>> Marie Arana: Hi.
I'm Marie Arana, and I'm
the Literary Director
of the Library of Congress.
Welcome to the first of
our new 2020 fall programs
for the National Book
Festival Presents.
As many of you know,
this series was created
to continue year-round
the spirited energy
that our annual National Book
Festival, always engenders.
Speaking of the festival,
I should mention here
that although we unveiled the
2020 Festival a few weeks ago,
it is still very much alive.
You can find a rich array of
100 programs across many genre,
and for many ages
on LOC.gov/bookfest.
You can also find the two-hour
PBS television specials
that includes many
of our festival stars
on the PBS.org address that
you see in the description
of this video, or below
here on your screen.
The theme of the festival
this year, our 20th year,
is American Ingenuity.
And it is also the theme
of the National Book Festival
Presents program today.
We wanted our featured speakers
to answer the question what
does American ingenuity mean
to you exactly?
What does it mean to transform
challenge to opportunity
and be ingenious, creative, and
solution-oriented in the moment.
I can't think of two more
fitting and eloquent authors
to address this theme than
our friends Danielle Allen,
and Walter Isaacson.
So let me introduce
them for you here.
Danielle Allen is the 2020
recipient of the Library
of Congress's prestigious John
W. Kluge Prize for achievement
in the study of humanity.
She was elected to that
role because she's joined
so brilliantly her scholarship
in history and philosophy
to these contemporary times.
And because she's done so much
to bring these subject
to the public square.
She is the James Bryant Conant
Professor at Harvard University,
where she also direct the Edmond
J. Safra Center for Ethics.
Among her laurels, which are
really far too many to mention,
is her indispensable
book, Our Declaration,
a reading of the Declaration
of Independence in defense
of equality, in which
she takes us step-by-step
through the meaning of
every word and phrase
of that remarkable
founding document.
Walter Isaacson is the
Leonard Lauder Professor
of American History and
Values at Tulane University.
He's a highly accomplished and
prolific journalist as well
as an acclaimed biographer.
He's given us unforgettable
portraits of Albert Einstein,
Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs,
and many other ingenious
Americans.
His most recent biography
is about one
of the world's great
geniuses, Leonardo da Vinci.
And in it, Walter sheds new
light on how Leonardo's science
and art are inextricably linked.
Walter's great gift is to show
us how ingenuity can range
widely, and how it can spring
from the most unexpected
quarters.
Please welcome our
very special guests,
Walter Isaacson and
Danielle Allen.
>> Danielle Allen:
Good morning Walter.
How are you?
>> Walter Isaacson: Good
morning, Danielle and thanks
for being with me on this thing.
>> Danielle Allen:
Oh such a pleasure.
You are the prophet of
ingenuity, so [inaudible].
>> Walter Isaacson:
[laughs] Well,
you wrote about the
greatest ingenuity of all,
which is creating America,
and so many things,
and congratulations on
what you're doing now.
>> Danielle Allen: Oh thank you.
Thank you very much, Walter.
>> Walter Isaacson: And
your wonderful prize.
>> Danielle Allen: Thank you.
Thank you so much.
I've always loved coming to
the National Book Festival.
It's really so exciting
to be there
in the convention center spaces.
I know it's digital this year,
but I hope that all the energy,
the creativity unleashed the
chance to discover new things,
the happenstance
discoveries are still a part
of this year's festival.
It's a joy of learning
and celebration.
>> Walter Isaacson: Yes.
I've been at the Festival, I
think it was 2008, 2012, 2015,
for Steve Jobs, Einstein,
and then The Innovators,
and it's always been
a way to just well,
bell buzz with people.
And I hope that soon,
when the pandemic recedes,
and the Earth begins to heal,
being together in person
at a place like that, I can go
back and remember Jim Billington
on his golf cart when we
were doing it on the Mall.
Today it's just a
special, magical moment
where we celebrate ideas.
You know, if imitation is the
sincerest form of flattery,
I've been a flatterer
of the National Book
Festival for a long time.
I went to the Aspen Institute;
we created something called
the Aspen Ideas Festival.
I said it should be just like
the great National Book Festival
on the Mall, where people are
talking in different venues
about great ideas, and now that
I'm back here in New Orleans
at Tulane University,
we've created,
and we'll start next March,
the New Orleans Book Festival.
You know, during my career,
I've met a lot of smart people,
and it suddenly dawned on me
that smart people
are a dime a dozen.
They don't usually
amount to much.
