

(18:37):
Understanding is not validation.
But understanding is critical because youhave to understand where the evil comes
from, how it was perpetrated,who the people were who perpetrated it.
Evil is very simple in caricature terms,but when you humanize evil,
it becomes much more difficult,much more complex.

(18:59):
Like the characters, for example,in Shakespeare, who are the villains?
They're rounded characters.
They're full characters.
Again, it doesn't justify who orwhat they are, but
it does help you understandat a deeper level.
So when you're going to sitdown with an archivist,
that archivist is sitting there all day,every day, year after year after year.

(19:25):
What do they think?
What do they know about the documentationthat they're in charge of?
What do they think about visitorswho come in to use the materials?
What kind of visitors do they have?
How many visitors do they have.
They're guardians preservingthis historical memory.
Long hours, low pay,not a lot of appreciation in some cases.

(19:51):
What are their lives like?
So with an archivist, I would sit downwith them and I would show them how I'm
reading the particular documentationthat they were putting in front of me.
And I would say, this is what this tellsme and this is how I understand this and
come and look at this.
And soon enough we became,as it were, collaborators in reading,

(20:14):
understanding, talkingabout the documentation.
They appreciated the kindof thoroughness and
care I was demonstrating inapproaching the documents,
the kind of rigor, the demand formore and more documents.
And so they had preserved these documents.
They had worked all those long hoursto catalog them and make sure they were

(20:37):
in decent condition in case anybodyshould come in and ask for them.
And I was that person.
And not only did I ask for them,but I wanted their collaboration,
their assistance in interpreting them.
And so you develop a relationship asprofessionals with the legacy that they
are collecting and preserving andthat you're trying to understand.

(21:02):
And before, I was often the onlyperson on the reader side who would go
into the archive, not in all cases,but certainly in Magnetogorsk.
There was almost no day where there wasanother person besides me going to read
that history.
And I had come from a long way away, andthose people were living down the block.

(21:25):
By the third, fourth, fifth week,
almost the entire archival staff wouldsometimes gather around my table and
engage in questions anddiscussions about the documentation.
They were so happy that someonewas studying the history and
studying it faithfully andcould discuss it with them.

(21:46):
All of a sudden, their life workbecame much more meaningful.
It wasn't only forsomething abstract, like posterity.
It was for this real person writing thisbook that I would then give to them.
And I had worked in the archives inMoscow before going to Magnitogorsk,

(22:06):
so I knew a lot of things thatthey didn't have in their archive.
Because the Soviet systemwas highly centralized and
many things were decided or sent for
final keeping only in the Moscow archiverather than in the local archive.
And so I could relate to them materialsthat I had read about their history that

(22:28):
they were not able to see orhadn't seen yet.
And then, of course,I had come from the Hoover Institution,
where I wasn't affiliated yet with theHoover Institution, but like many people,
I was just another researcher who hadworked here in the library and archives.
And I had read the anti communist archivesof the Hoover Institution, for example,
the Boris Nikolayevsky collection.

(22:50):
And so I could bring them later,
the actual photocopies of documents,but initially,
stories about some of the Americanpersonnel who had come to Magnitogorsk and
helped build the Stalinistshowcase city behind the Urals.
And they had no accessto materials like that.

(23:12):
And so they were thrilled to learn aboutthe existence of those materials and
eventually to see some of those materials,when later I took other trips, a second
trip, and I was able to bring, as I said,photocopies from the Hoover archives.
So archivists are our friends.
They're indispensable people.
And getting to understand them is on us.

(23:36):
And getting to appreciate what they do andgetting to partner with them,
the same thing we do hereat the Hoover Institution.
But in the case,I'm talking about an encounter between
inhabitants of very different systems,very different realms,
but trying to understand a similarquestion, history problem.

(23:59):
And so it's very rewarding.
To be able to relate to them.
Now, what did they think of me?
How much did they appreciate this?
Were they all of the same mind?
No doubt.
Some of them saw me as an interloper.
Some of them saw me potentiallyas conducting espionage,
reading ancient documents about a steelplant with obsolescent technology,

(24:22):
wastefully producing at high cost,low quality steel, that maybe they
thought I was involved in some typeof espionage or whatever it might be.
But the ones that I encountered directlyand sat with at that table were deeply
engaged with me in the same process oftrying to understand their history.

>> Dan Wang (24:43):
Let me share what I think is
the greatest put down ofthe field of history.
This is coming from another historian,probably a distorted quote
from Arnold Toynbee, which is that historyis just one damn thing after another.
What's her response?

Sometimes it is, sadly.
So there are two caricatures.
One caricature is of the historian knowseverything imaginable about one thing and
just keeps burrowing deeper anddeeper and deeper.
And you ask that person to compare,to make generalizations, to come up with

(25:27):
larger statements of significance, andthey'll say, no, this case is different.
It's not like all those other cases.
Or no, we can't reallygeneralize based upon this.
So they get lost in the details.
That's a version of onedamn thing after another.
It's just all details andthey can't add up to anything.

(25:49):
And everything is sui generis.
That's one caricature.
The other caricature is ofthe political scientist.
And the political scientist knows a tinysomething about lots and lots of things.
So the historian,everything about one case,
the political scientist,very little about very many cases.

(26:14):
And so the political scientistgeneralizes from shallow,
very superficial understanding ofwhether it's China or India or
South Korea or development orwhatever it might be.
And they come up with these grandtheories which any historian or
specialist on one particular casein their multiple cases comes and

(26:35):
says that doesn't apply to that case,or that's wrong.
And so you have these twostereotypes where it's all
generalizations based uponshallow knowledge and
no generalizations based uponridiculously excessive knowledge.
So it's clear you don't haveto be a genius to understand

(26:57):
that a good practicing historianis about deep knowledge
about more than one case andcoming up with patterns,
coming up with patterns of understandingthat apply to more than one case.
So you want to explainthe French Revolution, okay, but
does your explanation work forthe Russian Revolution?

(27:20):
Does it work for the Iranian Revolution?
Does it work for revolutions thatdidn't happen, cases that failed or
ceased to unfold the way somecontemporaries thought they might.
So in developing your analysis,you have to know your French Revolution
story really well so that you can passmuster with the experts who deeply,

(27:44):
deeply have researched the topic.
And then you have to know your othercases, your Russian Revolution,
your Chinese Revolution,your Iranian Revolution.
And then you can begin to talkintelligently about the patterns
of revolution across multiple cases.
And then you can debate whether theyapply to Nicaragua or whether they apply

(28:06):
to fill in the blank, whicheverrevolution you want to talk about.
And maybe they have to be modifiedwhen they're in conversation with
cases that you didn't consider orthat you don't know.
So knowing deeply is indispensable, but
being able to see patternsis also indispensable.

(28:27):
And that is the trade off,the balancing that you have to do.
You have to know more than one case,as many cases as is feasible,
the way that politicalscientists try to operate.
Multiple cases, multiple ends,as they like to say in the jargon.
But you also have to know enoughabout each of those cases to pass

(28:51):
muster to stand up toscrutiny with the experts.
So I think one damn thingafter another does happen.
It doesn't have to happen.
It's not endemic, it's not inevitable.
And the way to get out of it is to aspire,to try to find patterns,
and therefore to have more than one case.

(29:15):
Russia Eurasia,enables this because of its geography.
Russia Eurasia is world history.
It's 11 time zones.
Russia is geographically part of Europe,
geographically part of the Middle East,geographically part of East Asia.
So by taking seriously Russia, Eurasia,

(29:37):
by taking the geography seriously,you're inherently a Europeanist,
a Middle Eastern specialist,and an East Asian specialist.
So that's what studying Russia,Eurasia gave to me.
Sure, you can focus on Moscow,you can focus on the regime,
you can focus on provincesin the central region.

(30:01):
All of that is fine.
There's a place for that.
And people do that.
And some people do that really well.
But for me, the challenge,the thrill, was always the whole
shebang in all its stretch andambiguities and contradictions.
And therefore, I had to be inEast Asian Studies while doing Russia, and

(30:22):
I had to be in European studieswhile doing Russia, and
I had to be in Middle Easternstudies while doing Russia.
And that's how I organizedthe PhD program at Princeton.
Everybody who came to do a PhD inRussia Eurasia with me at Princeton,
where I spent 33 years,had to acquire at least one language and

(30:45):
expertise, either in Europe,
the Middle East or East Asia,in order to do this.
Well at least in order to work with me andothers in that program at Princeton.
So yeah, one damn thing after another.
Sometimes it's well written one damnthing after another and it's a good read.

