The Eric Metaxas Show - Nathan Raab

Episode Date: May 18, 2020

He's been called the Sherlock Holmes of rare American artifacts, and Nathan Raab joins Eric in the bunker to talk about the stories behind the discovery and acquisition of some of these antiquities.

Hi, welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. I just found out I'm supposed to be someplace else right now. So my sincere apologies, but I simply won't be able to introduce today's host, Mr. Eric Mataxis. Hey, folks, welcome to hour two of the Eric Mataxis show. In this hour, we're going to be talking to a history sleuth. His name is Nathan Rab. And he is like probably the foremost collector of antiquarian historical letters. and objects and things.

Very impressive, and he's going to talk about a new book he has coming out. Before we get to that, we have a couple of letters that we want to read. People write to us, and I always say if you write to us at our website, either at my website, ericomtaxas.com, or via the radio website, we read every letter you send to us, at least at this point. I still am able to read every letter. We can't respond to everyone. But we've got a funny one about Phil Robertson.

Now, I got to explain this past weekend, TBN ran their first anniversary show with me. This is the first anniversary, one year of me doing the TBN TV TV show every weekend. And it was a wonderful show. And I talked to Phil Robertson during the shutdown. So in a few minutes, Albin is going to read that letter. Wait until you hear this, folks. You'll see. You'll get it, I think. You'll get it. But before we do that, I want to remind you, we are hitting angel tree hard. We are asking you if you haven't yet given, and that's most of us. We've got a phone number. There are kids out there who are the children of prisoners. They did nothing to get into this unfortunate situation. Their parents made mistakes and are behind bars. And these children need to be shown the love of God. And what we typically do is we raise money for them at this time of year to go to summer camp. Angel Tree,

which is a part of prison fellowship, started by my friend and hero Chuck Colson. They've created a program called Angel Tree camps and they send these kids for a week to get them out of their environments and to show them a different part of the world and to show them the love of God. Now, this year, because of the pandemic, a lot of these kids will not be able to go. So the kids that can't go, they're in part of the world where it's, where Angel Tree can't fulfill this, they are nonetheless preparing wonderful care packages to show these kids the love of God. I've talked about it before. I'll talk about it again, but I want to encourage you to call the number. And actually, while we're talking about this, I should say that we have, we're past the halfway point in this campaign because it's this month.

And honestly, for some reason, I know it's tough for a lot of us, but we are way, way, way behind where we would be, where we were this time last year. So if it's possible for you to give, I'd be so grateful. We've got an audio clip I want to play. The donations that those of you have given are already blessing kids around the country. And Ray Ann from Prison Fellowship has a message. Let's play that. You help support these connections, discover new things that they want to have otherwise discovered in their own environment. There aren't people yelling at them.

There aren't people looking down on them because they have a parent who's incarcerated. And the only way they can get released from that is opportunities like angel train. I just want to tell you, it's so rare that we get served up on a silver platter and opportunity to do something that is an unmitigated good. I want to tell you, folks, this is an opportunity. We often wonder, how can I give? What can I do? And we're all going through our own tough time. So I just want to say sometimes doing something for someone else is the best way for us to deal with what we're going through.

This is a golden opportunity. Angel Tree is just one of the best organizations I can think of. Prison Fellowship, of course, is the larger organization. So I want to enlist your help to let these at-risk kids, because they are at-risk. You understand in this demographic. to let them know they're not forgotten. Okay, so this is, you have to go to metaxis talk.com and you can give there. Or there's a phone number.

I know a lot of you would prefer to stay away from your computers and just dial a phone number. Whatever you give, I want to tell you, whatever you give goes to help these kids. And whatever you give, you will be entered to win the grand prize drawing. This is big, folks. That's a visit to the studio. If you can't make it, you can send somebody or you can email somebody in the New York. who can come. We're opening up the studio soon. And any time in the next year to visit the studio, you get all kinds of signed books.

I will sign my Bonhofer book for you. I'll sign my seven more men book for you. I'll sign all of my books that we have for you. And you can use them yourself or give them away as gifts. That's the grand prize drawing. Anybody who gives $100 gets a free subscription of Metaxa. That is this program with no commercials and all kinds of other benefits. If it's Metaxus Super, you can buy that, or you can just give $100 tax-free to this program, and you'll get Metaxus Super.