What really counts is being
innovative, having ingenuity.
And that's the ability to
connect discovery to invention,
to something that's useful.
It's exactly that
was in the core
of Benjamin Franklin's
soul, Steve Jobs's soul,
and even Leonardo da Vinci.
And so to me, I love that
concept of ingenuity,
because it feels not only
American, but something
that we've helped
flourished over here.
Danielle, what's
your thoughts there?
>> Danielle Allen: Well, I
love ingenuity as a feature
of our cultural life, so I've
always loved the writings
of Mark Twain and Ralph
Ellison on the kind of figures
of the trickster,
in all honesty.
You know, sort of --
I'm thinking of Melville's
confidence man.
I'm thinking of Ellison's
incredible characters
who find their way through our
complex social world inventing
things as they go.
Inventing stories,
inventing reasons for people
to be connected with each other.
Making new things from the sheer
power of their story telling.
So there's a lot of different
aspects of American ingenuity.
The innovation, just
as you said Walter,
but there's also this sort of
daredevil willingness to kind
of play make believe
until it's real,
and see what comes from that.
>> Walter Isaacson: That was
one of Steve Jobs's strengths,
was that ability to stand at
the intersection of the arts
and the sciences, and
that he said allowed you
to think different.
And that was something
key to Steve Jobs,
moreso than Bill Gates
and some of the others,
was that he truly
loved the humanities.
He loved poetry, and
calligraphy, and dance.
And he said that led
to his ingenuity,
because he could always
think out of the box.
>> Danielle Allen: That's funny.
I always think of ingenuity
as being about lines of sight
that don't fit in boxes.
Where people are
able to see beyond,
able to see things other
people haven't seen yet.
It's as if people can
conjure up patterns
in our social universe before
others have even seen how the
pieces are coming together.
That's something that matters
in politics just as much
as it does in culture.
So the Declaration of
Independence for example,
is in a certain way a great
example of playing make believe
until you make it real.
With incredible ideals
for humanity,
there was a vision there of what
was possible for human beings.
Not everybody subscribed to the
full breadth of that vision.
And yet here we are, able
to realize it progressively
from one generation to the next.
So that's another way in which
sort of what ingenuity does,
is lay out a path for people
before they've gotten there
actually, so that others
can follow along afterwards.
>> Walter Isaacson: I love
how in Our Declaration,
your wonderful book, you talk
about it as an act of ingenuity,
an act of creation, that
you're going to have a new type
of nation, unlike any other
that had existed before.
That's based on a
particular idea,
almost a mission statement.
And you see you know, the
three characters who were
on that committee: Franklin,
Adams, and Jefferson,
trying to craft that "We
hold these truths to be --
" you know, and I think
Jefferson writes sacred,
and Franklin changes
it to self-evident.
We're just inventing
a new nation.
>> Danielle Allen: The fact that
we are able to invent ourselves
with ideas, with
cultural creations is one
of the extraordinary things
of our culture I believe.
And I'm really curious
to know Walter,
how you've picked the specific
characters you've focused on.
I mean, it's clear that Jobs
has transformed our world
without any doubt.
But how about some of the
other people that you picked.
Why were they the ones
that you really settled
on as your best examples
of ingenuity?
>> Walter Isaacson:
Well, for Ben Franklin,
it was that ability
to connect his love
of science, and his curiosity.
I mean, he would -- when he
was a little kid running away
to England, he would measure
the water in the Atlantic Ocean,
and helps discover
the Gulf Stream
because he was so curious.
And then he connects both his
science and his curiosity,
not only to doing things
like creating lightning rods,
and varying genius devices,
but understanding checks
and balances, and how you
use the Enlightenment science
to create a new type of nation.
And after doing him, I realized
that science was so core
to his mission, I
wanted to do Einstein.
After I did you know,
Ben Franklin
and Einstein Steve
Jobs came to me,
and said you know, do me next.
I said no.
Ben Franklin, Einstein, you?
But then I realized that
he too had that ingenuity
that came from connecting it.
You said something interesting a
moment ago about lines of sight.
It reminds me of Leonardo da
Vinci because he studied optics.
And he studied the
mathematics of perspective,
and how light enters the eye.
He dissected the human
eye to see how it worked.
And to me, from that
he's able to do the smile
of the Mona Lisa, or that
trick perspective you see
in The Last Supper.
So it was a very concrete
example of ingenuity coming
from standing at
that intersection
of the arts and the sciences.
