Ben Franklin's World is a production of the Omaha-Hundro Institute and is sponsored by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Hello and welcome to O.I. Reads, a new series on Ben Franklin's World where we introduce you to new books that we think you'll love and that are published by the Omaha-Hundro Institute.

I'm Holly White and I'll be your host.

It's no secret that the Omaha-Hundro Institute have been proud publishers of award-winning books since 1943.

Our guest today is Carolyn Eastman, a professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University, an author of the recently published book, The Strange Genius of Mr. O, The World of the United States First Forgotten Celebrity.

During our conversation, Carolyn will introduce us to James Oglevy, one of early America's first bona fide celebrities.

And as we explore Oglevy's life, we'll also discover what it meant to be a celebrity in the early American Republic, what Americans most feared and worried about during the early days of the United States, and why despite a celebrity so few of us remember James Oglevy today.

Carolyn, would you tell us who was James Oglevy? How and why did he matter to the history of early America?

During the early 19th century, James Oglevy was the very face of eloquence.

He had been a burned out immigrant schoolteacher who discovered that he had a real knack for the spoken word for delivering thoughtful and passionate speeches.

And in 1808, he decided to abandon the school room and undertake a career as a traveling public speaker.

He spoke on some of the country's most pressing civic concerns and he spent the rest of his life traveling from place to place, selling tickets to his talks.

And I think it's easy upon hearing that to think that oratory as a topic sounds hopelessly old fashioned.

It sounds like one of those vestiges of the 19th century that we've now lost and that were not terribly eager to get back to, but I think it's really important to understand how vital early Americans saw public speaking as a form of communication.

I mean alongside print, they really believed that oratory was crucial to the early United States.

And Oglevy modeled exactly the kind of community discussion that many Americans felt that their country needed.

If you read early American letters and diaries, what you would see coming up again and again is a real concern about the future of the country.

They believe that their country might be in fact so divided that it would fail as a republic.

So when early Americans looked back to the two other great republics that had existed in the past, the republics of Greece and Rome, what they saw there was great public speakers who brought people together in a room, who gave them ways of thinking about the problems that they face.

And argued about different modes of moving forward.

And so what Oglevy was doing as he did the same thing, he brought people together in a room, he explored all different sides of some of the most important issues of the day from dueling and female education to the topic of suicide.

The people who attended his talks thought together about those topics as he moved through them.

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