$200, you get Metaxus Super plus a signed copy of my new book, which is Seven More Men. For $500, you get a visit to the studio and everything else. And those of you who are able to give $10,000 tax deductible to this truly great cause, and I know that you're out there, and I hope you will be moved to do something about this. But we get to spend the evening together, have dinner. And, of course, you get all the signed books and everything and the visits to the studio. Let me give the phone number. It's 888-206-2793.

It's 888-206-2793. We really need your help. We want to read that fun letter, Albin. I don't know if you, do you have that in front of you? Oh, I have it here. I have it. It's from a, it's funny. It's from a woman.

I'm just going to give, let you know, it's a woman in Peakskill New York. York because I'm not sure she wants us to use her name. And the message is titled, Fried Puppie, Are You Serious? Okay. Now, this is the letter. This is a real letter. It's not a joke letter. This is a serious letter. Go ahead. Yeah, I accidentally caught an airing of your radio show on television station TBN, Channel 10, where I live last night. The program scheduled several surprise guests, including the Duck Dynasty guy. And then in parentheses, she said, don't know his name, nor do I care to know. In his banter, he discussed how living off the grid has prepared him for the pandemic crisis that we're all going through.

The ramifications, including food shortages. Regarding the latter, he boasted. He has no problem with it, and he and his family are self-sufficient. He then listed what the family has been eating, including fried puppy, which he said two times, as if he was seeking to get a rise out of you or your audience. yet you let it go over your head and didn't say anything. Was he serious? Was he joking? What was he talking about? If you do not know, you should contact the authorities to find out.

This needs clarification immediately. You know, I think this woman is suggesting that there's something wrong with consuming dog flesh. And I know that Chris and you, Albin, and I all sat around a barbecue. And dog meat can be some of the tasty. meat that's out there, especially if it comes from a sweet-natured creature. The flesh is just, it's just marvelous. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm a cat person myself, but I can assure you that no puppies were fried for the making of the first anniversary. I've got a joke, but here's the issue. This woman obviously doesn't know me and obviously doesn't know Phil Robertson. The idea that he

would actually talk about eating fried puppy and that I would let it go is. is itself hilarious to me. That's why we had to read this letter. But I think he either was talking about hush puppies, which Miss Kay has made for me and my friends, when we've been down there visiting, hush puppies are, it's a cornmeal and whatever. But I actually think on the program,

if you watch the TBN, you should go to TBN and check it out because it was a wonderful thing. And we're not going to play it on this radio program, but wonderful TV program. But what he said is he said we had, you know, shrimp et tufe and we had gumbo and then he said fried crappy but he pronounced it like cruppy or croppy crappy is fish so that is i think what this woman in petechill is responding to but i just think it's more fun for me to think that she's not going to listen to this program and she's just going to

go on thinking that i approve of eating dogs and there's a sick part of me that's like i'm okay with that We're going to go to a break, folks. You've got to help AngelTree. 888-206-2793, 888-206-2793. Or go to Metaxistock.com. We'll be right back with the history sleuth. Stay tuned. Hey, folks, welcome back.

As promised, Nathan Rob, I'm going to ask him when he comes on how to pronounce his name correctly. It could be Nathan. I'm not sure. He's the president of the Robb Collection. It's one of the world's foremost. He is one of the world's foremost experts on historical documents and authenticity. Okay. You know this is up my alley.

Okay. So this is really exciting for me to talk to somebody who's into this stuff. But hey, there's good news. He is out with a book. You know, I'm kind of a fan of books. It's called The Hunt for History on the Trail of the World's Lost Treasures from the Letters of Lincoln, Churchill, and Einstein. to the secret recordings on board JFK's Air Force One. Nathan, welcome to the program.

Thanks for having me. And it is Natan. It is Natan? Okay. Like Sharansky. No, but is it robbed? Am I getting that right? You know, how do you say it?

In the family. I say rap. You say rab? What do you know? You're a kid. Okay. So you say, but you really do say Rab.

Yeah. You know, like my dad says, my dad said rab, so I say rab. Okay. You know, since you're Nathan Rab, I'm going to give you credit that you know how to say it. So it's the Rab collection. Yeah, let's hope I know that much. Okay. My goodness.