(31:06):
But ultimately people are looking foranalysis, explanation, understanding and
that comes from depth of knowledge but italso comes from recognition of patterns.

>> Dan Wang (31:18):
Recognition of patterns is so important.
One of your great lines that I loveto repeat is that everything is
unprecedented unless you knowa little bit of history.
Now for many people who do notknow a lot of history who do
not think necessarily about whatare the great trends of our time,

(31:40):
rise of China, rise of India,
artificial intelligence I think isone of these big things where for
everyone everything isalways unprecedented.
How do you greet the propositionthat this time is different?
How do we know that thistime really is different?

Sometimes, you don't know until it's over.
Which is very frustrating for people.
Retrospective is pretty easycompared to prospective.
Looking forward is really hard.
And history does not tellyou what the future will be.
The future is to be invented,and the future is also plural.

(32:23):
There are many futures.
But what history tells you is,first of all,
that the present cannot just beextended indefinitely in time.
Meaning that what we havetoday is going to change.
And it's also going tochange in surprising ways.
Because that's how it's changed inthe past again and again and again.

(32:46):
The day after the change,everyone says they predicted it.
But two days before the change.
People often didn't see it coming.
And so history is great that way.
It gives you that humilitythat you think you're right.
You think your thoughts are smarterthan your predecessors.
But then you go look andsee that they were smart people.

(33:08):
And they got a lot wrong.
Maybe they thought that the sunrevolved around the Earth.
And that was proven to be wrong over time.
And so you have to have that humilitythat what you think is important.
That you think you might be superior.

(33:30):
Either in your values or your knowledge.
It's quite possible that peoplewill look back at you and think,
how could they think that?
That's so silly.
The sun revolving around the Earth.
Could they really have thought that?
And for hundreds andhundreds of years, yes, they did.

(33:51):
So that kind of humilityhas to be applied.
When you're thinking aboutyour analysis of the present.
And how things might evolve.
What you're looking forare the big drivers of change.
What the drivers of change might be,what the big trends are.
And how we might be able toaffect those drivers of changes.

(34:15):
To maybe shift them a little bitIn a direction we want to go.
History is about the relationshipbetween structure and agency.
Agency makes no sense whatsoever.
Until you understand the structures,
large structures, geography, institutions,

(34:36):
which are very,very difficult to change quickly.
Commodity prices.
There are huge factors that are out ofthe control of any single individual.
No matter how powerful.
But agency matters because agencyputs those structures into motion.

(35:00):
Retards, redirects,sometimes changes those structures.
Stalin did that.
Changing the socioeconomicstructure of Eurasia 11 time.
It's remarkable.
But first, you have to understand what'sthere and where it might be going and
what's driving it.
And then you can begin toplace agency on top of that.

(35:23):
There are no structures without agencies.
But agency is absurdwithout the structures.
So this is life and times thatsome people call it structure and
agency in the jargon.
So now when you're looking at thingsthat are precedented or unprecedented,
nothing is identical.
But again, there are patterns,there are similarities,

(35:46):
there are reasons that certain formscan be identified because sometimes
people don't know they're not borrowing,they're not emulating.
But similar circumstances cangive rise to similar forms,
whether in governance, in daily life.
And so you look to see whathappened before in order to

(36:09):
understand what might behappening going forward.
It's easy to talk about the rise of China.
We've all been living through it.
But you sort of open up the aperture andyou go back in time.
And China has been one ofthe most decisive countries,

(36:30):
civilizations for recorded history,
with the exception ofthe period around 1800 to 1980,
which is what we call modernity andso looks extremely significant.
And China was in a dark tunnelduring that time period.

(36:52):
Part of it was the predationsof the European imperialists.
Most of it was the predations by thecommunist regime and Mao's rule itself.
Warlord andother episodes that you know well.
So there's this 180 year tunnel whichlooms very large in discussions of
modern history that often beginfrom the French Revolution, but

(37:15):
don't loom as large inthe fullness of Chinese history.
And so in many ways,China is driving, aspiring,
driving to reclaim a placethat it had long occupied.
Similar story for India and
how central India was throughmost of recorded history.

(37:38):
So much of what we think of as Chinesecivilization is actually adapted
from India.
India, more than China,
was in some ways the center of what wecall retrospectively the Silk Road.
And so seeing that deeper history andappreciating that deeper history
can allow you to then talk about thecurrent rise of China which has happened.

(38:03):
It's been a remarkable story, one ofthe most, perhaps the most remarkable
stories of our lifetimes,what the Chinese people have achieved.
But placing it in that longercontext can be helpful.
No, there are differences,there are ruptures.
Not everything is continuousthrough five millennia like Chinese

(38:26):
communist propaganda might indicate.
We understand that.
We know that it's not the same throughfive millennia or three millennia or
two millennia,whatever frame time period you prefer.
We know there are changes andruptures still,

(38:47):
unprecedented is an award youhave to give out very sparingly.
That goes for populism.
The US has one of the richest stories ofpopulism of any country on the planet.
Multiple veins of populism.
Andrew Jackson's presidency.

(39:08):
A biography of Andrew Jackson readslike a biography of current politics
today in America.
Again with all the differences thatmust be taken into account as well.
Prairie populism, which was partof my training as an undergraduate
with Christopher Lasch atthe University of Rochester.
Another really rich veinof American populism.

(39:31):
Pat Buchanan, a more recenta version of American populism.
The former speechwriter for Richard Nixon.
And what could go on?
Does that mean Trump isthe same as all of this?
No, of course not.
Does that mean that things that we'reexperiencing today are unprecedented?
Well, some might be, butthe burden on you to show something's

(39:54):
unprecedented is to masterthat previous history and
then to demonstrate that it trulyis unprecedented despite that.
Previous history.
So it's a bit of a burden tohave to go into the history in
order to analyze phenomena today.
It definitely is work,it's a responsibility, but

(40:15):
I think it's much richer,more rewarding and deeper appreciation for
the things that are different,truly different.
Genuinely a rupture, genuinely a point ofdeparture because you know the history.
I like that you bring up the idea oflooking at things retrospectively.

(40:40):
And some people write prospectively.

>> Dan Wang (40:44):
So when I bring up your biography of Stalin, I think in popular
parlance it is often comparedto another giant biography.
Robert Caro writing aboutRobert Moses in the Power Broker.
Now power is right there in his title.
Power is something that youthink about extensively.

(41:06):
I have read the Power Broker andhave felt pretty
frustrated by some of thesetechniques of interviews.
No matter how extensive narrative,no matter how monumental,
to describe something thathappened in the past that I

(41:27):
think doesn't necessarily read sowell today.
About Robert Moses, how do you thinkabout how your approach might be
different from what is a more journalisticbook about power by Robert Carroll?

Anybody who wants to put me in the same sentence with
Robert Caro.
Like me.
Go right ahead, Dan, I'll take that.
And I appreciate that deeply.
His Master of the Senateabout Lyndon Johnson,
I would put on the same level as thePower Broker, the Robert Moses biography.
He's still finishing the multivolume Lyndon Johnson biography,

(42:06):
but Master of the Senate is oneof my all time great favorites.
And so, yeah, Robert Carroll.
So what's the proposition thatCarol is putting in front of us or
that I'd like to imagine thatI'm putting in front of us?

(42:26):
It is how power is accumulated,how power is exercised,
and what are the consequencesof the exercise of power.
And those consequences are manifold,of people who have
no idea who the person mightbe that you're writing about.

(42:48):
And yetthat person has tremendous effects,
multi-manifold, multivariouseffects on their lives.
Coffee growers in South Americadon't know any of these
people wearing redsuspenders in London and
having a drink after work in a Londonpub with their red suspenders and

(43:14):
their green tweed jacketshanging off the chair.
But those red suspended London people,
the consequences of their powerare felt throughout the entire
coffee-growing region of anySouth American country that grows coffee.
So the consequences of power,first the accumulation,

(43:38):
which is a story in itself,then the exercise of it,
but also it's incumbent upon usto get to the consequences of it.
Those consequences can be perverse andunintended.
Perverse and unintended consequencesis sometimes a synonym for history,
at least as I understand it.
But so, Caro, that's the proposition.

