and sarah bakewell look at humanism and freethinking. also on the list explores the post-world war ii summer and formerework city policeman and inconvenient cop which looks at the intersection ofole brutality and racism. the full list of best books of 2023 is available at publishers weekly.com. >> watch c-span q&a on sunday journalist discusses her book the great pretender about a 1973 experiment led by stanford psychologist david rosen hand that was conducted to test legitimacy of psychiatric hospitals in america. susanna talks about the experiment and the impact on the psychiatric profession . . . l's

airship: the life and tragic death of the world's largest flying machine" >> host: author s. c. gwynne, he opened her latest book "his majesty's airship" in cardiff to england october 4, 1930. what what was happening that day? >> guest: well, october october fourth, 1930, the 777 football 1 airship, the largest thing that it never flown, in fact, larger than the titanic by volume, it wasak about to take f on a trip from london to karachi which was then in india as part of a scheme hatched by the british empire to sort of link the far-flung pieces of empire. it was kind of a moonshot.

>> host: a moonshot, a scheme to call it. one of youre chapters is titled dreams, pipedreams any provision. how much of each was this airship? >> guest: actually a nice combination of all of them. airships as it turned out were a bad idea. they were with airplanes in the early century, starting in the first decade of the century. they were competing because nobody really knew what was going to be the future of aviation back then. both of them crashed all the time. the problem with airships as we will see, ass we talked today, s that it was a fundamentally flawed idea that essentially took about 40 years to play out completely. airplanes crashed all the time in the early days that they were fundamentally sound to be improved. part of what i'm writing about is this competition between the

two, and my airship that in writing about is featured the poster ship was kind of the focus of all of this effort to persuade people i guess that airships with a way to go. >> host: might be a good time to explain the difference between a hot air balloon, , a blimp and a rigid airship which is what this was. >> guest: it's very important because people think of aor bli. this is not a blimp. it's not a balloon. if you go, little history if you will bear with me, if you go back to the 18th 18th centn balloons were invented, they did this astonishing thing in the world governed by gravity. they went up and nothing else would do that but you could still blue with something like hydrogen or hot air would go with. bob is you would go wherever god or the wind wanted it to go.

this was a problem. in the 19 century a frenchman solve that problem basically by putting a motor with a propeller and a writer on to a 140-foot balloon -- a writer. he demonstrated how this would work by flying axman email from paris and turn around and come back. it was a fresh verb to direct or to steer. something you could steerst our direct was desperate to risible, that's what comes from come, something, a balloon you can steer. the problem still with balloons was that they were just an envelope filled with the gas and at some point in size they would collapse upon themselves and you could lift very much with them. this is a big problem. 1900 this marvelous german military man, military lifer and inventor named count ferdinand

von zeppelin invented something called rigid airship. a rigid airship had a skeleton. why? so that it could hold inside of the skeleton a lot of hydrogen filled gas bags. so with the advent of the rigid airship you could suddenly lift way, way more than anybody could before. his airship come his first airships wendy 400-foot category. the enormous things with of gasbag in them, steal skeleton covered with a light kind of doped cloth. >> host: von zeppelin one of the main characters of the german story of this. who wasn lord christopher bird would? >> guest: so he's a hero of my book, tragic you of my book. he is the man who drove the thing that we call, what was called the empire or the

imperial airshipri scheme. what that idea was when britain came out ofat world war i they have the largest empire in human history, 25% of the globe was british one way or the other. there empire was a little wobbly and it was being challenged and they were looking for ways to kind reestablishes there empire, reestablish a technological summer sea. empire stretched from sydney, australia, to toronto, egypt, india, there were going to connect these far-flung places -- they were going to connect these far-flung places with rigid airships. all of these airships flying around all of the time and connecting up the empire. more important, what does airships were going to do was to reduce the travel time from australia to london from a month to 11 days, to india from 11

days to four days. to canada in two point five days. it is a radical thing, the man who drove, getting back to birdwood thompson who was the secretary of state for air, a wonderful title i think, he drove this vision of the future, he was going to reestablish himself with the technological supremacy. the old empire was built on technological supremacy, the pounding piston and the big steamships and the bigger guns, they were going to kind of use their own technology now to rule this new world that was more peaceful and linked together. the point is into perspective, why were airplanes not a good idea? do you from london to karachi -- to go from london to karachi? this airship took off, hercules

try motor, heavier than air airplane went to india and it took 12 days and 26 bone rattling stops. the airship could do it in two and with a single refueling stop in egypt. it was a radical kind of idea and a new way to think about the world, christopher thompson was this man, he was a man of empire, one of the last men of empire. >> you return to this comparison a couple times in the book, one of the startling weaknesses of the airship was there was nowhere to go in a storm, no safe harbor, no port of refuge. the difference between a plane and a boat versus traveling in an airship when a storm hit when bad things happen? s.c. gwynne: airships as i said

were fundamentally flawed, we can see that. they were not readily apparent it was true then. they were vulnerable to wind. r101 our poster ship, the ship that is taken off for this, the trip to india who never made it. i'm not giving anything away, it was flawed. it had 6 acres of surface area on it. if you have ever been in a small syllable in a significant wind, you know what wind can do. imagine a 6 acres hitting wind. this becomes a problem. you are extremely vulnerable to the elements of the storms and updrafts and the weather of all sorts of things. one of the problems is, let a storm comes out we were up there

in the storms in the airship? you are getting buffeted all of those reasons i just said you cannot go down. you cannot go down because something that big in a storm on the ground gets beaten to pieces. you cannot control it or stop the wind. it must stay up to avoid getting smashed to pieces. this introduces this wild concept where at least theoretically a plane can land. theoretically, about, can find a safe harbor. an airship cannot land anywhere in a storm and it was an extremely tragic moment in the 1920's, the american airship, spent hours fleeing from the storms unable to essentially lose them, everywhere they went it was thunder and finally the same was hitting a downdraft and

it was went down into the freezing atlantic ocean and it was one of those flaws, there are many. the flaw that we all kind of know because we have seen pictures of the hindenburg is the hydrogen flaw. that is a big one. hydrogen, touch a spark to it, it goes up in a spectacular way. there was another flaw, vulnerability to wind and elements that are not being able to go down in a storm was another flaw. >> the full title of the book "his majesty's airship: the life , and tragic death of the world's largest flying machine" , how far did the r101 make it almost to india -- on the trip to india? s.c. gwynne: it was heading out to india, it crosses the chan nel where it should not have been up in the storm, crosses

the english, it is heading for egypt. it went down, 90 miles north of paris. it is in the air for nine point five hours, i chronicled the last flight, the doomed flight and what happens on the ship. we were able to preserve records because there were some survivors and because there was a lot of communication around. >> yours learn that more people died in the r101 crash than in the hindenburg which loomed so much larger in history and memory. why is the r101 not known as well? s.c. gwynne: the hindenburg as you know, and i know, absolutely world-famous, everybody knows the hindenburg. the reason that they know it is because of the 30 seconds or whatever it was of film.