I was going to ask you Danielle,
to what extent do the sciences
at all inform the people
you've written about?
>> Danielle Allen: Well, Ben
Franklin matters to me as well.
And I love hearing you talk
about him as a scientist,
because for me, he's such a
creative spirit with regard
to human social relations.
And I think it's infrequent that
we actually think of science
of the humanities
as living together.
And yet I think you're right,
they really do belong together.
That in both cases, there is an
interest in human flourishing.
The question of what is it
that we can see around us,
where there's potential
to make something more,
to convert potential
energy into kinetic energy.
And bring about new
human possibilities.
So in general I have been
much more focused on people
who conjure new worlds
with words,
rather than with experiments.
And yet, I think
there is a synergy
between those two efforts,
and it really is --
again, I want to use that
metaphor of unlocking
or unleashing potential energy,
turning it into something
kinetic.
Setting new dynamics
into motion.
The thing that is
interesting me about the folks
that you've selected, the
people I've been interested
in always is that I
think the motivation
for their ingenuity has
really been what I call sort
of a philanthropic spirit.
A genuine love of humankind.
So I'm curious whether
you think that that love
of humankind has been an
important part of the stories
of ingenuity that you've
been interested in,
or do you think it doesn't --
the motivation doesn't matter?
Anybody can be sort
of have ingenuity.
You don't have to be motivated
by human well-being
or human progress.
>> Walter Isaacson: I think
you have to be deeply connected
to the idea of human desires and
human loves, and that allows you
to create anything from the iPod
to Vitruvian Man to
the lightning rod.
All the ingenious
people I've written
about started with a passion.
A passion that was
pure curiosity.
But one of the things we
have to learn in life,
and this is something
that graduation speakers
sometimes forget.
They keep saying follow your
passion, follow your passion.
Well, it's not just about
following your passion.
It's about connecting your
passion to something larger
than yourself, something
where as Steve Jobs said
when he was dying, I said
well, what is your motivation?
He said I used to think
that life is like a river,
and you got to take
wonderful ingenious things
out of the river that people
had invented before you.
But now I know that life is
about what you get to put
into the river that
other people will use.
>> Danielle Allen: Absolutely.
Wow, that was beautifully said.
>> Walter Isaacson: You know,
you connect things from history,
and make them resonate today,
which I've always loved.
I remember you did your book,
I think in a Prometheus,
about punishment in
ancient Greece and Rome.
And now we're going
through a period --
well, we're trying to
figure out what is justice?
What is punishment?
I was wondering how you see the
echoes in history like that?
>> Danielle Allen: Well,
you know it's funny.
I do think that history echoes.
History provides contrasts
that open up our eyes,
our spirits, our minds.
I wrote that book on punishment
in ancient Athens because I grew
up in the 1980s in
southern California
where incarceration was just
ballooning all around us.
I went to college,
and I took a class
on ancient Athenian democracy.
We spent the semester
reading courtroom speeches,
one after the other case of a
sort of plaintiff or defendant.
And I knew -- something was
bugging me about these texts.
I couldn't quite
put my finger on it.
And one day I got it, and
I raised my hand in class,
and I said to my professor,
why is there no mention
of imprisonment?
I mean we're in these
courtroom texts.
Do they not have
imprisonment in ancient Athens.
And my professor said, well
that would make a great
dissertation topic,
Danielle in fact.
So then I was off to the
races on that subject.
But the more important point
is just that here I was,
this 18-year-old kid
from southern California,
and I had just -- I always think
of human beings as sensors.
We register things
in our environment.
I didn't have any
training in sociology.
I didn't have any training
in criminal justice,
but I was registering
the fact that all
around me this penal
system was growing.
And so then when I encounter
a fragment from another world,
with a different kind of penal
system, I felt that contrast.
And that contrast triggered my
interest in understanding more
about what was possible for us.
How our world could
be different.
But I want to tell that
story, or I tell that story
because it's so important for
me to underscore how every kid
out there is registering
the world around them.
And we have to recognize I do
think, the power of potential
of young people to show us
our or world's changing,
what matters in our world.
We need to listen to them, and
I want to suggest that maybe
for your next project Walter,
there'd be a great project
to be done about young people
as sources of ingenuity,
sources of creatively.
They see things I think before
some of us older people do.
>> Walter Isaacson: Well, as
it happens, my next book is
about a new field of ingenuity,
which I think is
a life sciences.
When I did Einstein, it
was about a 50-year period
of physics, beginning with his
1905 papers up to the atom bomb.