(44:00):
Accumulation, exercise,consequences of power.
And for me, it's the same propositionarrived at independently.
And many people predatethe Robert Moses book and
Caro's work andanything that I might have written.
This is long standing.
You can argue way back.

(44:21):
You can take the ancient Chinese classics,
you can take the ancient Greek classics,Egypt, Rome.
It's a similar proposition,whether they're trying to validate,
to justify, rationalize the power, orthey're trying to critique the power.
Power and institutions.
Okay, so how do you go about doing that?

(44:45):
How does one dig into, analyze, explain,
narrate the accumulation, exercise,and consequences of power?
So the way I try to do it,I'll speak solely for myself.
But I didn't invent this.

(45:06):
I'm just a practitioner of it.
I derived it from many people.
We could discuss many dead Machiavelli,
Tocqueville, some I met in person,Foucault,
others I wish I had met in person,Nietzsche.

(45:28):
The way I try to do it is I try tocompose an analytical narrative.
An analytical narrativeis all about the detail.
But the detail is related tothe biggest possible structures and
stories and consequences.
So you use those details,

(45:48):
you dive really deep into the detailsto reveal the biggest possible picture.
And sometimes the smallest detailgives you the widest horizon.
And if you can bring the readeralong through narrative,
you can have the analysisbuilt into the narrative.

(46:08):
And the small andthe big come together to teach you not
just one damn thing after another,but also the why and
the how andthe with the what consequences.
So that method of analyticalnarrative is hard.
It's not easy because you can sometimesoverwhelm the reader with details.

(46:33):
You know too much.
You've spent too much time doing research.
The narrative is too long.
The reader gets lost in the thicketsthat you worship because it's work
that you did, it's discoveries that youmade, it's documents that you read.
But you have to always keep inmind the reader, the audience.

(46:55):
Everything is about audience,
whether you're speaking ona podcast with Dan Wang.
Welcome to Hoover.
We're thrilled that you came here.
Or you're in a lecture hall with students,
high school students,master's students, general public,

(47:16):
general public that works inprofessions like journalism.
Or read a lot of journalism versus generalpublic that maybe works on a farm or
works in a factory, like my father did.
So it's always about the audience.

(47:36):
What does your audience think already, and
what would you like them to thinkif they're gonna take the time and
put in the hard work of engagingwith what you're doing.
And so when you combine what you know anddo with what the audience might need or
how they might receive it, that'swhen you begin this iterative process

(47:59):
of developing what I'm callingthis it's analytical narrative.
It's a show rather than a tell.
It's not hitting people over the head.
You don't get up on a sandbox in thefreedom of the United States, sitting in
an office in the Hoover Tower at StanfordUniversity condemning communism as evil.

(48:22):
Well, yeah, of course it's evil, butwho cares that you think it's evil?
Your voice is insignificant because howmany millions of people who perished or
witnessed it can tell you better.
And so forget about the soapbox, but howabout showing what evil meant in practice?

(48:44):
How about showing wherethe evil came from?
How about showing the little people, theordinary people who were perpetrators of
this evil on their neighbors andon themselves?
How about showing what happenedas a result of their action?
In other words,showing rather than telling.
Not soapbox, but immersion, invitation.

(49:08):
Bringing people into that world.
When you read a great novel,
it transports you to that place,that time,
that family, those characters,their world.
It's another world that you enter.
And so this is what you have to doin writing an analytical narrative.

(49:32):
You have to invite people into thisworld that you're going to show
how it worked and what that means andwhat the consequences of it were,
and you're going to dothat in an inviting way so
that you not just invite them in,but you keep them there.
They stay with you, andmaybe they come back again.

(49:54):
And maybe if your book is read not justfive years after it's published or
10 years or 20 years, but50 years after it's published,
maybe you've achieved somethingbecause people that are born
after you may perish are still invited and
kept in that world that you'vehelped them understand.

(50:19):
So this analytical narrative approach.
I think Carl is extremely goodat this analytical narrative,
and I'd like to imagine thatI'm a practitioner of that and
struggling to get better becauseit's just really important
to be able to invite people in,teach them something, and

(50:42):
have them be able to appreciate what itis that you spent all that time doing.

>> Dan Wang (50:49):
Steve, thank you for the welcome to the Hoover Institution.
I'm thrilled to jointhe Hoover History Lab.
You took me out of the Yale Law School,and I think I have found
the only people who are morefastidious about footnotes and
the lawyers must bethe historians like you, right?

(51:12):
So it is good to besurrounded by historians.
One of the things I really loveabout the field of history is
that I feel that historiansare some of the people who still
have an ethic in universitiesof writing for the public,
of writing for trade press,rather than only Academic press,

(51:36):
in trade press anda bookstore like Barnes and Noble,
it is pretty rare to come acrossa book by a political scientist,
by an anthropologist,even by an economist.
But there is still this ethicof writing for the public.
Now I feel like a lot of academicdepartments have somewhat retreated into

(52:00):
writing for a narrow specialist audienceinstead of writing much more broadly.
But, certainly there is that trendalso in history departments.
Do you feel that there is goingto be this ethic of writing for
the popular audience and what does thatdo to the field of history that so
many people, that somany historians really try to do that?

Yeah, I think this is a really important question for all of us.
I would put it this way.
All audiences matter.
Your narrow specialist audience matters,
your wider public audience matters,and everything in between.

(52:46):
If you can reach them simultaneously,that's a high bar to have jumped over.
If you can reach them simultaneously,but only partly, that's still good.
Although you need to get better.
Writing for a wide audience andwriting for
a specialist audience canbe the same proposition.

(53:09):
I hope that specialistsappreciate my work and
I hope that people who don'twork in universities or
haven't been there since graduation,
I hope that they can alsoappreciate what I do.
I don't differentiate so much.

(53:29):
I'm going for this, I'm going for that.
I want them all in there and
I want people of every politicalpersuasion to be reading my work.
You started off with the sharp elbow andopinionated.
I think only people on the receivingend who perceive that I am,
that my work potentiallyundermines a certain socialist or

(53:53):
leftist utopia might feel thatI'm a little bit sharp elbowed.
But again, my goal is empatheticallyto understand who they were and
to show what they did andwhat the consequences were.
The demand for history is enormous.

(54:15):
It's almost unlimited.
When I go into offices,I'll go to D.C. in the Pentagon,
I'll go into the intelligence apparatus.
I don't work for the government,I don't have a security clearance.
I get invited occasionallyto meet with them.
I'll go to the State Department,I'll go to the White House.

(54:37):
And all the questions are about,geez, what happened last time?
Or how did we handlethis the previous time?
Are there any lessons we can pick upfrom the last time this happened?
Or did somebody get this right before andcan we copy or adapt what they did?

(54:58):
The same happens when Iget into the communities,
the rooms with business people andinvestors.
All business, all investingis an analysis of the trends,
the performance up to the momentthat you're talking with them.
Everything the Federal Reserve does isto study how prices have worked and

(55:20):
how their policy interventions havehad the consequences that they've had.
Everybody in every walk of life, medicine.
The first thing they ask you, Dan,when you're talking to the doctor,
is to go through your medical history,sometimes back through your grandparents.
Medicine, investment,

(55:42):
diplomacy, it's all history.
Everybody wants to know the historybecause they want to apply
it to the challenges thatthey have in front of them,
the use of history applied tocontemporary policy and other challenges.
That's why we foundedthe Hoover History Lab that you're now.
A member of.

(56:04):
And so the demand forhistory is unlimited.
You see this in the book sales.
History books and history books,sibling biographies,
are some of the best selling, I mean,sort of after self help and cookbooks.

>> Dan Wang (56:20):
Big genre is romantasy now, Steve.
So maybe that's somethingthat you can get into too.

I wish I could write at that level for that size audience.
But anyway, my point beingis that the demand is there.
So it's on us to supply, to deliver,
to meet that demand in all ways we can.
There are two big seasonsin the book trade,

(56:47):
Christmas and Father's Day.
Everything else is noise butChristmas and Father's Day.
So fall books published forChristmas season and
spring books published for Father's Day.
And history and biographyare obviously dominant genre there.

(57:09):
Not only, but dominant genre,including history of science and tech and
history of innovation and biographies ofinnovators or scientists or entrepreneurs.
So we don't have a problem of tryingto find an audience somewhere.
The audience is there.
Our challenge is meetingthat audience where it is.

