John Hay and Samuel Clemens grew up some 50 miles apart along the Mississippi River and became acquainted early in their respective careers – Hay as private secretary and assistant to Abraham Lincoln, Clemens as a writer who would gain fame as Mark Twain.

In a discussion of his new book The Statesman and the Storyteller: John Hay, Mark Twain, and the Rise of American Imperialism, documentary film producer and author Mark Zwonitzer examines the lives of the two men, who maintained a mutual admiration despite differences in personality and world view and helped shape and define their era. Their later years saw an increasingly aggressive America wrest control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.