And then I did information
technology you know,
with Steve Jobs and
then The Innovators.
Now I think we're entering
into a new generation that'll
be defined by the life sciences.
Whether it's COVID or CRISPR,
the gene-editing technology.
And there a lot of young
people leading the way.
People of our generation
wanted to make sure
that our kids learned
how to code digitally.
I think now we're going to have
to make sure our kids know how
to do the genetic code.
So I'm writing about
Jennifer Doudna,
who is a very young woman.
Read The Double Helix
when she was in 6th grade,
and she decided she wanted
to become a scientist.
And she decodes how RNA works,
and decodes how to turn it
into something that's not just
basic science, but ingenuity,
which is CRISPR, which
allows us to edit our genes.
And this has become very
useful in the age of COVID,
because I think CRISPR-based
technologies are what will
eventually save us from viruses.
But we'll also raise those type
of things that you have to do,
which is the moral challenges
of when do we edit our children?
Do we make them taller?
Do we give them higher
IQ, bluer eyes,
whatever we might
say we would want.
Or should we have the
moral restraint to go back
to a phrase you used earlier,
not to play Prometheus.
Not to fly too close to
snatch the fire from the gods.
And to me, and I wanted to
get your reflections on this,
it also always comes down
to the moral questions
that our ingenuity brings up.
>> Danielle Allen: Absolutely.
I mean, there's no question
but the life sciences are
transforming our world,
just as the physics
revolution did,
just as the information
technology revolution did.
And the moral questions
are profound.
I think when one
talks about ingenuity,
one has to put another
word alongside it,
which is the question
of control.
When does ingenuity
sort of develop
or become hyper-developed in
a way that lends people --
or encourages people to think
of themselves as having control
that perhaps exceeds what they
should realistically endeavor
to secure.
What do I mean by that exactly?
I think the CRISPR technologies
will give us incredible things.
They will be transformative
for medicine.
At the same time, there
is a real question
of what the stakes
of gene editing are.
None of us actually
knows the whole
of what our genetic
inheritance holds.
And it would be a mistake
to pretend that we do.
And so in that regard I do
think and generally advocate
for an attitude of
humility in relationship
to our use of these powers.
I do think we should pull back
from those kinds of efforts
that would change the
gene pool, for example.
I think the last thing we want
is a gene pool for our species
that we ourselves have designed.
Because our minds are not
infinite, at the end of the day,
for all that we may be ingenious
and creative and so forth,
our minds are not infinite.
And to the world is in fact
infinite in its multiplicity
and diversity, we
will narrow it,
and confine it, and limit it.
If we allow our minds too
much control over the material
that came before us
and pre-exists us.
>> Walter Isaacson: Was I
right about Jennifer Doudna,
Emmanuelle Charpentier, and
Feng Zhang at Harvard MIT,
who've created this
easy-to-use, and David Liu
at Harvard now has done it,
make it even easier to use.
You're right, the
question arises OK,
who should control that?
And we have a system in
our country that you write
about so eloquently
that tries to be based,
or at least tip the scales
towards individual liberty.
But sometimes these decisions
need to be made collectively,
because you know, it's been
3 billion years that nature
or nature's God has
helped create
that genome of the
human species.
If we come along and think that
in 30 years we can rewrite it,
we may be like Prometheus.
We may be snatching fire
from the gods in a way
that could be dangerous for us.
It also could deeply reduce
the diversity of our society.
>> Danielle Allen: Exactly.
>> Walter Isaacson: And by
that I don't just mean ethnic
diversity, but if you were going
to have a child who
was going to be deaf
when you could easily
edit out deafness
from your heredity
code, many people would.
But you know, being deaf, or
being blind, or for that matter,
being from you know,
different ethnic
and other cultural backgrounds,
that diversity is not only good
scientifically for our species,
I think it's good for our
morality and our social life.
Because it sort of says, hey
we're all in this together.
And there but for the
grace of God go I.
So you feel a kinship to people
who are different from you.
>> Danielle Allen: I fully
agree with that, Walter.
I think you put it very well.
And I think for me, one of the
challenges of human ingenuity is
that we've not yet in all
of human history managed
to disconnect ingenuity from
the misuse of our tools.
So for the wonderful innovations
in physics and Albert Einstein,
one of the results
ultimately was nuclear power,
and the devastation the
world saw with the atom bomb.
With -- [clears throat]
excuse me.