(57:32):
We did that better sometimes in the past.
More writers of sort of Cairostyle achievement were in history
departments in the pastpotentially than they are today.
A lot of your best selling historiansdon't have an academic affiliation.
You could argue that that's notaccidental, that there's something that

(57:56):
emancipates them or frees them up to writefor a larger audience outside the academy.
That's a debate that we could have.
I think there's something to that,although we don't want to oversimplify.
But again, I'm okay with peoplewriting for specialists too.
I think that's a worthy audience.
I think persuading them orat least engaging with them if you can't

(58:20):
persuade them is a really importanttask of us in the academy.
What I don't like is peoplewho dismiss popular history,
who dismiss the general public orthe wide audience who
say you've cheapened history bybeing successful with the public.

(58:42):
I don't like people who saythat specialists who write for
specialists and are very goodare wasting everybody's time.
I don't like that either.
And I especially don'tlike condemnation of
achieving an audience forthe work that you do.
Popularization is just another word forhaving done a good job,

(59:07):
that a lot of people are readingwhat you're writing now.
We have choices.
There are many different optionsin books that people can read.
Whether you go to the library, as mymother used to take me when I was growing
up, the public library had a library card,or you go on the Internet,

(59:29):
you scroll on your phone,you go to Amazon, you go to Barnes and
Noble, you belong to a book group,virtual or in person.
You have unlimited options.
And in my view, it's all good.
But can I break in to those venues?
Can I become an option for those people?

(59:52):
Can I offer them somethingthat they can take away,
that's valuable with allthe other choices and options?
In other words, can I participatein the marketplace of ideas?
Can I compete in the marketplace of ideas?
Can I succeed in the marketplace of ideas?

(01:00:13):
Can I justify taking the attentionof people with all of these options?
Are they going to feel thatthey wasted their time, or
are they going to feel deeplysatisfied and want more?
That is incumbent on us, whether we're inthe academy, not in the academy, whether

(01:00:35):
we imagine, fantasize that we're goingto get this audience or that audience.
And the proof of the pudding,as they say, is in the eating.
If people are reading your work,even to condemn it,
that's a whole lot betterthan if you're being ignored.
If you're on the syllabi of PhDseminars or undergraduate courses,

(01:00:58):
if you're in the conversation onthe blogs, in the big blogosphere,
if you're in the substack, if peopleare reading you even to dismiss, condemn,
overturn, revise what you're saying,you've achieved something,
you're part of the conversation,you're helping people get to a better

(01:01:18):
understanding, even if it's a rejectionof what you're trying to say.
They are encountering you.
The highest achievement is when theyhave no choice but to take you into
account when you're on the PhD syllabus,of those people who despise your work,
of those people who are threatened byyour work, of those people for whom,

(01:01:42):
if you're right, they're wrong,if you're on their PhD syllabus,
if you're inside their substack,if they must, if they must encounter you,
if they must take you seriously,you've achieved something.

>> Dan Wang (01:01:59):
The goal of the Hoover History Lab is to use history to inform
public policy.
That's one of the severalthings that we do here.
And I wonder, how do we think aboutwhat is valid historical reasoning?
Now, one of these tools thatare quite commonly reached for

(01:02:20):
by a certain class of commentatorsis that that any attempt to be
conciliatory smells likethe munich Agreement of 1938.
Yes, that is just a normalthing that people reach to,
to accuse someone of being appeasement.
How do we ever weigh anyof these analogies and say.
And ask whether the metaphorapplies to the problem.

>> Stephen Kotkin (01:02:44):
Yes, Dan, that's a deep one too.
So junk history is the biggestproblem we face in history.
You often hear the complaint thatpeople are ignorant of history.
You hear that complaint sometimesfrom history professors, and
you want to take that mirror andhold it up and say,

(01:03:06):
geez, how could it be thatpeople are ignorant of history?
Who's trying to teach them andwho's failing to teach them history?
Who's failing to attract them to historyand engagement with history, right?
So anybody who complains that peopleare ignorant of history, they need to look
in the mirror and then decide whatthey're going to do about that.

(01:03:27):
People who are ignorantof history are teachable.
You have to do it well.
Again you have to attract theirattention away from their other options.
You have to compete andsucceed in the marketplace of ideas.
I'm good with that.
And I'm okay with ignorance of historybecause, as I say, they're teachable.
A bigger problem we face is junk history.

(01:03:49):
People who think they know something,people who use analogies.
People have a superficialunderstanding of the past, and
they're righteous about thatunderstanding and its application.
So every time you go intoa diplomatic conversation and
you're not maximalist in your demands,it's Munich, it's 1938.

(01:04:15):
It's the Munich Pact, it's Chamberlain and
Daladier giving away the store toHitler for nothing, or it's Cold War,
or it's fill in the blank,whichever analogy you prefer.
And so that's a much bigger problem,at least for me,
to face the abuse of history,cutting off conversation by

(01:04:40):
referring to historical examples andgetting away.
With it,because the people you're talking.
To don't know the history either.
And so you are so self assuredin your use of the analogy, you,
you're bluffing your way through.
Let's just take the Munich Pact fora second.
Just for fun, which I wrote aboutin Stalin Volume 2, I spent a lot

(01:05:04):
of time revisiting the Munich Pact andwhat happened and why in Stalin's role.
We won't give all the details,but just people can understand.
So Chamberlain was the initiator; hewas the Prime Minister of Britain.
His policy was called appeasement,which was a positive,

(01:05:27):
not a pejorative term inits usage back in that day.
And it meant that you would try to findan understanding with the other side,
short of maximalism.
So there was a deal to be had and
the issue was to find where that deal was,to avoid war.
Because war is always bad,even when you win.

(01:05:52):
Lives are lost, property,assets are destroyed.
Healing takes a long time.
So avoid war, do a deal.
Appeasement.
And it had many motivationsin the case of Chamberlain.
Preserve the Empire, preserve Britishstanding in the world, globally.

(01:06:14):
Don't get into a war with Germany.
It had been very costly, the war just onegeneration earlier, the First World War.
So avoid a repeat of this.
And so he goes to Munich, Mussolini.
Is there as the dishonestbroker presiding.
It's in the Fuhrer House,which still stands to this day in Munich.

(01:06:37):
I was there not that long ago.
And the Czechoslovaks,whose fate was being decided by Hitler,
Mussolini, Chamberlain andthe French Prime Minister Daladier
didn't invite the Czechoslovaksinto the main room.
They were in an anteroom,not part of the conversation.

(01:06:59):
Their fate was decided without them,for them.
And soit received tremendous condemnation.
Part of it in real time and.
Most of it retrospectively ashaving been a really bad deal
to give Hitler the Sudetenland,
the predominantly German speakingregion of Czechoslovakia,

(01:07:25):
for free without compensationafter Hitler had stirred up
from outside Czechoslovak borders,sabotage and
other acts to destabilizethe Czechoslovak State.
He got the Koda Works,which was the number one
Central European defenseindustrial factory complex.

(01:07:49):
He got it for nothing.
There was no compensation paid.
Many people became refugees.
He promised that that was all he wanted.
And then, of course, he then forcibly tookthe rest of Czechoslovakia the next year.
And on it went.
And then Poland and World War II.
So people look at Chaebol and they.
Say, what a fool.
What was he thinking?

(01:08:10):
That he could appease Hitler and giveHitler something, make concessions, and
that Hitler would swallow that andbe satisfied and that would be it.
And so, yes,that's how we understand the Munich Pact,
which is invoked every time someone wantsto make concessions, just like you said.
So it's very interesting.

(01:08:30):
You have these letters fromChamberlain to his sisters in
real time talking about what he should do.
He's sort of confiding in his sisters,the Prime Minister.
These are confidential,personal letters, but they've survived.
And his critics,the critics of Chamberlain are saying,
you just have to do a deal with Stalin.

(01:08:53):
And if you do a deal with Stalin together,you, England, right, the UK and
the Soviet Union together canfight against Germany and win.
And the Czechoslovaks will fight and
maybe the French will join this in, whydon't you just do the deal with Stalin?
First of all, Stalin was in the processof murdering huge numbers of loyalists.