they filmed this thing going up in a hydrogen fireball. if you go back to your 1937, lakehurst, new jersey, the airship, there was a film crew there and they filmed this thing and they were able to film it and this was shown in movie theaters all over the world, it was the ultimate reality television, nobody had ever seen anything like that before. it was not until the 1960's i think when a british producer finally married the sound because there was radio broadcast that we all know too where the guy is saying oh the humanity! the soundtrack gets married to the video if you will in the 60's and we have the full package and everybody in the world knows about the hindenburg. it overwrote things, the r101 is

a better story, the hindenburg story, the hindenburg stories what touched off and sparked. the r101 is this great empire sweeping story with all of these characters in it. beyond that, the r101 goes down in a hydrogen fireball just like the hindenburg but nobody photographed it. there were another 75 fireballs by my estimation, airships going down or burning in their sheds are being shot down by british fighter planes or whatever was happening. another huge number of airships had already gone up that way and the thing about the hindenburg, it was the only one way or we have a record of it. you can see what it looks like. >> author s.c. gwynne is our

guest this month, if you live in the eastern and central time zones it is 202--- you can also send a text at @booktv. he is with us for the next hour and 45 minutes, start calling in, we will talk about all of his books, seven books, his latest book is his his majesty's airship. let us talk about the practicality of the form of travel, we were talking about the 35 airships blew up, one sentence from page 162 of his majesty's airship. at least 15 giant rigid airships had gone up in a men's and of a hydrogen explosion that had nothing to do with fighting or combat missions.

ld 102, 1 04, 105, 117, the r 27, or 28, and the question is why, why did they continue to think after each one of these tragedies that they could make this work? s.c. gwynne: it is one of the great tales of human folly, i kind of realized sometimes you have a revelation and what are you really writing about? i am writing about early aviation, but really what i am doing is writing about human folly for the same reason why does this persist? airships going up in volleyball's in 1906 and 1908 and -- fireballs in 1906 and

1908. people just believed that with the right technology you could fix this. there is a huge bash a lot of the reason that airships lasted as long as they did and by that i mean 40 years, starting in 1900 and the last one went down in 1931, that was it. why did these things persist it is nationalism, a lot of it is there was something about the size or something that was so colossal and the technology, that ran them, it was so absolutely unusual. it is something that told a national hearts brings in some way. the whole reason that one build the zeppelins -- that the creator of the zeppelins will do built the zeppelins is

he was going to bomb innocent civilians and he was creating the first long-range bomber, the first weapon of mass terror. the first time that humans understood they could be annihilated from above. the whole early experiment, the zeppelins were big failures, especially after the british figured out if you shot an incendiary bullet at one, you got a very satisfying, videogame-like response. anyway, it was wrapped up in german national pride and the germans in germany, people thought that the zeppelins were succeeding. they fail and we came out of the war, it opens the door to britain. britain has this great plan,

they will make their own airships and they will protect this idea and it is wrapped up in national pride. they will beat the germans at their own game and that will perfect making the r101 save as a house, like saying the titanic is unsinkable. the americans who were lesser players, but there are only three main players. great britain and the united states but it was all very much tied up in some kind of idea of national pride. this kept things going way longer than they should have ever of gone. it is part hubris, overconfidence, straight out folly, it is wonderfully fun to write about.

this eternal kind of human optimism and also i must say in the early days of the aviation industry, there were a lot of crashes. i still do not understand the mentality of people who are willing to be the first adopters of technology, almost certain to kill you. people would go up in airplanes although airplanes kept crashing and people would go up in zeppelins or rigid airships even though they kept crashing. there was an ethic coming out of world war i were people were just more accustomed to being in peril or taking risks than they were before. with any new technology there is that period where it is not work that well. it is dangerous. to me, if you look at airplanes as time went by, their ability

to improve their speech, wing loading, they realized they did not think airplanes could ever carry very much. the improved wing loading. as we are moving towards will work two, airplanes are getting better and better incrementally and you can see it and the airships never got better. they never saw those -- solve those basic problems. even when the americans fill theirs with helium, they crashed the airships. >> the story of the r101, the title is his majesty's airship. yo first two books focusing on the financial industry, sellg money, young banker's fall of the lending boom, 1987 is one that came out. in outlaw bank came next in

2004, a wild ride into the secret heart of bcci. "empire of the summer moon" is what you are best known for, the fall of the most powerful indian tribe and american history, a pulitzer prize finalist. and then "the perfect pass: american genius and the reinvention of football" , then back to the civil war with "hymns of the republic: the story of the final year of the american civil war" , and this year with "his majesty's airship: the life and tragic death of the world's largest flying machine" ." s.c. gwynne: when you read that list out it makes me sound like i have a short attention span! it is interesting, that is my career. i am more of a journalist. >> how do you pick the stories you choose to write about? s.c. gwynne: in the same way i would have picked them, most of

my career was spent as a journalist at time magazine. in that, to some extent, there are stories you must do and you have to do, a bomb goes off in oklahoma city, have to go cover it. mainly i pick stories because they -- i like that they are good narratives and good stories and i want a good narrative and a good story. i would also hope that that idea connects the subject to a large idea. comanche indians, they held up the entirety of the advance, the manifest destiny america, as it was going west. if you look at my biography of stonewall jackson, there was a man who utterly and it was a complete failure who transformed the war.

the opposite, let us say that i had been a toss or specialist in a large midwestern university, i would be in a field, my whole career. here i just have gone where the best stories are. there are certain recurring interests. the civil war, two books of the civil war and i did a lot of time in research on that. that is the -- i think to some extent journalists, one of the appeals of journalism is whether you are a or whatever you are, or magazine, as i was, in your story and get all excited and you write the story and it is in the bottom of a birdcage at the back of the night and you start again. it is great, we are off to a new subject and a new something. that is more who i am.