Well, anyway, listen, you're out with a new book during this time of coronavirus. So you and I, we understand each of. I've just come out with a book, Seven More Minute, to try to promote a book in the middle of a pandemic, not great timing. But listen, we didn't know the pandemic was coming. This book, because I'm a, you know, a history buff, I guess is the term. And I've written books on historical subjects. I was so excited when I saw that this book was out. So let's dive into it. First of all, how did you get into, you know, what you're into? I mean, looking up finding these kinds of documents and things.

What drew you into this? Is this something that your father was into before you? How did it happen? Yeah, my dad started this business when I was in middle school. And, you know, we were always sort of surrounded by history. We went to historical sites as kids. We, you know, we took family vacations. it was often somewhere historical.

And my dad was a collector of historical documents, firearms, a variety of... And you're in Pennsylvania. Yeah, we're in suburban Philadelphia, the main line, if people know where that is. So you're like in the middle of it all. You're right there. Yeah, although right now I'm in Maine. Okay. Have they moved the Liberty Bell to Maine?

I know that they moved it recently. No, they've moved me to Maine. Okay. So my dad started the... business when I was in middle school and I joined the business maybe 15 years ago. And the business is what? Do you sort of, you know, collect and trade historical documents? Do you sell historical documents? I mean, it seems like that's part of the business. Yeah, I would say the vast majority of the business, 99% of the business or so is simply buying and selling historical

documents. But this is the first book you've written about it. Correct. Yeah, correct. Because obviously you've got some stories to tell. So let's just go to the title. I mean, the most intriguing thing to me was the JFK, or I'm sorry, the recordings on Air Force One. Can we talk about that? What is that? So the way that we know what happened during and after the Kennedy assassination comes from a really small number of primary resources. some of them are well known to the American people like the Zerruder film and are popularized in movies like the Oliver Stone film.

And others are, you know, firsthand accounts, people who were there. But one of the main ways that we know what happened after the assassination is an audio recording that was created between the plane carrying the president's body from Texas back to the East Coast. Where were they going? Who was around? What were they saying? you know, is there any conversation there that would shed light on the event of the day? And the only version of that recording that we have is one that was heavily edited and released by the Lyndon Johnson administration.

And that's been a source of, it's been fodder for conspiracy, let's say that. You mean what was redacted by LBJ, who he was kind of a, I always think of him as kind of a, of a dirty player. I think if him as sort of corrupt, you know, coming out of that sort of world of Texas politics at a time when you used whatever power you had. So I'm just guessing that anything that made him look less than stellar, he would have redacted from that recording. Yeah. So that's been the, that has been the concern of those who have suspicions about LBJ's motives and who are, you know, inclined to sort of disbelieve. the LBJ narrative. So the questions are, why was this edited?

Who edited it? You know, were there nefarious purposes behind the editing of it? Where's the original? You know, so this is recorded by a government agency. Why don't we have the original? Right. We went to a small auction company that was handling the estate of someone who was there at the time, McClos Kennedy aide, who functioned more or less as a chief of staff to John Kennedy,

what we would consider today to be chief of staff. They didn't have chiefs of staff back then, but this guy was more or less that. His name was Chester or Ted Clifton. And at the bottom of this box were these, you know, real to real, I think, old-timey, you know, spinning, going one to the other tapes. And, you know, one of them said conversations onboard Air Force One from that day in November in 1963. And so my dad, who was going through this material, had a suspicion. Well, you know, maybe there's something here. Of course, we didn't know. You can't sit there in an auction

company and pull out your real-to-real player. I mean, I don't even have one. I can't imagine many people do. No one. No one does. And the people under the age of like 25 probably have no, I can't even picture what I'm talking about. I was just going to say, I mean, I remember when I was a kid, they still used them. But my goodness. So, so, so, where was this that you saw these tapes or that your father saw these tapes? He said an auction house, but where? It was in Philadelphia. So we were able to just go downtown and take a look at it.

And so, you know, we took a little bit of a flyer based on that hunch and bought the tapes. This is what you guys do. It just occurred to me. This is what you do. You look at something and you say, my hunch tells me this could be valuable. You spend money. You gamble. And in this case, it seems to me like your dad hit the jackpot.