(01:09:17):
Around a million people were executed ordied in torture in 1937 and
38, some of it duringthe Munich Pact negotiations.
It wasn't clear that you could do a dealwith Stalin and he would uphold his word.
The people who mock Chamberlain fordoing a deal with Hitler,
as if Hitler would keep his word,are advocating doing a deal with Stalin,

(01:09:39):
as if Stalin had more trustworthiness andcredibility than Hitler.
So that was one problem.
But there was even a deeper problem.
Chamberlain wrote to his sister andhe said, you know,
if I do the deal with Stalin and we go to.
War against Germany and we win, how.
Do I get the Communistsout of Central Europe?

(01:10:06):
We call that the Cold War.
That was many decades of peoplebehind the Iron Curtain.
That was exactly right.
You see, because Churchill did the deal.
With Stalin andthey won the war against Germany.
And then Churchill couldn'tget the communists out of

(01:10:27):
Central Europe, could he?
They were there long after he perished.
Churchill, he did what Chamberlain'scritics said Chamberlain should have done,
and it worked in defeatingHitler at unbelievable cost,
almost unfathomable cost.
And then the communists were inoccupation of Central Europe and

(01:10:49):
through all sorts of other processes inthe fullness of time, that came undone.
That's a story for another day.
I've written quite a lot about that.
But my point being is not torehabilitate Chamberlain and
say that we got him wrong,that he really was a genius and
that the critics of him were wrong.

(01:11:11):
No, my point is just that thingsare complicated and Chamberlain,
better than some of his critics understoodhow fraught the choices were and
maybe didn't trust Hitler as muchas people think he trusted Hitler.
He was desperate for the deal towork because the other deal also had

(01:11:31):
downsides andbig problems that he recognized.
So it was a choice of two evils andhe chose one evil and.
It doesn't look good in the fullness.
Of time and Churchill chose the otherevil and it looks much better in
the fullness of time except if youare on the receiving end of that.
The consequences of powerduring all of those decades and

(01:11:55):
Hungary in 56 andthe Prague Spring in 68 and etc, and
they called it an Iron Curtain fora reason.
So again, invoking Munich to criticizeany possible diplomatic concessions.
Okay, if you want to do that.
But then let's talk aboutthe Munich story in its full

(01:12:18):
depth all the way around,not a one sided view of Munich.
And then let's see if youwant to use that analogy for
something that you're criticizing today.
Maybe you still do, or maybe you'regoing to think, you know what,
it's more complicated.
Maybe the application ofthe Munich analogy doesn't work.
Maybe it does work, ormaybe it doesn't work.

(01:12:40):
We see not just commentators, but
policymakers making thesehistorical analogies.
There's a great book on the Vietnam Warof abusing historical analogies.
I have it right behind me on the shelf.
It's just fabulous.
Showing the policymakersapplying junk history to

(01:13:02):
justify American involvementin the Vietnam War.

>> Dan Wang (01:13:06):
Which book is that?

This is that book.
Analogies at War.

>> Dan Wang (01:13:12):
Analogies at War by Yuen Foong Khong.

And you can see the subtitle.

>> Dan Wang (01:13:20):
Korea Munich, Dien Bien Phu and the Vietnam decisions of 1965.

So he exposes the junk history that was extremely consequential
for 55,000Americans who perished there.
And for untold numbers, probably sevenfigures of Vietnamese who perished there,
as well as South Koreans who fought onthe side of Americans and Australians.

(01:13:50):
And we could go on.
And so sometimes junk historycan be extremely consequential.
Now there's an argumentabout whether the analogies,
the junk history is used as motivation or
whether it's used as postfacto justification rationale.

(01:14:10):
In other words,it maybe didn't motivate them,
it was just how they were tryingto explain it post facto.
And that's an importantempirical question.
My point only is that junk historyis a danger even more than
ignorance of history.
And good history is just hard to do.
And people disagree about it.
And that disagreement is fruitful.

(01:14:32):
There's no such thing as one truth,one history.
Rifle the past and come up withthe consensus and we're all in agreement.
But there's preponderance of evidence.
There's better history.
There's critical use of sources,there's more sources.
There's ways in which yourhistory can be better,

(01:14:55):
even if you can never resolve forall time an argument
with people becausethe sources are ambiguous or
because disagreements overinterpretation are valid.
Nonetheless, junk history,Dan, we fight against

(01:15:16):
it hammer and tongs andwe lose most of the time.

>> Dan Wang (01:15:21):
Junk history is a big problem.
Right now in the present moment,
we on the Internet are seeing more andmore of what the Kids call slop,
which is AI generated nonsense thatare being read by all sorts of people.
How is AI affectinghistory practice today?

Not enough.
Not nearly enough.
So we can't be afraid of inventions,
of breakthroughs of technology.
It can be our friend.
It doesn't have to be our enemy.

(01:16:06):
It doesn't have to bepredominantly a threat.
People say to me,do you allow students to use AI?
And I say, well, what makes you thinkI could prevent them from using it?
You think I could prevent them?
So of course they're going to use it, and
they should use it because it'san important tool that's available to them

(01:16:29):
that wasn't availablewhen I was a student.
And so all I ask is that theydivulge that they used it,
tell me how they used it, and
then I'll discuss the materialwith them orally.

(01:16:50):
Because if they've used it in a way not toengage the material, to avoid hard work,
they've cheated, not me as the teacher,they've cheated themselves.
They've cheated themselves outof an education at these prices.
And so we want to make sure thatthey're using it in ways that

(01:17:14):
enhance their education,enhance their skill set,
enhance their capabilities going forward,not just now.
So I'm good with students using AI.
I just want them to use itin ways that benefit them in
intellectual development andskill set, as I call it.

(01:17:39):
So now you're talking about slop.
Back in the day,slop was mimeograph newsletters
in five carbon copies sentto post office boxes and
pass it on, or it was radio,where someone was ranting and
raving on the radio andpeople were amused even if

(01:18:03):
they couldn't follow the line of thought.
To the extent there was a line of thought,slop has always been there.
Radio made it a massiveform of communication.
The carbon copy typewriter with the carbonpaper to make the five copies and

(01:18:26):
distribute them was a more difficultdistribution mechanism than radio.
And radio, of course, is still with us.
And now we have the internet.
And so you have to ask yourselfnot why slop is being produced,
but why it's being consumed.

(01:18:48):
Who's interested in why?
Supply of slop is not interesting to me.
Demand for slop.
That's a really interesting question.
Demand for conspiracy theories,demand for junk history.
Demand for we could go on andwe could go on and
you know better than I do what'scoursing through all those

(01:19:13):
amazing electronic devicesthat we're privileged to have.
I want to understand the demand and
I want to get myself in to meetthat demand, but not with slop.
With instead evidence based,verified information and

(01:19:33):
knowledge that's also interestingto read and talk about.
In other words, it doesn't have to be dry,it doesn't have to be medicine,
it doesn't have to bethe opposite of slop.
It can read like romance andfantasy, it can read like a novel,

(01:19:54):
it can read like some of the stream ofconsciousness that you refer to as slope.
Where it's hard to make ends meet.
You don't know where it begins and whereit ends because it doesn't begin and end.
It's just roiling.
So I'm okay, I need to get in there.
I need to reach that audience too.

(01:20:15):
I need somehow to access those people.
I need to understand why theyare consuming that slop and
I need to figure out how to compete withthat and get them to consume other things.
The answer is never to prohibit.
It's never to try to repress, suppress,
to censor,because that doesn't work in practice.

(01:20:38):
Even if there are harms fromfailing to repress certain things,
mental health harms teenage girls.
One could go on.
Even if there are harms,it's very hard to successfully suppress.
It's much better to provide the positive,the alternative, but

(01:21:00):
to provide it in ways that are attractiveand to provide it where people are.
You're not a Venus flytrap whereeverybody's going to come to you because
you're up in some tower at Stanford.
You got to go out towhere they all are and
you got to meet them in the midstof that slop potentially.

(01:21:21):
And it has to turn upsomehow on their feed or
on the algorithm on the scrolling,and it has to keep them
because they can go to otherthings that are being fed to them.
So I understand people are nothappy pro holocaust podcasts

(01:21:42):
that gain hundreds of thousands,maybe millions of views.
I understand that thatstuff is reprehensible.
That stuff makes a lot of people upset,even people who are not
directly affected by the subjectmatter that's under discussion.

(01:22:03):
Sometimes it's uncomfortable.
Free speech freedom canbe very uncomfortable.
It can even cause harm to people,sometimes unintentional and
sometimes actually intentional.
So how do you remain a free andopen society and assimilate AI?