>> born in western massachusetts, joining us from texas, first call from houston, texas, marshall, you were on with s.c. gwynne. >> good morning and thank you. i am interested in three things, one, your s.c. gwynne process -- your writing process and what do think about agents? s.c. gwynne: writing process and agents? >> i wrote them down in case you need them later. s.c. gwynne: my writing process, people say do i write every day? i do not i am in the world of nonfiction so i cannot do we fiction up and write until noon every day or something. what i do requires either

extensive reporting in current times or extensive research. most of what i do really is research. the majority of the time that i spent is not writing which is weird. sometimes it strikes me that i have been researching a book for two years and have not written a word. that is the way it is. once i've done the research, i tend to write, i tend to do a lot of background research and then i will research individual chapters just before i write them. i do not understand writers who do not do this by there is a lot of them who do not, the outline, the outline is everything. it is the process of thinking your way through the story. the main thing i write, once

i've done the research, then it is the outline and then what i'm going to do is put into the outline, three c, san houston, deals with the comanche. when i get down to three the i am actually going to go pack in information which is going to tell me you need to go to this book, this source, this reference. as i moved through the outline, by the time i am writing i'm not going i wonder where that particular piece of information is, it is in the outline. i'm riding an annotated outline and that is the way i -- i am writing an annotated outline and that is the way i move through each chapter in a book. it is, it works for me, i have built a machine, going to write the story or chapter for me,

it is also the concept, it has a really good, really thorough outline. as for advice to writers, i started out in the world of fiction. it took me much longer than it should have to realize that i am no good at that. i do not know, i can look at a blank page and i do not know how to pick a subject or where to write, something set in ancient egypt? i have no idea. if you pull me into nonfiction, and everything about how to figure all of that stuff out. i have been doing it for so long. mostly as a journalist. to me, when i finally got over the idea i would be at scott

fitzgerald or something, i am emphatically not ever going to be that. when i realized that nonfiction was the way to go, i started working with a journalist. what to write about, i am working for somebody now and i'm getting assigned. i am working for a newspaper and five stories a week, you are not going to sit around and wonder whether you are going to set your book in ancient egypt, your out on a store with an editor who is waiting for that thing to come back. it forced me to write because that is what journalism was. i covered business, for most of my early career but it was deadlines, stories, either i would pick them up or the editor would pick them up or the breaking news was determined. this is not a good answer, i am just sharing my own experience.

when i realized that is what i was meant to do and was good at and understood it changed everything for me as a rider. -- writer. what was the third? host: agent? s.c. gwynne: here is how my ward works, come up with an idea. i then write a 25 page book proposal. some people write a sample chapter, i write the proposal as if to demonstrate the type of writing it would be. in the 25 pages, you -- in the early goings in my career it was used to get an agent. i have a book proposal here. it is going to be a book about -- of the summer moon.

i wrote a book proposal and i sent it a guy in asia and he -- it was not a good proposal. he came back and i will always remember his response. he said you know, there is a book in here somewhere, i am pretty sure, i am not sure where it is. that was the response. what then happened was this is a good agent who was a fiction editor at the new yorker, he knows what he is doing with words. they thing gets redone, republished, good agents do that for you. one of the reasons they are good and successful is because they involve themselves in the first stage of the product, making sure that proposal is really good. that is what they are going to send an editor to solve the book. but it what happens next and if the agent is good, they will

send it to the correct shop publishing houses. as a result will be a sale, it is an advance. that is how my world works. the agent sells it, i get an advance, usually in three parts. one right away, the second, progress, and third when the manuscript is delivered. the agent becomes a critical part of the everything that happens. he realized that the editors, or the editors i have dealt with, they do not want to deal with flaky writers. they would rather deal with agents. smart agents who have a sense of the market and everything else, they are critical middlemen and there is all kinds of stories about that, they agents.

i had a movie agent trying to sell scripts in hollywood, he was the worst agent. really, he held us back. on than i ever would have been a famous screenwriter, but he was an obstacle to success. i have a good agent, i would include there is the editor, agent, rider relationship. -- writer relationship works. an agent that is good will be enormously helpful on the front end of what is your idea, how are you going to crop the proposal, how are you going to actually figure out what it is you will do? that is a long-winded answer. host: you mentioned your book that was on the bestseller list and the outline of your riding,

the empire of the summer moon, it takes place on two tracks, a larger story of the comanche and the history of the comanche and then there is the more intimate story about the parker family. who is the parker family? s.c. gwynne: it was one of those frontier families that went out onto the front tier and in this case it central texas, willing to go out and to go into hostile territory unsettled territory, willing to go where there were not institutions like police are words or anything or even commercials -- commercial institutions. in those days you could get these enormous kind of land grants if you are willing to do that. from mexico and they came down and they were given a lot of land and they went and built their fort in the absolute edge of -- well into indian country.

as i have said many times before when describing the frontier, i could kind of see going out on the frontier myself as a young man. i could maybe in a pinch of sea dragging my wife out there? -- in a pinch see myself dragging my wife out there. but children? it is dangerous. it is land that belongs to someone else. the parker family went out and on a fateful day, in 1836, largely comanche raid rated the fort and ended up killing people and taking captives, one of whom was a little girl's with cornflower blue eyes and blonde hair named cindy and parker who became one of the most famous

indian captives. -- cynthia parker who became one of the most famous indian captives. as for the craft, the book works in two tracks and the reason it does work is because of the two tracks. i got the track of the rise and fall of the comanche tribe which is interesting how they got the horse from the spanish and understood the horse better than any other tribe, ever. they used it not only to hunt but also to fight. you have this great rise and fall of the tribe going back to spanish times. then you also have issues, a little bit a small store of the parker family and going out alone in the frontier and losing the daughter to the indians who later comes back and her son becomes the last greatest chief of the comanche. it is a great plot. we have a big picture plot of

the american west, the southwest anyway. alternating chapters with the smaller tail of the parker family and the little girl and you are never far, no matter how you talk about the spanish or the horses or the way that the native frontier was, we are far from this story of a real family. host: one of the things that stands out is the violence, the cruelty of the frontier, things that would be called war crimes or worse, why was it important to go into such detail about that in this story? s.c. gwynne: i think it was -- i detail in graphic terms violence because the reporter in me really happened. if you cannot gloss over it, you cannot say it did not happen.