You know, it reminds me of the, I think this was Thomas Edison, but somebody. You know, it's always dangerous quoting people because then the internet will tell me that that person never said that. But somebody once told me that Thomas Edison said, the harder you work, the luckier you get. And, you know, so often when we have these hunches, you know, there's sort of a kernel of something behind the hunches. So, you know, in this case, once we got it digitized, and I knew that the public version was around an hour and a half, an hour and 40 minutes, the digitization, which, again,

is not easy to do, and it's quite time-consuming and expensive, because you can't do it on site, you know, it's quite an operation. The new version was closer to two and a half hours, meaning close to an hour of additional audio was there. Wow. So we went sort of the, you know, the transcript and, you know, to sort of line item, okay, well, this is different, this is new, this is, you know, to understand, okay, what had been edited out. And at the end of that, we realized that there really were some consequential edits made to the tape. Now, what do you do with it then?

We digitized the whole thing, put everything online for the, for people to listen to, and then went public with it. It was, you know, obviously generated a great deal of public interest, but then, you know, you know, we received a phone call from the federal government, effectively saying, you don't own that, we own that. And you can try and sell that, but we will stop you. It's not the most pleasant phone call to receive. Keep in mind that the time this happened, I'm in my late 20s. You know, I'm not the seasoned griseled 41-year-old I am right now. Yeah, you're looking pretty grizzled. I was going to say, I would have guessed about 75, man. You're some of your grizzled If only can people watch the videotape, they would laugh.

Okay, so seriously, though, the government, if they tell you that you don't own it, it means that the people from whom you bought it sold it fraudulently? I mean, the auction house, how does that work? They don't, I learned a lot about legal ownership over these things. Like, who owns history? You know, do they have a right to say, you don't own this? And in some cases, they do. maybe not the government, but, you know, if...

I got some moonstones in my closet, you know, and like if they knew, I hope they don't listen to this. Go ahead. Oh, oh, we're going to, I'm sorry, we're going to go to a break. Hang on a second, Nathan. Folks, I'm talking to Nathan RAB. Is it RAB? There you go. You got it.

We finally got it. It only took a few minutes. Nathan Rab, the book, folks, is the hunt for history. It is loaded with stuff. We're just getting started. By the way, I want to remind you. folks, please everyone has to participate. Go to metaxis talk.com. Click on the banner for Prison Fellowship AngelTree. We would just be so grateful to you. These kids really need our help.

This is a great thing, great organization. I can vouch for it. We'd be grateful to you. We'll be right back with Nathan talking about the hunt for his... Christian bestselling author and speaker Richard E. Simmons does not shy away from the big questions of life. His latest book is called reflections on the existence of God, and it tackles the biggest question of all, does God exist? I've read this book, and I got to tell you, I'm a little biased, but you can imagine that I like it a lot, because Simmons offers insights for those grappling with life's biggest questions. Where do we find meaning in life? Who determines what is evil? Can we be moral without God? Does God even exist?

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your worldview. Folks, you know how important this is to me. Your worldview is going to impact the way you live your life for better or for worse. If you want to challenge yourself to spiritual and intellectual growth, and I hope you do, then be willing to ask yourself life's toughest questions. Dive in today by picking up a copy of reflections on the existence of God right now. Go to existence of godbook.com. That's existence of godbook.com. Hey folks, I'm back with Nathan Rab. We're talking about the hunt for history.

Nathan, let's go right back. So you're talking about who owns you. the tapes. You and your dad bought real-to-reel tapes from that it was a recording of Air Force One immediately following the assassination of JFK. So what happens at this point? What do you do with something like this? Yeah, so we're bona fide purchases of this of these tapes at a public sale. The federal government steps in and says, you don't own them, we own them. And effectively, you know, very politely, I mean, they were very polite about it, but it effectively threatens us. there was a law pass that required Congress and the federal government to collect everything related to the Kennedy assassination. I think this was in 1992 or something like that.

So their position was that based on that law, they had a right to seize this. Our position was that this was a public document created by a public servant and therefore belonged to the public. And whereas today, the executive branch, the president cannot simply give anything away. that only came about because of Richard Nixon's excesses when he refused to give over to Congress his papers. So at the time, Kennedy or anyone else could have walked out of that White House with whatever they wanted,

and there was nothing that could be said. Luckily, we had something that the federal government knew that didn't know that we had, which was an exact duplicate of the same tape. So the solution, not to spoil it, there's plenty of other... I get it. I get it. There's plenty of other interesting plot twists in the book, but the solution was to donate one identical copy

to the federal government and to sell the other, which is exactly what we did. So we went down to the National Archives. We put both the tapes playing at the same time. It was like, it was a crazy scene. Well, that, okay, so that's in the book. Now, I want to talk about stuff that where things were revealed. I mean, this is everybody's dream. I know that one of the things in this book, The Hunt for History, you talk, you're in Maine right now.

