Elizabeth Mitchell joined me today on KTRS to talk about her new book, “Liberty’s Torch: The Great Adventure To Build The Statue Of Liberty.” In it, she debunks the widely-held belief that the statue was a gift to the US from the government of France. In fact, sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi had to run the equivalent of a Kickstarter campaign to raise the funds to build and transport Lady Liberty — not to mention buying the island she stands on. Mitchell also revealed who the model for the statue was, how long it took to build, and why the Emma Lazarus poem (“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”) wasn’t part of Bartholdi’s original design.
Listen to our conversation here.