you cannot see that the indian tribes, the comanche did not mistreat captives, they did. by the same token, you cannot say that the texas rangers were a bunch of nice fellows who were out there trying to keep the peace. they were violent in many of the same ways. they became famous, the rangers, famous for giving no quarter. that is an ugly thing, when you take a sleeping indian village and go in and there is no quarter, every man, woman, child is dead. it was this kind of extremely violent place, the frontier. there was a sense, the way indians have been pretrade in

american -- been portrayed in the 20th century, you have the movies, the 30's, the 40's, the 50's were indians were bad. they were not particularly bad or good, there were human beings. then comes the very my heart at wounded knee, a popular book of the 60's where this entirely different vision of who native americans were. and a very rosy, not showing the violent side if you will, not showing the violence that took place between tribes long before white people ever got here. i think there was a certain feeling that these tribes were the victims and they were always victims and they were nothing but victims and the american colossus rolled over them and destroyed them.

there is truth in that. 365 broken trees later's -- treaties later. the fact was and this is how i portrayed the comanches, some of these tribes were enormously powerful, diplomatically, commercially, militarily, there were sophisticated. they held the comanche empire, it was not like the roman empire. there was a lingua franca which was comanche, they held vassal states and tribes, they regulated commerce between them, there was all of this that went on. my vision i guess, as i wanted to portray the power, yes, did they get subsumed and run over? yes they did, but there were and always like that, i think there was some times, that gets

forgotten about if you look at the iroquois confederation or other tribes in american history, enormously powerful. and violent, and mistreated their captives like crazy and they were doing it a long time before the white man got there and it took white people for them, the heirs of the judeo-christian tradition and the enlightenment to come over and be shocked at some of these things. the native americans were not shocked by it. host: s.c. gwynne is our guest, taking your calls and questions, when you least is in louisiana -- cornelius is in louisiana. caller: god bless both of you and c-span two, my question for you being an african-american, do you ever talk about the buffalo soldiers?

also august the 20th, on the history channel they will celebrate the seventh 61st, they were all black tank units during war two, we would welcome you to louisiana to do a story on them and what happened here, we had a what we call a massacre, the area would have been massacred it was not for the first african-american that stayed at the hotel thinly, there were not allow plaques at the hotel family and the general spent time at our historical hotel which is 100 years old now. i would love if you would do a story, like american heroes, and or have you ever thought of that? thank you and god bless america. host: i do not know if you've

heard of the black seminoles? s.c. gwynne: one of the great medal of honor winners from the african-american heroes, i wrote about the buffalo soldiers in "empire of the summer moon" ." they were like a lot of black soldiers, 10% of the union army was black at the end of the war, they were mistreated and they were kind of discriminated against and they were treated horribly by indians but they had enormously tough fighters and it is a great history to be told which i told a part of in my book. host: bob is in minnesota joining us, you are on with s.c. gwynne. caller: i turned your show on when you were talking about the hydrogen episodes earlier in the sentry and i did not get the gist of what the conversation was going to be about, there is

a few things around hydrogen right now that are really interesting, i'm not sure the audience would be necessarily known into the importance of hydrogen -- would be necessarily tuned into the importance of hydrogen. s.c. gwynne: i am talking about hydrogen in the context of the first 35, 40 years of the 20th century. it is used in airships, hydrogen is the best lifting gas, helium also goes up it is only half as good as hydrogen, the problem is hydrogen blows up, it was a chronic problem of these big airships had in the early century. really going through the last big boom was the hindenburg in 1937.

hydrogen and hydrogen after that was never ever used again in airships. if you look at the experiment will type airships, they are very cool, helium. all the way. it is interesting because hydrogen, i'm not against hydrogen, they save the world from what i read. the new hydrogen technologies. they are astounding, at least from what i read, it was limited to -- limited to the particular practical applications on these big airships and one of the most remarkable things that say, the hindenburg after all of these things happened, how i cannot remember what it was, 7 million

cubic feet of hydrogen. host: this is seven years after the r101? s.c. gwynne: yes, the guy, the heir to von zeppelin who was in charge of this he desperately wanted hindenburg to be a helium airship. really, it was funny, he was a strange, he had concluded finally with r101 the hydrogen was a bad idea. deville airships with. -- to fill airships with. he did everything he could to secure helium. what has happened as helium lee was not available at all commercially, it was located in the texas panhandle and kansas and it was -- it began to be produced in larger quantities in the 20's. the problem was it was hugely

expensive and hard to ship and that is why the british did not use it. the germans tried like crazy to get a hold of the helium. i guess as the world lurched closer towards the 30's, the americans decided that helium was a strategic element and there were not going to share this with anybody. the last few treaties of roosevelt and his people, it did not work, we were not going to share it. the germans, again, nationalism, if you recall seeing the picture of the hindenburg, it has swastikas on it and it is a nazi ship and it was not going to get the helium and as a result, it went up in a gigantic hydrogen fireball. host: essex, connecticut, you are next. caller: i want to congratulate mr. s.c. gwynne on all your

success. you have had quite a bit, you have been pigeonholed to integrate and i think the success would be your book on the comanche. i have to pose you a challenge and a question. with love, i have become fascinated by the indigenous people and all of the different tribes and it is easy to find information and books on the mohicans and the comanche, so many others, i can go down the list. in my effort to find information on the pride that columbus and the conquistadors were so quick to annihilate. it is amazing how much information is not out there. my challenge to you is i will guess that you have some information, my challenge is i would hope that would be the next effort on your part if you decide to write another book on

indigenous people. i would challenge to you and what can you tell us about that tribe that columbus and the conquistadors came up against? and you fill us in and educate about what we can expect from you? s.c. gwynne: thank you for the question, i do not know anymore than you do, i have read that too and i have not -- if i do not do my own research into it, i do not really understand what the parameters were and i also do not understand because i have not looked into it, although it is a great idea, although i do not understand -- i am not sure why there is a little information about it, sometimes there is so little recourse at the time and when you go back in time and we are talking about way back in time, the records and of the things that the spanish have been pretty good at

and only speaking was keeping records of things -- generally speaking was keeping records of things. i would see what records it would be of the tribe. i would suspect because there is so little information that you cannot find it, it does not exist. you cannot really work with anything. it is an interesting concept. like the first contact tribe, just an idea. you have peaked my curiosity, i will look into it and see why something has not been done, it in some ways it is a logical thing to do. host: i want >> host: i want to come back to the viewer using the term pigeonholed. becoming a pulitzer finalist on your third book and pirates of the summer who do think it pigeonholed you? what was at experience like

becoming a pulitzer prize finalist so early in your writing career? >> guest: i wouldn't say pigeonholed that surprised by success. that book is a big hit it sti sells a lot. this should happen all writers. i hope it does. i had, i i followed it with another bestseller, not -- empire is in it so, it's got very dust on it. i'm not sure whyn it does. so when people think of me as the author of that as opposed to say the author of "the perfect pass" about the reinvention of the game of football and they clearly do, crazy people are thinking of me in terms of football. it's fine. i mean, i do have any problem with it. but here's what it didn't do. what it didn't do was pigeonhole me commercially.