You talk about discovering in an attic in Maine letters from Alexander Hamilton. I mean, it's everybody's dream to kind of stumble into an attic. and find something like this. So tell us about that one. Yeah, well, so this man had inherited from his great grandfather, this book, you know, an actual bound book. But what people used to do is they would bind original documents into a book. So, I mean, you can bind anything into a book.

So they could take these leather covers and they created books out of historical documents. But in this case, there were slews of incoming letters from Alexander Hamilton. So my recollection is 15 or so. And to say that that was an incredibly fortuitous find is an understatement. And this man sort of knew he had this stuff, but he didn't exactly know where it was. And one day he just re-stumbled across it in his attic, and he called us. And he said, are you interested in 15 letters of Alexander Hamilton? And then we went up and looked, and of course they were authentic.

The answer is, of course, yes. And then it's a negotiation. Okay, well, how much do you want to pay for them? And then we have to think, okay, well, what are they worth? What can we sell them for? But the Alexander Hamilton craze, which was generated first by the Ron Chernnell book, followed by the Lynn Manuel Miranda musical. It is real.

So in the course of, you know, 24 hours, we sold all 15 of those Alexander Hamilton letters. I would think so. I mean, that is amazing. And then I imagine you unbind them, you frame them appropriately so that people can, you know, hang them in their houses and stuff. So where is your actual, do you have a storefront

where people can go in and buy stuff? We have offices. Yeah. It's not a ground level retail operation, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, offices by appointment. Yeah. And we're in Philadelphia. So, so tell us more than, so what, what's in the book, the hunt for history?

I don't want to give it all the way. What else can we expect? So, you know, the book follows me on my journey effectively as apprentice. I mean, really this is an 18th century style apprenticeship that you go through. There's no school. You can't study in any kind of formal environment for this. It's repetition, repetition, repetition. You have to see 100 letters of George Washington to be able to authenticate one.

This is the big question because when you talk about a big part of what you do and what's in the book, The Hunt for History, you talk about being able to authenticate things. So it's hard for many of us to believe, I get hard for me to believe, that there are people who traffic in historical forgeries. So how often do you come across a good historical forgery where somebody is using a bizarre skill set to create a fake historical document? Not often enough. I mean, I would buy everyone that comes my way. And, of course, if you think you have an authentic George Washington document and I offer you, you know, and normally I would offer you 15,000. And instead of 15,000, I tell you that it's a forgery and I give you 1,000. You're not likely to accept that.

It's just too dissent from what your expectations are. But, you know, the modern foragers are not very good. They're signing, you know, little scribbles on a signed photograph or, you know, they're signing baseballs or things like that. The old school foragers who were, you know, signing in the 20th and 19th century, they were real artists. And I say that not in an approving way, but, you know, it's an art. You sit down and try and forge a letter Abraham Lincoln.

It's hard, you know, to the extent that you can fool people. fool the experts. So what do you look for when you see a forgery? What sticks out? I mean, from, from, you know, one of these forgery experts, you know, from past decades, generations. When you're trying to forge a letter, when you're trying to uncover a forgery, you need to look at a variety of things from paper, pen, context. Were you in, like, you wouldn't buy a sign photo John Lennon dated after he was dead. So most of the workers can get one of those. elements right, but they can't get all of the brain. Right. Well, I just, what was the film recently that was out with Richard E. Grant, the actor?

I can't think of it. Well, we're going to go to another break, but I'm just fascinated with historical documents and forgeries, and that's why this book to me is just so exciting. Folks, it's called The Hunt for History. Nathan Rabb will be right back. Hey, folks, welcome back. I'm talking to the author of The Hunt for History, Nathan Rab, American. America's, what is this word, foremost dealer in rare documents.