(01:22:24):
That's the challenge in front of Les.
My generation, we caused enough grief.
We failed at enough things.
Us baby boomers,we have a lot to answer for.
We're not going to fix this.
Your generation,the generation behind you,

(01:22:45):
the generation behind that,
it's going to be up to you guysto assimilate the slop and
other phenomena whileremaining a free society.
There's nothing morevaluable than freedom, and
there's nothing more difficultthan keeping freedom.

(01:23:06):
There are so many temptations, seductions,
to curtail freedom inthe name of some injustice or
in the name of some emergency orin the name of some harm that's going on.
Until you study unfreedom,
you don't always appreciate whatcurtailing freedom Involves.

(01:23:27):
It looks like you're solving one problem,but you're getting perverse and
unintended consequences.
You never solve the problemyou think you're solving, and
you introduce a whole lot more problems,you know?
Stalin spent his adult life in theunderground, the political underground.
He got exposed.
He was a student of great achievement.

(01:23:51):
Got into the seminary on merit.
Teacher's pet, sang in the choir.
Spectacular student, really smart.
Gonna be a monk priest at the end of thefive year course of study at the seminary.
Was the highest educationalinstitution in Tbilisi,
which was the capital of Georgia, ImperialRussian Georgia, where he was born.

(01:24:13):
In a small town not faraway from the capital,
he got exposed to subversiveliterature that was illegal.
The censors were trying to suppress it,and they failed.
It circulated anyway.
Eddy got exposed to injusticeat the marketplace,

(01:24:34):
in factory life, up anddown the streets of the city of Tbilisi.
The injustices were real,they are not invented.
Tsarist Russia was an unjust place andmany people suffered unjustly.
And he witnessed this.
And he dedicated his lifeto fighting injustice.

(01:24:58):
And he gave up the priesthood.
He never had a job, except he wasa meteorologist at a weather station for
a few months when he was a teenager,that was it.
Otherwise he was no money,no profession, no prospects,

(01:25:19):
Exile in Siberia, prison,escape from exile or prison,
back to exile in prison, surveillance,being monitored by the police,
being harassed by the police,how many countless arrests.
That was his life for 20 years,

(01:25:40):
from the late seminaryperiod up through the 1917
revolutionary period in Bolshevik coup.
A penury, no prospects.
And he did that because he wasdedicated to fighting injustice.

(01:26:03):
You don't give up everything andanything, have no money,
no life prospects, live in Siberian exile,
go to prison again and again forpower out of cynicism.
That's not a life you choose easily.
And it's the life he chose.
He wasn't the only one.

(01:26:25):
Many young people chose that life.
But that was his 20s and his 30s.
He then gets into power throughcomplicated circumstances that we're going
to skip here, butobviously I've written about.
And in fighting injustice andovercoming injustice,
he helps create the most unjustsystem that's ever existed.

(01:26:53):
And injustice in Stalinist Soviet Unionis worse than even
the incredible injustice inthe Romanov dynasty imperial Russia.
This is perverse andunintended consequences.
That's why I say perverse and unintendedconsequences is sometimes for me,
a synonym of history.

(01:27:14):
So you think you're fighting one thing,and
you may actually be creatingsomething worse in the process.
However sincere you might be,however dedicated,
however much suffering you endure.
Because causality is not linear,because intentions are insufficient,

(01:27:36):
because systems behave in complicated andsometimes unpredictable ways,
because other people have agency,not just you.
And I could go on.
So this is the richness of history.
And so when you get this slop,
now that's more prevalent in termsof being able to access it and

(01:27:57):
see it than it was back in my daybecause of the electronic brake paper.
Breakthroughs.
And now because of AI,you have to be careful.
Retention of freedom is the mostimportant way that you're going to
manage this technological breakthrough.
And you need to bend it your generation,you need to bend it into positive use

(01:28:21):
cases, knowing full well that there aregoing to be negative consequences to it.
Additionally, the genie's notgoing back in the bottle.
You're not going to be able to control it.
There are going to benegative consequences.
Are there going to bepositive consequences?
And how can we leverage thosepositive consequences for

(01:28:43):
immense positive effects foryour generation and the ones behind you?
I think that's a fabulous.
Such an enticing proposition.
I'd love to be your age again.
I'd love that to be what'sin front of me right now.
My whole life unfold inthe pursuit of making that happen.

(01:29:05):
But I want to be careful Idon't end up like Stalin.
Perverse and
unintended consequences and a worseoutcome than what I'm fighting against.

>> Dan Wang (01:29:18):
Steve, we have to reach the audiences where they are,
get into the algorithms.
We're not going to break out intoa TikTok dance right at this moment.

No. >> Dan Wang
the next episode whereyou talk about freedom.
The most difficult thing to preserve.
I can't agree more.
After spending quite a few yearsliving in a modern communist country,
what I missed the most was.
Was a sense of pluralism.

(01:29:49):
Yes.

>> Dan Wang (01:29:50):
And that is, I think, the most important thing in America.
That is the most important attributein America that I crave and
that I want to preserve.
But we're recording nowin middle of May 2025.
There has been some economicchaos triggered by tariffs,

(01:30:11):
some curtailment of civil liberties.
I'd be remiss if I didn't ask, Hugh,
what is the historical momentthat you're reaching for
beyond Andrew Jackson to think aboutthe second Trump administration Right now.

We have to be careful not to imagine that two
thumbs which are hard at work almost 24,
7, are creating longterm enduring effects or
even short term enduring effects.

(01:30:50):
Many things that are coming from a pairof thumbs are not happening in reality.
Many things which people sayare happening are not happening.
There are approximately 58Senate confirmed positions so
far, more than three months intothe new Trump administration.

(01:31:13):
There are 5,500 political appointments and
a large number of themrequire Senate confirmation.
And so far we have about 58at last count when I looked,
we don't have a largefunctioning administration.
It looks like a lot is happening becausethere's just a lot of noise there's a lot

(01:31:34):
of drama, there's a lot of melodrama.
There are lives affected.
There are a million foreignstudents in the United States.
A million.
They're here for a reason.
They perceive correctly opportunity here.
And they're tremendous.
And we're lucky that they come here.
Of that million, approximately1400 had their visas revoked,

(01:31:59):
in some cases even green cards.
1400 people affected.
Every one of those is a life.
Every one of those is a person.
Every one of those is a story andin some cases a tragedy.
That's 1400 out of a million.
You can do the math of that.
1400.

(01:32:19):
A majority were reinstated.
So the thumbs andwhat's happening don't always fully align.
I'm not saying it's inconsequential.
I'm not saying that lives aren't affected,they are.
I'm just saying we need perspectiveon what's happening and

(01:32:39):
especially what's not happening.
I doubt that Trump will reach thedeportation levels achieved under Obama.
I seriously doubt he hasthe competence capabilities,
staff follow through to reach Obama leveldeportations from the United States.

(01:33:02):
We'll see.
And also there are worthy debatesabout the nature of immigration,
who should be allowed in,who should not be allowed in, etc.
Those debates are not one sided.
I'm not taking a side in those debates.
I'm just saying that they'reworthy debates in a democracy.

(01:33:24):
Immigration policy has been a failure.
It's been a multigenerational failure,and it's been a multi sided,
bipartisan failure.
And I would love to seea solution rather than a failure.
But if you want to talk about the currentmoment, Dan, it's a reckoning,
it's a revelation.

(01:33:45):
Trump intentionally andunintentionally is revealing a lot
of stuff that was happening thatwas either under the radar or
barely studied orignored even if people knew about it.
He's showing that manythings were not working,
many processes needed to change,many things that we kept saying,

(01:34:08):
we need to keep this, we need to keepthat had already become moribund.
And so I perceive the currentmoment as a colossal opportunity.
It's a colossal opportunity to remakewhere we're going to be and need to be.
We need a new equilibrium domestically andinternationally.

(01:34:31):
We need a rebalancing in America'srole in the world and relationships.
We need a rebalancing here at home.
We need a revival of our institutions.
We need a revival of the storythat we tell ourselves and
our children and our grandchildren.
This is not the way I would have done ithad I been asked, how should we rebalance?

(01:34:57):
How should we revitalize?
How should we bring aboutthis new equilibrium?
But it's on us to seize this moment,to use our agency as citizens,
as green card holders,as students on visas,
as foreign allies andpartners and friends.