i mean let's say you were a band and you do an album and everybody likes the albumn if u decided to an album that's completely different that is a jazz. you did rock the first. nobody wants that. your record company is that he kept the and say look, you better go back and do the thing that sold, do that. i never had to deal with that. in fact, the success of "empire of the summer moon" put me in a position where i could say i could kind of, i don't want to say do what it want but i could, there were things that i could try to do that it wouldn't have been able to do. i thought of two characters in the civil war that i would just die to write about, you know? although i wasn't a civil war destroyed so i normally may be with net done that. those two would've been ulysses s. grant andn stonewall jackso.

jackson was a possibility. i then spent the next four years of my life writing a 680 page of barbie to stonewall jackson. i may be pigeonholed in someone's mind, but not commercially. and then again the books the follow are a book about football, then another book about the war, a different part about the war and then a book about airships. i don't feel like i've been pigeonholed at all commercially. >> host: that biography, rebel yell, the subtitle the violence, fashion and redemption of stonewall jackson. focus on that last bit, the redemption of stonewall jackson. what did you mean. by that? >> guest: well, he sort of, as i said operate in several levels. he's a complete failure in life. he reallyur is.

he's a professor, like the worst professor that anybody has ever seen and the kids make fun of him and he's just this kind of, i mean, he is not a success at all. so in a sensese he redeems himsf from his own failure. there is a sense also i think that the religious sense he was intensely religious man who believed that all of his success came from godod and from nowhere else.e and that he deserved none of the credit for what he did. he was, i think he was himself reading in the eyes of god. i'm not saying you have to agree with them. robert e. lee was also deeply religious. and finally there is a peculiar sense that a a talk about at e en ofk the book where you, whee after he is shot by his own men at the battle of

chancellorsville, after his probably the most brilliant light march in history, or one of theme anyway. he dies a few days later. and when he died an interesting response. he was of course a great hero to the confederate. second only to robert e. lee. but it was interesting how many people in north admired him. they thought he was a gentleman and thought he was a christian, a real christian. they greatly admired his military skills which were in terms of battle fighting. after he died there were church bells that rang in the north, a number of places, you know, the northern view of him was very interesting. there's certainly a few of them that he's a traitor, why even bother writing a book about -- whatever. that kind of wasn't the view of him. kind of this christian gentleman who fought for the wrong side. i mean, he shouldn't have done

that. anyway, so there's this kind of multilevel retention going on i guess if you will. i guess that's the i best answei can come up with. >> host: just following that come he died in 1863. 1864 the poem barbara comes out and the story of barbara, she pulls up the flag that has been shot down and holds it and the poem reads she says to the marching troops the confederate troops marching back of sheet if you must this old gray-haired spader countries flag a then in the poem stonewall jackson's reaction followed. said quote i should said this i blush of shame over the face of the leader came the nobler nature within him stirred who like at the women's deed and word. quote, touches the hair on jan gray had come dies like a g march on, he said. did that actually happen?

>> guest: well, no not exactly like that. that wasn't the point. the point was that's the way people thought of him. and this was a few held of this, i don't know, he was a, i mean he took countless lives, union lives. i mean, he was one of the most effective fighters america has ever produced. so, i mean, about it people were dead and/or wounded because of him. but there was this other kind of sense that captured in the poemw of who he was. when you look at, there is a real tendency i think these days to just kind of look at like anyone who was in the confederacy as somehow evil. somehow kind of like pointing fingers saying yeah, they did

it, they were the ones who did it. when it was a kind of a narrow way to look at the world. not that the confederacy didn't secede and not that they didn't fight and not that the principal reason for the wasn't slavery. which it was. if you look at where did those slaves come from? it was newport, boston, new york. they were all finance, all those voyages to the middle passage were financed out of the northcom insured out of the north, commercial empires jpmorgan was built partly on the slave trade.re 15 president own slaves, tenin while in office. you know, it isn't, i don't think people in the north from a historical perspective can sort of point fingers and say, it was all the problem. the greatest speech ever written to me was lincoln's second inaugural, and what he says in this speech, he says civil war was blood atonement for all these years of the national sin of slavery.

at this point is that slavery is wound around the core of the country, and it is. he views that we had to expiate the national sin, the war, that was blood atonement for the national sin of slavery. anyway, so i think there are, i perhaps take the more expansive view of the more holistic view of the country as a whole. and anyway, getting off on a tangent. >> host: just about one hour into our in-depth this month with s. c. gwynne. his latest book, "his majesty's airship." we're taking her calls and questions and also looking for social media posts and texts. here's a you can get in touch with us. 202-748-8200 if you live in eastern or suppertime zones. and it is 202-748-8201 if you're in amount or pacific time zones. if you want to send us a text,