I'm trying to read something on my computer screen. America's preeminent dealer in rare documents. Nathan, that's a pretty extraordinary title. That's a big deal. You ought to be pretty proud of that, I would think. Yeah, it's on my business card. That's, you've got a number of exciting things. I want to talk about the Rosetta Stone.

Can we talk? Let's talk about that. So this was another example of sort of playing a hunch. If you're reading an auction catalog, the auction catalogs typically, the larger, the more space they give to the piece, the more important they think it is. Because they want to drive the price up on the really expensive pieces. That's where they make their money. Right. Buried in an auction catalog, like two or three sentences long with no illustration,

was this letter signed by a man named Hutchinson. And it was dated from Egypt. in my recollection is 1798, but around that time during the Napoleonic Wars. Yeah. And it mentions the stone. So, you know, how many people would read that and immediately grasp the context of that?

Okay, well, this is an Englishman in Egypt during the Napoleonic Wars, asking for the text of the stone and asking them to seize the stone. I mean, if you know your history, I mean, I would know right away that's the Rosetta Stone, but I've been kind of reading on it lately. But it's weird because they didn't, of course, didn't yet know what the Stone said.

Yeah, and it would be a while until Champaulian broke the code. But they knew it was something important. I mean, they sort of had an understanding that this was something. If you don't mind my interrupting yet again, tell my audience, because a lot of people listening, they have a vague recollection of what the Rosetta Stone is. Tell my audience what the Rosetta Stone is. So the Rosetta Stone is literally a stone, a large stone, which is now in the British Museum, which allowed us to crack the code and be able to read ancient Egyptian.

Prior to that point, no one had any idea what it said. And what it did is it put next to, it was a text and order in three languages, one of which was ancient Egyptian, I want to say one of which was Greek and the other one was Aramaic. That could be wrong, but it was three languages, two of which we knew. So the juxtaposition of those languages allowed us to translate ancient Egyptian, which was an incredible historical feat. And the person who did that was a Frenchman named Champoliano. Right. And so this is, what's extraordinary, though, is that here you have Napoleon's soldiers discover this in Egypt. They don't know what it is. They know it's something amazing, something ancient,

but they don't know that it is going to crack the code so that we can read Egyptian hieroglyphics into the future. I mean, can you even imagine how long it would have taken to figure out Egyptian hieroglyphics without this code that they happened to find in 1798? So tell us more about the letter. Who wrote the letter? It was a Brit. It was an English general whose last name was Hutchinson. Nobody of any – a person whose name has been lost to history, more or less. I mean, not a household name for sure, either here or in England.

But the reference to the stone and the language of it gave us a hint that perhaps this related to the Rosetta Stone. And we were evidently the only people who put two and two together because we bought it for what I consider to be a relatively small amount of money. But it ended up being that, it ended up being the order to seize the Rosetta Stone. It's interesting that the Rosetta Stone itself was a code that you had to break. And in many cases, when we're looking through these documents, we're in a sense breaking down a code. Well, I was just going to say only because I'm writing a book on biblical archaeology and other things, did I do my own research on this a few weeks ago? And I had never known what you're referring to. In other words, the French discovered this. Napoleon discovers this.

But then the British win the battle or the war. I can't remember in 1798. but the point is that part of their negotiation is we get the stone. And I've never known the story. Why is it in the British Museum if it was found by the French? And there you have a letter which adds to this story. I mean, pretty amazing stuff. Yeah, which is why the British Library,

which is sort of the archival equivalent of the British Museum, it's why they bought it from us. It's why they bought the letter from you. Now, are you allowed to say what the fee was, what they paid for it? I don't think it's a secret. They paid, my recollection is $9,000. Yeah.

This was a decade ago. I mean, you know, I would charge a lot more for it today. Yeah. Well, let me tell you, this is, I guess what I get excited about, the letter and the Rosetta Stone are both examples of it. We don't know, and this is what your whole business is, we don't know what's hiding out there. We don't know what's in the mud of a river stone like the Rosetta.

Stone. We don't know what's in an attic or in some archive someplace. It's there right now while we're having the conversation and we haven't discovered it yet. So it's just kind of cool that we get more and more and more proof of what happened in history. It's still out there waiting to be found. And you're one of the main people who does that. Are you working on anything right now? Any leads right now? You know, that is one of the best aspects of this business is that every day is different. I never know what is going to come knocking on my proverbial door. We have a letter that Winston Churchill wrote to his captor as a P.O.W. When he was fighting in the Boer War, you know, right around the turn of the 20th century.

