Isaac Butler

Where there's like literally a board of venerable people who decide what is French and what is not.

We don't have that in the United States.

Culture wars are going to flare up all the time because, you know, the arts are how we decide who we are.

That's the terrain in which, you know, the soul of a nation or of a person is really explored and developed.

So America is particularly prone to them.

Yeah, and it was stressful, I'll be honest.

But this was a story that had been sort of part of my life ever since I was in high school because I grew up in Washington, D.C., and in fact, I make a couple cameo appearances in the book just talking about what it was like to live through this time.

My mother was very involved in the arts in D.C.

at the time, and so was I. I was a child professional actor in D.C., and so it really felt like...

The culture wars of the 80s and 90s that I grew up in were repeating again with many of the same forces, sometimes the same people, the same mistakes being made.

And so I really wanted to tell the story of this time for its own sake because I think it's an important story.

And then I also think that story has incredible resonance for today.

Yeah, so it's this really wild thing often called the Kanawha County Textbook War, which makes it sound like a Ken Burns documentary.

Dear Martha, today I go to fight in the textbook wars.

You know, it sort of has that feeling in it.

Basically what happened, and this will sound very familiar to people today, right, is that a school board was going to approve a new curriculum.

So, you know, hundreds of books, thousands of pieces of educational material.

And what state was this in, by the way?

West Virginia, in Kanawha County, West Virginia, to bring the county's...

curriculum in line with a state regulation that said, hey, you got to diversify your curriculum, basically, right?