202-748-8903. 202-748-8903. sam has been waiting out of florida. you are on with s. c. gwynne. >> caller: thank you. my question is a quality of life back in the time of the civil war. you know, you see women getting on stagecoaches and going from town to town. you can't do that today without stopping at a gas station. how did they stop and stay? what happened when they had to go to the bathroom? what was a hotel room like where people didn't shower for months at a time and they couldn't do the sheets. what did they, the town smell like? .. television, those horses never go to the bathroom. . what did the town smell like? questions like that. guest: this types of questions,

to me, make the best history. when rain for in a town and mixed with the horse maneuver, you had this main street that was all sort of feces and mud. what does it smell like? the main street that was feces in mud, what does it smell like, it was a dirty, gritty place and there was very few niceties anywhere. i applaud your curiosity when the historian is taken the trouble, what did it but didn't feel like where did they go to the restroom and those things interest me. when i was researching the civil

war washington, d.c. during the war, talk about smelly there was this raw sewage running everywhere, the tide would common in the whole town would wreak and it was a small place that was dead horses and pigs in the street. if you look at my book hands of the republic i spent a lot of time doing what you suggest, what did it smell like. how dirty was it how many horse carcasses were there on constitution avenue i spent a lot of time and put in my book. i am with you. >> why did you choose to write about the final year of the american civil war was. >> that's a good question, ies wrote the biography of stonewall jackson and he died in 1863 in

the middle of the war. when i researched outlook i had to research the lead up to the war the two plus years the two chancellors but i didn't have to research half of that because my central character. in fact jackson had to live in gettysburg would probably be divorce i got a very close up vif the war's first two years. after i'd written the book, i was reading about the later war, some books about the end of the war. i was struck by how absolutely hard and cruel and bitter and

vengeful it was, compared to the first couple years of the war. not that war is a pretty place, people were dying from bullets in diseases like crazy in the early war. but there were something more innocent about it. at the end of the war, you had the rise of guerrilla warfare, which you never had before. 10% of the union army black troops, who were given no quarter by confederate soldiers. you had the rise of the hardware d war, people like will sheridan, basically conducting anti-civilian warfare, burning forms to the ground, burning crops to the ground. what sheridan did in the shenandoah valley was probably worse than what sherman did in georgia and the carolinas.

just the desperation at the end of the war on the part of the south. the only people left home, so many of the young men had died, fathers and brothers were dead or wounded. you had women and slaves and children trying to man these trying to man these farms and losing them and going bankrupt, it was so cruel and so bitter and i thought the legacy of the work today is more of that certainly they go to shenandoah valley i spent so much time in the early were that i realized how the war had changed so that i thought, okay i wanted to write about the civil war but what of my book is about time.

the last year and to rise to take over the army and you had what is supposed to be the end-all fight between grant and lee in virginia until the end of the war. it was interesting i thought it had to be a great idea, a book about the final year of the work and of course the first thing i think of is there's been 18 books done about it. and with all classically trained historians i googled it to see where amazon or whatever i did tn anything, not about that. not since bruce canton, he won the pulitzer prize in 1964. the first time anybody had done

that. i was sort of the second. i wanted to do it for the i said earlier, but also because i thought it was an open field to play in. host: that comes out in 2019, the latest book earlier this year " his majesty's airship." in connecticut, you are next. caller: good afternoon. i am going to go back to stonewall jackson, i find him such a fascinating character. even before he came famous in the civil war, he started exhibiting strange behavior that continued into the civil war. the second thing i want to know about, he was a strict disciplinarian. they still loved him.

how do you feel about that? guest: let me answer the second question first. he was indeed loved by his men, is interesting because he marched them to death. one of the thing that happened, as he marched in the shenandoah valley campaign, he marched and fought in a marched and fought -- marched and fought and marched and fought. they did not know where they were. as time went by -- in hindsight, they could see where they had been. they had gone here, to stand and come up the valley, the river valley. they could now see where they had been and they could see the battles in retrospect. they began to see this guy as a real genius. one who was so good that they

would always win their battles. i think that was part of why the men loved him, they loved him because he was a hell of a fighter and they thought he was going to keep them safe. if you look at jackson, as jackson went to west point, got out, ended up fighting in the mexican-american war in the 1840's. spent some time in the army. then eventually left the army, got a job teaching at the virginia military institute in lexington, virginia. he was a completely peculiar character all the way around. before i get to jackson as a peculiar character, i should observe his men loved him. his generals often hated him. he mistreated his generals in

astounding ways. host: and was not afraid to court-martial them. guest: no, all he was doing was court marshaling. he was a tough customer. he was unfair to a ridiculous extreme. some really deeply unfair in his treatment. it was some sort of a psychosis. you would think a guy like that really needed the allegiance of his main lieutenants, but he alienated many of them. it was a peculiarity of his personality. if we go back to the lexington years, just a peculiar -- an audit duck. wherever he was in the middle of any conversation at 9:00, he would abruptly leave and go home. he had a very strange diet, he was always on whatever fat diet because he had stomach problems.

he was considered by the students to be a joke. they would drop pictures of him -- they would draw pictures of his feet on the blackboard wall, they were trust of a cadet by the door so when jackson opened the door, the cadet would go sprawling. they would pull the linchpins from the canon so that artillery practice, the wheels would fall off in the canon would go rolling down the hill with the professor flogging after it. as a teacher -- here is the kind of teacher he was. on a test, you had to regurgitate word for word everything in your textbook. you were supposed to just put down exactly what there was, nothing more. if you did, you were punished. lousy teacher, very peculiar

guy. eccentric. it is interesting, because this happened to a lot of people during the war. he was not a failure like grant, grant was a washout failure. partly because of his alcoholism. sherman was pretty much a washout failure, though he was not a drunk like grant was. even one of my favorite characters barton pretty much a failure, just before the war starts. but there is something in war that changes the ground rules. somebody like jackson, the minute anything to do with war comes up, he is smarter than anybody. he is more resourceful, more creative. one of the first things he said before the war started, if the war starts, we need to march

into the north, taken army, marching to the north, live off the land. he initially said give no quarter, which he took back that. the confederate war department reacted -- they sent someone to shut him up, stop saying this. we are not going into the north, we are not taking an army to lake erie. we are not going to fan out the army and live off the land, how crazy is that? jackson's point was you have to make the north feel the pain. what does robert e. lee do in 1862? he crosses the border into maryland. what does he do in 1863? crosses the border into pennsylvania. what does sherman and sheridan do in 1864? they span out the armies and live off the land. when it came to war, jackson understood it and got it right

away. he understood if they were going to win, they would have to fight that way. we could go on with his peculiarities, he is one of the most compelling. i find him endlessly fascinating . i've never written a biography of my main hero, ulysses s grant. but following him is looking at a completely different war, if you will, then following jackson through the war and i find it very illuminating. host: the 2015 book "rebel yell" two texts we have received, one from ben turner in austin texas calling you one of the best storytellers and researchers there is, read whatever he writes. a question from eric in new york, wants us to return to his majesty's airship, asking if there was a positive financial component that kept the airships

viable. i understand the pride and nationalism, but did anyone make any money despite the tragedy? guest: if you're a good question, no. no one ever made a penny on airships. i take that back. the hindenburg was actually crossing and re-crossing the atlantic. i cannot remember if they made money in the bottom line, i doubt it. but it was a revenue producing venture. from the beginning, the first airships were zeppelins. even though they ran -- it was like a phony airline the only flu and fairweather -- flew in the fair weather. they did not make any money. i should take that back, what i said.