(01:35:18):
To seize this moment collectively,to rebalance, remake,
get us all to a better place.
The beauty of citizenship is thatagency where we began the conversation.
The structures are in flux.
Things are in motion.
The future is not determined.
President Trump is in his second term andalready a lame duck.

(01:35:40):
He cannot rule again,let alone what age he might be.
Trumpism without Trump hasbeen a big question mark.
All the people who've tried tobe Trump at local levels or
even a national level, have not succeededthe way Trump has in capturing.

(01:36:02):
Imagination and attention or office.
We'll see how enduring some ofthe phenomenon prove to be.
They might be enduring,they might not be enduring, but
it's a moment of opportunity.
Seize it, shape it,
move it in a direction that's positivein ways that you want to see.

(01:36:25):
Things were failing not across the board,but in some cases now they're
failing worse in some cases, butthey're being revealed more.
That's a skill.
Trump is one of the masters of socialmedia in ways that's just breathtaking.
He's gotten people to believe thingsare happening that are not happening.

(01:36:48):
He's gotten people tobelieve all sorts of stuff.
Policies are being undertaken eventhough there are no people in place in
many cases.
He's great at storytelling in short formin ways that audiences are captivated.
He didn't win a majority of the vote.

(01:37:11):
He won by 1.5% more or less ofthe popular vote, but didn't get 50%.
That margin is very small.
It was largely a punishmentof the Democrats.
They deserve that punishment andthe voters administered that punishment.
And the voters will punish again becausevoters can't always get what they want,

(01:37:34):
but they can punish what they don'tlike and what's in front of them.
But in the meantime, Dan, how are wegoing to seize this opportunity?
What are we going to create?
What are we gonna remake?
It's not the 1940s.
There hasn't been World War II.
There haven't been 55 million killed.
We're not reinventing worldorder under the American aegis

(01:37:57):
like happened in the 40s.
A moment that was seized by a smallnumber of people at the top and
ultimately by whole societies,US society, European societies,
Japanese society, South Korean society,and we could go on.
It's remarkable the worldthat they brought into being,

(01:38:18):
the peace andprosperity comparatively to other epochs.
That's a remarkable epoch.
Not for everybody.
Cold war meant hot war.
You can ask the people in Vietnam, inAfghanistan, Congo and many other places.
Not everybody shared the peace,not everybody shared the prosperity.

(01:38:40):
But in world historical terms,it was a breakthrough.
Immense achievements, some of ittechnological breakthroughs followed
medicine, health, daily life,in addition to communications.
They could have not seized that moment.

(01:39:01):
They could have had a revenge orientedapproach to their former enemies,
like what happened afterthe First World War.
They could have had a non inclusive,moat, fortress style approach to
countries that had been eitherour enemies or been destroyed.

(01:39:24):
Instead it was opportunity at home andopportunity abroad.
All of this stuff about liberalinternational order and
rules based order that came much later.
Those Slogans never work for me.
I understand this is opportunityat home and opportunity abroad.
Widely shared wealth.

(01:39:45):
But first you have to producethe wealth and widely shared peace and
prosperity globally.
That's still in front of us.
We know how to do that.
We've done it before.
We have remarkable institutions thathave endured much worse than anything
they might be enduring now,depending on your political point of view.

(01:40:07):
And so the capability is there.
It's about will, it's about imagination,it's about creativity,
and it's about forming coalitions,multiplying our agency, amplifying.
It's about tolerance when people disagree.
It's about pluralism,it's about community.

(01:40:31):
And it's ultimately about storytellingwho we are and who we want to be,
what our aspirations are andhow we live up to them.
I'm extremely optimistic.
If we can avoid a Great Power War, and
that is the whole game ofavoiding Great Power War.

(01:40:52):
If the United States andChina do not go to war,
remember, 55 million is the lowestimate of World War II.
That number is alreadyimpossible to fathom.
And it's a multiple of World War I.
What could World War III look like?
I don't even want to contemplate that.
If we can avoid a Great Power War,which you don't avoid through appeasement,

(01:41:17):
as Churchill said, you only get war.
You choose dishonor and you get war.
We've been through that episode already.
Every other problem is manageable.
Every other problem can be addressed.
Everything can be tackled.
If you can avoid the Great Power War.
If you sink into Great Power War oryou opt proactively for

(01:41:41):
Great Power War because you thinkit's a solution, the grief,
not just the $115 trillioneconomy that's at stake, but
the grief and the generational grief.
Because the consequences ofwar are multi generation,
not just those who fight in it directly.
It's horrifying.

(01:42:01):
So I see us as figuring out howto share the planet with China,
because they're not going away andwe're not going away.
The two of us have never beensuperpowers at the same time.
When China went into that tunnel in 1800,approximately and
didn't come out till 1880,that was the rise of America.

(01:42:25):
There was no America inthe many centuries before 1800,
when China was one of, if not the mostimportant country on the planet.
We got to share the planet with China.
The issue is,what are the terms of sharing that planet?
What are the terms of sharing that planet?
And how can we achieve, not impose, but

(01:42:46):
achieve favorable terms strength butalso diplomacy.
People say peace through strength, yes,that is the only formula that works.
But it's the peace that's the key.
That's the goal.
The strength is the means.
The peace is the goal, the strength andthe diplomacy, negotiating the terms.

(01:43:07):
If the terms are Xinjiang,what's happening in Xinjiang,
I don't like those terms.
If the terms are what happened toHong Kong, I don't like those terms.
If the terms are domestic repressionin China extended abroad,
I don't like those terms.

(01:43:30):
Not everything America does is laudable.
There's a lot of hypocrisy inAmerican rhetoric and behavior.
But I live in a world in which you haveto make choices just like Chamberlain
had to make choices andChurchill had to make choices.
I want to negotiate morefavorable terms in sharing

(01:43:52):
the planet because Idon't want to go to war.
And if I can do that,then I can argue attempt manager.
Everything else,whatever the issue might be,
whatever the issue, that one side or theother side thinks is the most important.
The beauty of democracy is youcan peacefully settle your

(01:44:15):
disagreements in a countryof 340 million people.
We're going to disagree.
You and I don't agree, butwe can have a peaceful discussion.
We don't need violencejust because we disagree.
America is polarized by definition.
In 340 million people, you're goingto get far left and far right and

(01:44:38):
everything in between.
It would be shocking ifyou didn't get that.
The issue is not polarization,it's demonization.
The issue is I disagree with you and
you're a threat tothe American way of life.
That's false.
You're not a threat to the American,American way of life.
Neither am I a threat to the Americanway of life if I disagree with you or

(01:45:00):
you disagree with me.
So let's recapture thatability to use our democracy
the way it was designed, andlet's shape that future.
Use our agency.
Let's figure out those structures.
Let's figure out what's driving us,where it's driving us, and
let's see if we can tweak a little bit andpush it and

(01:45:23):
bring it in alignment with our values orour hopes or aspirations.
And let's do that whilesharing the planet.
But let's make sure we can have leverage,
strength in negotiation to determine,
to figure out the termsof that shared planet.

(01:45:44):
So that's where we are.
That's why we study history.
It's not the only thing we study.
We want to study science and technology.
We want to study everything and anything.
The toolkit has to be as big as possible.
As long as the institutions,the democracy, the humanity,
the compassion,the strategic empathy, the humility,

(01:46:08):
all the stuff that history cangive you if done properly.
Let's do that.

>> Dan Wang (01:46:14):
You're known for being a great mentor at Princeton.
In 2010,you won the Graduate Mentoring Award.
How do you think aboutbuilding the next generation?

I was really lucky.
At Princeton,I had a very significant PhD program.
We had applications from around the world,not just the US and
we had unbelievably diversetopics across Eurasia and
different methodologies anddifferent personalities.
And it was a privilege beyond wordsto be able to be part of that.

(01:46:49):
And they taught me.
However I mentored them,whatever I might have taught them,
they taught me an immense amount.
And they've all gone on to big stories,to writing big stories,
and having that impact andbeing those people, life of the mind,
people that when they were young,they wanted to be.

(01:47:12):
And you look back at that andyou think yeah, that's invaluable.
Could never put a priceon that experience.
And I had more than three dozenin my 33 years at Princeton where
I was the first Reader Advisor Co advisor.
And almost every single one ofthem has a major academic jobs.