We have a speech that Washington held, hand-delivered speech by George Washington, a collection of letters relating to women fighting in the American Revolution. I mean, you know, there's, you know, one of the challenges in the book wasn't to find the stories. It was to whittle them down to a point where, okay, well, these are the ones I want to focus on. But there are a thousand more stories like that. Now, a speech, you're saying this is a speech that was given by Washington, a handwritten speech, and this is the copy of that? This is that speech. That is amazing.

I mean, where has that been hiding for 250 years? It is really hard to reconstruct two and a half centuries of provenance, and I cannot with this. So the short answer is, I don't know. We bought it from a private collector. And so it's probably been in a private collection for, you know, 200 of those 250 years. What a concept. And so what do you do with something like that? I mean, do you, have you sold it?

I mean, have you sold that to somebody? Or is it in a museum? What happens? We sold it to a to a customer and then we bought it back, which can happen. What do I do? Hang on, Nathan. I'm sorry. We're going to go to another break.

We'll be right back five more minutes with Nathan Rab. The hunt for history is the book. Stick around. Hey, folks. Welcome back to the Air Comtaxas show. We're talking about historical objects. The Hunt for History is the title of the book. Nathan Rab is the author and is my guest.

Now, Nathan, you know, you can see me on video and you would not. know this, but the wig that I'm currently wearing, it's a horsehair wig. It's been in my family for generations. It has a lot of sentimental value to me, and I won't sell it for any amount, but I would take, I would take $5,000 cash if, you know, put up or shut up. You know what I'm saying? All right, let's talk. Let's talk about the letters from Reagan, Ronald. This is really touching to me because I have a daughter. Many people know that he was estranged from his daughter, Patty. that for most parents that just rip your heart out when you think about that.

So tell us about this. Yeah, so I have, I also have a daughter. I have a seven-year-old, and we were contacted by Patty, who had these letters from her father to her. And, I mean, more than any other acquisition, they gave me a window into the private life of a very public figure.

in a way that is hard to forget. Reagan, you know, Reagan spent the latter years of his life in addition to many other things, trying to reconcile with his daughter, and sent her during this process a series of heartfelt pleas.

You know, Patty, we miss you. You're breaking our heart. I remember bouncing you on my knee. You know, don't, you know, don't forget. Your parents love you and all this stuff. And, you know, over the course of, of years kind of pleaded with her just to stop saying things about them in public. And these letters, so we, of course, we bought them immediately.

And then she had one that she kept. And she contacted us later to sell it. And it was a copy of one of the letters that he had sent, in my opinion, the most evocative one, one where he's really pleading with her, you know, I remember the way things used to be. We can fix this. You know, it's like, it's hard to it to express some words. You don't have to buy the book to read the letter. But the, there's so much.

Say again? Yes, people can buy the book, The Hunt for History. But I was just going to ask you, first of all, what was the source, if there was one, of estrangement between them? It seems very disturbing to me. You know, I don't know. I don't know. I wouldn't want to speculate about, you know, such a sensitive topic.

But I can tell you it was real. I mean, it was not, you know, these letters were really vivid. In any event, the copy of the letter was one that Ronald Reagan kept his desk, presumably as a heartfelt reminder of this attempt, this relationship that, you know, was broken at the time. But the fact that he kept a copy of that letter in his desk was to me, you know, all the more poignant. When did they reconcile roughly?

I'm not aware that they ever fully reconciled. I could be wrong, but I'm not aware. Certainly at the time when I was dealing with Patty, there was still kind of a complicated family dynamic. And what might prompt someone like that to sell letters? I mean, to go find a dealer to sell these letters. That itself to me is bizarre. Wow.

Yeah, I mean, that's a common question. You know, at the end of the day, people who sell, they want the money more than they want the thing. And it doesn't mean they need the money. It just means that whatever the value of having the object is secondary to them having the money. But I don't know. I mean, would I sell something like that? You sound like an antiquities dealer. You sound a lot like an antiquities dealer when I just asked that question because it's kind of funny. Like you've got to, yeah, listen, I'm so sorry, we're out of time. Nathan R-A-B, the book is The Hunt for History. Nathan, thank you.

so much, terrific.