the zeppelin factories got contracts during world war i from the german government. they did make money, producing and building the zeppelins. within the context of the military contracts, they did make money. what we get to, the british efforts in the 20's. it is just a sinkhole for money, money going down. they loaded it up with the most advanced technologies, even when they were not necessarily appropriate. it was just a one-way street. they certainly paid salaries of the people who built the airship, but it was pretty much a giant money hole. host: in texas, you are on. caller: good afternoon.

listening to you talk and hearing your approach to studying history reminds me of a professor i had at university of texas, his name was oliver. he was a specialist in european, russian and german history. i wonder if you ever knew him, he was eccentric. he was the only professor i've ever heard of who could fill up the biggest lecture hall on campus with people who were not enrolled in his classes because they loved to hear him lecture. he was not funny. he was not entertaining. but he knew every detail about the areas he was teaching about. you had to learn the geography,

the rivers, the mountains, the minerals. as far back as records would allow. that kind of detail in the way that you speak and have all of these details at your disposal, i just wonder what you think of the way history is taught today. it seems to me there is a lot of glossing over. so when i read a book, you mention grant as your hero. when i read a book like the history of grant, i really enjoy it and i enjoy listening to you talk. and i wonder what is your opinion of what you see of the way history is taught today, and if you ever had the opportunity to meet that professor. guest: thank you for that.

i have heard the name, i am aware of him. but i have not -- i would guess one of the reasons people came to his lectures is because he told stories. humans like to have the world put into narrative. that is what i do for a living, i put the world into narrative. this goes all the way back. we have this middle eastern tribe that has adventures over hundreds of thousands of years, they live here and there and do this and whatever. then someone comes along and writes the bible, which puts it all together into a narrative tale. it is the way human beings like to get their information. it is interesting.

you think of fiction as a storyteller, but nonfiction -- you have a lot of the same tools the fiction writer has. i do not mean making things up. but you have the ability to say -- bring your characters on stage where you want. you can set up point and counterpoint between characters. tell a good tale. all of my books are hung off of human beings, stories about human beings. "hymns of the republic," the narrative hangs off of a person. one of those is barton. one of those people as robert e. lee, another person is grant.

the way to make people interested in history is tell them a human story, tell them a great tale, because they are there. when i go back to thinking about empire of the summer moon -- when i talked to -- sometimes i talk to fifth-graders or middl schoolers. i have talked to middle schoolers before, they are falling asleep in front of you as you speak. whenever you are saying does not interest them. but i will tell them the story of how the six shooter started. it this unbelievable tale of -- there is a guy who has this crazy idea for a five shooter with these interchangeable cylinders, there is no use for

this. he thinks it might be useful in the military, but the military has no use for it. nobody wants them. somehow, the texas navy gets a hold of them. they order them, they have them, they are sitting in trunks in a warehouse. somehow, the texas rangers fighting and losing on the frontier heard about this. he got a hold of these things, figured out how to use the guns. when the mexican war came around , his lieutenant went and worked with samuel colt and designed this gigantic nine pound handgun , hand cannon that became the gun that changed everything in the west. it is this incredible story. colt is bankrupt by this time, colt has lost even the patents.

he asked as her ties in new york papers to find someone who has the pattern for the gun. it saves him from bankruptcy and turns him into the richest man in the world. we all know what a colt 45 is. that is a story, to story about the rangers fighting on the frontier and losing. they only had three shots. they carried any number of arrows, they read a huge disadvantage. they see the five shooter can even the odds. the world proceeds from there. if i tell that story to middle schoolers, i've got them. you could tell that story differently. just tell the story about the little ranger that could. host: great details, two sides

of the same coin perhaps reflected when we asked for list of your favorite books. here is what you said. the worst journeyn the world, goodbye to a river, the wolf hall trilogy and desert solitaire. the great details part, just from the introduction of desert solitaire, i want to read two sentences. if a man knew enough, he could write a whole book about the juniper trees. that one particular juniper tree that grows from the ledge of naked sandstone near the old entrance to arches national monument. guest: he is a genius. the books are a little all over the place, but -- what was your question? host: on the details, the

stories about details, the canoe trip down a river, about the desert in the sandstone. you are looking for details in these stories. guest: in those stories, details are everything. this ill-fated voyage to the soh pole, the details are absolutely extraordinary, draw drop so as all of the stuff in edward abbey. the hilary mantell, wh historical fiction about good old henry viii, the story that we all know. it is flat, it astounds me. some of the best fiction i have seen in my life. it is so detailed driven. the key is to figure out how to use details. there's a difference between

detail and doing a data dump. one of the temptations when you have done a lot of research on something is to use your research. you see it a lot and civil war battles. the researcher has gone out and researched it like crazy, going to spend a year on whatever this one battle. he is going to put everything in, you are going to get every last bullet. what the 13th virginia was doing at 9:00 a.m., those are not details. that is a data dump. that is the writer being undisciplined and we are all subject to it. i went down a major bunny whole on empire of the summer moon. i should not have done it, i had this great research.

it had to go, 40 pages had to go. i was using my research. there's a difference between detail, which is the telling detail. you are walking down pennsylvania avenue in washington and there's a dead pig and horse carcass, that is a detail. dumping everything i know about washington in 1860 is not a detail. it is a question of the telling detail, the detail that really illuminate something as opposed to just throwing every last thing in there that you know. host: to the west coast, good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for all these years, everything you do. thank you to one of my old professors for giving us the bug of history. i am interested in your research

and book. we know a little bit about the apaches. when you were talking about movies and popular knowledge of things, there is a quote -- maybe there is some comanche or other quotes you found in your research that are parallel that maybe you can give us some wisdom on. talking to his own people, he said you are. make yourselves slaves. i think he was making reference to the products coming in from outside their environment. so anyway, i kind of see some parallels as to what happened to the native americans as well as modern kind of society, may the suburbs today our reservations,

the big box stores the broken treaties -- the big-box stores are reservations. any sort of wisdom with the comanches on how they can for see their liberty in decline? guest: great question. the problem is that -- the treaty -- the plains indians were like the comanches, nomadic. the apaches were sort of a weird hybrid. they were nomadic, they were hunters. it was all hunting based. typically when a treaty would be made with the u.s. government or