With our wonderful political
inventions, democracy,
constitutionalism, and so forth,
we nonetheless have managed
to carry along with those
wonderful inventions,
tools and tactics of domination,
including the endurance
of enslavement, followed
by Jim Crow, and so forth.
So there's a real
challenge at the heart
of understanding human
ingenuity, which is why
as we unleash our
powers, we find it so hard
to resist the temptations
of using them in ways
that are also detrimental
to humankind.
>> Walter Isaacson: And I
think that's most evident
when it comes to the
digital revolution.
Because I celebrated what
Steve Jobs did with the iPhone,
and with The Innovators,
which was a book I wrote
about the inventors of the
internet and social media.
And the whole point was to
connect us, to make us a world
that shared more things, the way
a book festival like this would.
And now I have come
to the belief
that the lines have crossed,
and the harm done to us
by social media especially by
anonymity, and this inability
to have you know, what you
would write about, which is sort
of a civil society
within the digital realm,
is undermining our democracy,
undermining our belief
in factorial information,
and that's going to be one
of the great challenges
of the future,
is to take that ingenuity
and maybe put some
of it back into the bottle.
So you know one of
the amazing things
about the IT revolution is
that its ingenuity has
not got the pillars
of the ingenuity of
other generations.
So just to make that
very concrete.
If the Constitution is
an ingenious arrangement,
James Madison is the
person who gets credit
for ingenuity in that instance.
He was particularly proud in
The Federalist Papers of the way
in which the design was
supposed to tamp down faction.
Right? Exactly those problems of
misinformation and polarization
that you were just describing.
And when he explains why
the design's going to tamp
down polarization,
there are two parts
of the design that
matter to him.
One part is representation, the
notion that we'll elect people,
and filter views,
and synthesize,
and help us find a kind
of moderating position.
But the other thing that he
actually thought would matter
was the geographic dispersal of
the population of the country,
with rivers and mountains and
so forth in between people.
The idea was that the
country would get so vast,
it would be very hard for
people with extreme views
to find one another, and
to acquire political power.
Their geographical separation
would require that they go
through representations.
Geography was a forcing function
that would make representation
do its job
of tamping down function.
So along comes our you know,
Jobs and our other figures
of the IT revolution, and boom!
There goes that pillar
of geographic dispersal
and distance that was actually
holding up the entire structure
of our constitutional edifice.
An unintended consequence,
but ingenuity often has
unintended consequences,
and that is one of the
hardest things for us
to know how to think about.
>> Walter Isaacson: I'd like
to ask you a moral question,
because you deal with this all
the time, which is the question
of taking responsibility for
what you do, and anonymity
that we have now built into the
architecture of the internet,
and to social media, where
people can say things,
or platforms can amplify
things on Facebook or whatever,
where nobody has to
take responsibility.
And back when the founding
of the nation happened,
you write about The Federalist
Papers, they were done
with pseudonyms, and
often Ben Franklin wrote
under a variety of pseudonyms.
But you always had a
sense I think back then
that people could kind of
figure out who you were,
and you had to be responsible
for whatever you did.
That was at the core of the
First Amendment, was not just
that you had the rights, but
you had responsibilities.
How do you see anonymity
changing in a fundamental way,
that notion of being responsible
for your own ingenuity?
>> Danielle Allen: Well,
I do think you're right,
that you know, we need people
to stand up and put their names
to their ideas and
their opinions
and their contributions
to the public sphere.
Every society needs
some room for anonymity,
because there's always
need for whistleblowers.
Sometimes you will
need protection
in order to speak the truth.
And so we can't forget that.
Yet there's a balance.
So in that regard, we ought
to be designing the tools
of our social media engagements
so as to require real names.
To require authentication.
That means that people have
to take responsibility
for their views.
Own them over time.
Know that they're interacting
with other human beings
who will also take
responsibility for their views.
I do think that's
fundamental to functioning sort
of moral dynamic of any
healthy public sphere.
>> Walter Isaacson: You know, I
think it's important what you do
as a professor at Harvard,
is making the connection
between our ingenuity and
our moral processing power.
You raised the notion
of the atom bomb
in which science ran
ahead a little bit faster
than our moral processing power.
And we used the bomb twice.
But then were able to
moral process it to realize
as Colonel Henry Stimson
and others did back then,
that this was a new
type of weapon.
And we don't use it now.
And often we're able
to control ourselves.
I just worry that
things move so fast now,
that whether it's social media
technology or gene editing
and cloning technology,
it might be able
to outstrip not only our
moral processing power,
but our ability to think
together as a civic unit
and decide what we want
to do as a society,
as opposed to what
individuals might want to do.