(01:47:34):
Some of them are already full professors.
I relinquished that PhD program when Imoved here full time three years ago.
I had a summer gig for multiple years,an adjunct part time role at Hoover,
mostly to carry out my own researchhere in the rich library and

(01:47:55):
archives and also to lead a workshopon authoritarian regimes and
democratic breakdown whichPaul Gregory had founded here.
And I began to co lead that with Paul.
And so moving out here I relinquishedthat PhD program into which I put so
much of my life into and got evenmore out of and instead I turned my

(01:48:20):
attention more towards policymakers andthe business community.
I had been interacting with them allduring those 33 years at Princeton.
But I decided that the Hoover Institution,
Stanford University,Silicon Valley was a larger and

(01:48:41):
potentially better platform forme individually to
have interactions withpeople in national security,
establishment diplomacy, venture capital,
investment, broadly job creation.
And I thought maybe I can get involved inthat way and have an impact in that way.

(01:49:05):
Different from the mentoring of the PhDstudents, but nonetheless an exciting new
prospect which was a principalmotivating factor for the move out here.
My first time I came here was 1985to do research in the library and
archives when I was a PhD studentup the road there at Berkeley.

(01:49:27):
So it's been 40 years I'vebeen coming down here, but
the last three years full timesenior fellow affiliation but
we have undergraduates involvedin the Hoover History lab and
we treat them like their PhD students.
We encourage them to do original researchand to publish papers under their own name

(01:49:48):
using history, applying it tocontemporary policy challenges.
We have quite a number of themnow which is really exciting and
they're phenomenal if you challengethem and then give them space,
boundless what they can achieve.
And then we have some assistantprofessor equivalents.

(01:50:09):
We have recently minted PhDs postdocs.
We have research fellowswho have the possibility to
renew year after year after year.
We have visiting fellows, often fromindustry, sometimes from government.
We have senior fellows at my level,Neil Ferguson,

(01:50:32):
Victor Davis Hansen Frank Decatur,Barry Strauss.
I hope I'm not leaving anybody out.
We have a large number ofreally exceptional scholars and
scholar practitioners H.R. McMaster twodoors down from me, where we speak.
And so our goal is to formsome sense of community and

(01:50:54):
collective enterprise like a lab.
And some people have theirindividual projects.
Some people might collaborate witheach other inside the lab and
do collective projects.
Multi-generations are encounteringeach other, and
sometimes the older generation ismentoring the younger people, and

(01:51:14):
sometimes it's the other way around,where the students are teaching and
actually mentoring us about what we needto do or to whom we need to speak and
how it's just really exciting.
It's a kind of movable feast.
It's this flexible structure ofserendipity and collectivity,
but also individual excellence andstriving.

(01:51:39):
So the PhD program had that.
There's a bit more of a mentordisciple relationship built into it,
at least at the beginning,when they first sign on.
That's less soas they master a subject that they learn
even better than andcomplete that PhD thesis.

(01:52:01):
Here, we don't have that.
We have much highly decentralized,highly opportunity driven,
more like a venture capital enterprise.
Someone comes with an idea andyou say go for it, and
you are maybe in charge of puttingsome resources behind it or

(01:52:22):
putting some staff time behind it orfacilitating it in some way.
The VC approach to really good ideas andsome will succeed beyond dreams and
some may not succeed andthey have to pivot or adapt.
So that's what we got going on here.
And if I can play a role in that at leastfor a few years, then I feel like I've had

(01:52:44):
a second wind or a second act, as we sayin America is the land of the second act.
Even if you haven't had a first act andI did have a first act and
now I'm having a second act andthat's really pretty special.

>> Dan Wang (01:52:59):
Steve, Anna Karenina had eight acts and so
I hope this is your second act.
I hope you have many more acts to come.
The type of person I most respectare those capable of self reinvention.
To have gone to Magnitogorsk,to have decided to do
a big biography of Stalin forPenguin Press, and

(01:53:24):
then to depart from a wellensconced position at Princeton.
To have yet another act,I think is very admirable.
Now we have to leave our viewers,our listeners,
with a few bookrecommendations of history.
Obviously you're capable of giving us500 history book recommendations, but

(01:53:47):
we are going to limit you togive us only five titles and and
authors that we shouldreally be thinking about.

Thank you for that prompt, but that's a tough one.
That's the toughestassignment you've given.
Now throughout the whole discussion.
The book that had the greatestinfluence on me is
Borges Labyrinths short storiesby the great writer Borges.

(01:54:14):
I have it here on my desk.
I have the copy from my collegedays right here on my desk.
I keep it close by because I read andread and reread the Borges Labyrinths and
it taught me more about historythan any other book I've ever read.
I could go on with some fiction.

(01:54:40):
Iliias Canetti's Auto-da-Fe,
which is about a Sinologist andhis social awkwardness and
about the way scholarship is produced anddisseminated.
It's a magnificent novel.
The main character, the Sinologist,

(01:55:00):
is both incredible success andfailure at the same time.
And it inspired me about academia andhow to be an academic and
what type of ethics topursue in the profession.
Auto-da-Febby Canetti,Canetti has many great books,

(01:55:22):
but that one I really like a lot.
Tocqueville the Old Regime andthe French Revolution.
One of the greatest history,
analytical narratives ever writtenabout how the French revolutionaries
smashed everything to createsomething new, unprecedented.

(01:55:43):
And they discovered that theyhad recreated a version of
the absolutist state with the shardsof what they had smashed.
The Old Regime and the French Revolution.
It's an immortal book.
Many others would citeTocqueville's Democracy in America,
which I also venerate without limit.

(01:56:05):
This Old Regime andFrench Revolution is pinnacle for
me when it comes to analyses,analytical narratives,
what I would like to aspireto even if I can't achieve.
There aren't very many books onTocqueville's level that you would put in

(01:56:26):
that category.
Machiavelli's the Prince is probably onethat I would put in the category with
Tocqueville.
Machiavelli's Prince is oftenunderstood superficially,
Again with that junk history.
Machiavelli was a really interesting,compelling character.
So many dimensions.

(01:56:47):
The book is so very rich andsurprising and
is not one that you can read only once.
You read it again and again and you getdifferent things and more things from it.
So, okay, so I think I'm at four now.

>> Dan Wang (01:57:06):
Four, last one.

I've painted myself into a corner here.
I have them coursing through my head.
Which books to mention should I mention?
Solzhenitsyn Gulag Archipelago?
Okay, we won't do that.
It's three volumes andtoo hard for most people.
What are we going to do forthe fifth and final book?

(01:57:32):
Memoirs of an Antisemite by Fon Rizzori?
That's a special taste.
It's also one of my favorites,but let's leave that one aside.
How about On Bullshit by Harry Frankfurt?
That may be a less obvious choice.
I also keep that.
I also keep that close by.
We published it atPrinceton University Press.

(01:57:54):
I was on the board formany years at Princeton University Press.
Harry was in the philosophy department.
And it's a very serious discussion.
It would seem to be a little bit trivialor tongue in cheek because of the title,
but it teaches you a lot about the natureof truth and the truth regime.

(01:58:16):
By that I mean we disagree onwhat constitutes the truth, but
we need to agree on howto get to the truth.
The truth regime.
We need to agree on how we could get totruth, even if you may have a different
version of the truth from my versionof it on any particular question.

(01:58:38):
So again, the use of evidence,of proper argumentation,
of rigor logic,when speculation is appropriate and
when it's not appropriatewhen you can't know things,
when you don't know things andwhen you make believe that you know

(01:58:58):
things that you don't knowwhen you're riffing or BSing.
And so it's a profound meditation.
It reads about the amount of timeyou need to go on the Amtrak
from Washington to New York orNew York to Boston or the other way,

(01:59:20):
probably a little bit longer thanthe Caltrain from Palo Alto or
Menlo park to San Francisco butnot much longer than that ride.
But deep, and rich, and abiding, and
satisfying in ways that fewmeditations at that short length are.

(01:59:42):
And so I had only one left forthe fifth in Harry Frankfurt.

>> Dan Wang (01:59:49):
Stephen, the Amtraks may very well be disrupted by
the fires which seem to be quitecommon on the tracks these days.
So if that's not enough time,we have that.
Stephen Kotkin, a historian ofanalytical narrative, thank you.

Thank you so much, Dan.
Godspeed to you.
[MUSIC]

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How Historians Work: A History Lab Discussion with Dan Wang and Stephen Kotkin | Hoover Institution

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}How Historians Work: A History Lab Discussion with Dan Wang and Stephen Kotkin | Hoover Institution