>> Danielle Allen: I do think
that's a critical issue.
I'm a fan of report written by
the Biotechnology Commission
for federal government several
years ago, maybe 6 or 7 year ago
at this point, that
argued precisely
for establishing bodies of
deliberation that would slow
down our thought process.
That would give us the chance
to consider new technologies,
begin to think through some
other downstream consequences,
before they are approved
for broader use.
We're habituated to this with
things like the FDA, right?
With new pharmaceuticals
for instance.
And I think we want to figure
out where else in our system
of collective decision-making
we can slow down our embrace
of new technologies in order to
be collectively deliberative.
>> Walter Isaacson:
And I think back
on the great most ingenious
people I've written about.
Whether it's Jennifer
Doudna of today,
doing the CRISPR gene editing
technology, or Albert Einstein
with the bomb, or for that
matter, Benjamin Franklin,
who always wanted these
civic groups to be formed.
Jennifer Doudna is now
leading them in terms
of gene editing technology.
But certainly Einstein was very
much involved after the war,
with the committees that
tried to figure out how
to make sure we didn't
use the bomb again.
And so this is where the
intersection of ingenuity
and the civic engagement
is so important.
>> Danielle Allen: Well,
it's very often the case
that ingenuity gives us
new tools, new powers.
That means it equips us
with how to do things,
but there's always
the what and the why.
Those are questions of morals.
Those are questions that
should never be left
in the hands of experts.
Experts can have a role to
play, but it is hugely important
that we recognize that
those are human questions,
and that we engage broad
publics in deliberating
on the moral choices involved
in which direction
we use our tools.
So I think that brings
us back to the subject
of culture actually in various
ways, and why we need books.
And why we need philosophy.
Why we need novels that explore
ethical and moral dilemmas.
Works of psychology and so
forth that help us all think
about human well-being
and human flourishing.
We really need that kind of deep
engagement with human questions
in order to know to what
ends we should put the tools
of ingenuity.
>> Walter Isaacson:
One of the things
that the current
pandemic has reinforced
for me is actually
the importance
of human interaction in person.
Getting together the way we
have for 4 or 5,000 years
to create civic society.
And that's what book
festivals do.
It's wonderful to do
this in a virtual way.
It shows the ingenuity, well
we can find ways to do things
when we're prevented from
doing them the way we used to.
But I think that there's going
to be a big hunger next year,
and in the future years, for all
of us to get together in person.
To just have those serendipitous
encounters, where you run
into a scientist and a poet,
and they start talking together.
That happens.
Steve Jobs was so
deeply committed
to building his headquarters,
and building
so there'd be serendipitous
encounters.
Ben Franklin created
his Leather Apron Club
so people could get
together that way.
And I think that's
what book festivals do.
Is in person, you get
to bump into people,
and you get to have
those encounters
that cross-fertilize ideas.
>> Danielle Allen: I
couldn't agree more
with everything that
Walter said.
I think we're going to have
to lift the rock of isolation
that the pandemic
has imposed on us.
And book festivals are a
brilliant way to do that.
Because our minds
can wander then.
They can discover
new possibilities.
But we do that with others.
That human connection
is so important
because understanding its value,
understanding how we make
meaning together, build a world
of shared memories, and of
cultural artifacts that we love,
that reminds us what our
purposes are together.
And then as we encounter
great works of ingenuity,
we have the resources of
fellow feeling, and solidarity
that help us be ready for
the hard moral choices,
hard moral deliberations.
At the end of the day, it
really is our commitment
to one another, to humanity,
to our fellow human beings,
that should guide us as we
learn how to take the tools
of the ingenious and seek
to make our world a
better place for all of us.
>> Walter Isaacson: Danielle,
it's always so exciting
to be with you
>> Danielle Allen: Likewise.
>> Walter Isaacson: And I want
to thank everybody else
who's been at this gala.
>> Danielle Allen: So much fun.
Thank you, Walter.
Thank you Library of Congress!
You are a remarkable place.
>> Walter Isaacson: Amen.
>> Marie Arana: Many thanks
again, Walter and Danielle,
for that truly enlightening
conversation.
Let me take this final
opportunity to direct all of you
to the 20th annual
National Book Festival,
which celebrates this same
theme of American ingenuity.
You can find the festival
at LOC.gov/bookfest.
Thanks very much to all of
you for joining us today.