estate, the treaty would involve you have to stop reading, stop whatever. you have to stay in this particular piece of ground, where there may or may not be hunting. by doing so, they were taking away the fundamental livelihood. comanches hunted buffalo, that is what they did. buffalo was the center of the culture. the food, clothing, lodging, everything. they take this away than say ok, here you go. we will give you beans and squash to plant. you can come down to the commissary and we will give you the bacon and flour and everything. in terms of comanches orplains indians, you are taking away the basis of their existence and

treating it for other defendants -- utter dependence on some quartermaster in the army. they often did not bring nearly the amount of food they said they would bring. in any case, the more food they bought, the more the dependence grew and the entire way of life was destroyed or removed. i do not recall the sitting bull quote, but it is a great quote. one of the interesting things about the centerpiece of my book, at some point he has a revelation and decides he is going to walk the white man's way and taken the last of the comanches. he was the last to surrender and he makes a go of it in the white man's world, which is part of my book. it was a horrible wrenching kind of life killing process.

eventually, there was no buffalo hunting, no nothing. no farming, nothing. but the white man giving you the flower --eflour and bacon. host: staying in california, you are on. caller: just off-the-wall question, but france, spain and england all came to the new country when it was discovered, russia was on the west coast doing what they were doing. i know a lot of treaties were broken. i am wondering because of the oil, the water, coal and other minerals, when we go to the moon or even mars, the same countries are going to be going there. are we going to be more any civilized up there then we are down here?

guest: i don't know, that is -- i would not think so. i have a pretty pessimistic view of humanity. we are barbaric people. we were a long time ago. i was just reading a history of the so-called dark ages, i do not see that anything has changed at all. in terms of human beings capacity for cruelty and viciousness and shortsightedness. it is a miracle when it works the other way. actually designs a system that does not turn immediately into some butchering monarchy or dictatorship. i would say we will take it all to the moon with us. sorry to be such a downer.

host: you mention what you are recently reading, here are your answers to when we posed the qution what are you currently reading. the wager and small mercies. which one do you want to talk about? guest: the dennis book, he wrote about mystic river, which is a great book and was made into one of my all-time favorite movies with clint eastwood directing. the small mercies book, it is a historic all novel, in a way. it is set in 1974 in boston. what a judge did in boston shortly before that was made a ruling that said roxbury hi, half those kids have to be shipped to south boston high school, which is all white irish. they were just going to exchange

and this created, as you may recall, it turns out people in the north are incredibly racist, just like the people in the south were. not much different. it is fascinating because the novel is set off against what is going on. the racism in it is so raw, it almost astounds me he can get away these days with writing that. it is quite something. i guess the fiction i am putting down on my list for you like hillary mantel, i like historical fiction. host: the keystone state, you are on. caller: good morning. thank you mr. gwynne, i have enjoyed your discussion.

my question goes back to the hindenburg before the 1937 crash. could you tell us about the last u.s. flight -- i believe it was 1935 or 1936, there was a full scare effort on the part of the germans to obtain helium from the united states. i believe the flight was dubbed the millionaires flight from lakehurst and back, it had people wake eddie rickenbacker and a young nelson rockefeller. guest: i think i mention this in the book. this was part of that enormous german pr push to get helium. it was very famous. when you think about what happened to the hindenburg not that long after, what it would have been if all those people had gone down. the germans mounted an enormous

push to try to sell this idea that the hindenburg is demonstrating -- the hindenburg is going to demonstrate the feasibility of air travel. just as our 101 was going to demonstrate the feasibility of air travel. they said it is all peaceful, we do not have any martial designs on this thing. they were just selling that idea like crazy to everybody. it is interesting to think about what would have happened if that had worked. the hindenburg would have been a helium ship. it certainly would not have blown up. it still would have been a nazi airship. that does not really answer your question, but thank you for anyway. host: almost the exception to the rule of crashes and explosions, the zeppelin.

what was that? guest: it was the exception -- i said that airships were a bad idea and did not work, most of them crashed, which they did. the grass zeppelin was -- it predated 101 by a couple of years, a hydrogen airship built in germany. the germans had not been allowed to build airships for a long time after world war i but they eventually built this one. the airships were extremely difficult to fly, much harder than airplanes. so many parameters that they were subject to. i cannot even begin to list them, incredibly difficult to fly. a lot of the problems they had were related to the fact the

people flying them did not know what they were doing or were not up to the task. the guy who took over for zeppelin, he assembled what amounted to the 1927 yankees of airship pilots and crew on that ship. even with them, they had unbelievably close calls. the airship should have been destroyed several times, somehow they got lucky. they flew it around the world, to tokyo. they made this thing work. it was not a very big airship and could not hold many people, it was going around the world down to brazil and over to tokyo and los angeles. it was having these near misses, but no one really knew about them.

one of the things about the zeppelin was it was always held up as look, the germans can do it, what is the big deal? go back to the question of why do we persist in doing airships when all these accidents keep happening. they didn't happen to this one, so people said it is simple. at one point in 1928, there were only two actual airships flying in the world, both of which were german built. you would have thought by that alone, wait a second. as opposed to tens of thousands of airplanes, maybe they are a bad idea because there are not any anymore. the idea was we are going to look at this, there is one. the germans make it look easy, we just have to do what they do. the airship in my book was in some ways a response to that.

we can outdo the germans, we are going to show you we can do you one better. host: about 20 minutes left, we have s.c. gwynne. in michigan, good morning. caller: good morning. and fascinated with the american indian trade and so on. there's some indian heritage in our family. i was always wondering -- you and i probably grew up watching daniel boone. i wonder how much our frontiersmen like daniel boone, how much truth there was between the indians and our american government that they would seek

all of his knowledge and so forth throughout the united states with all of our resources and everything, down rivers and things. i hate to imagine life from california said you had all kinds of people that would travel the rivers and how much -- the transfer of goods and so forth is like gold to those people. i am wondering what your thoughts are on the vital role that they play throughout. where they like daniel boone, that they had to converse with boones borough and have their meetings before they went to these wars and caused controversy? or was it give and take, let us take all we can get? my final thing is, something that my family taught me.

a lot of people do not understand -- the chiefs of the indians -- they have the least of the whole tribe. everything is for their people. if they go visit the chief, there is nothing. host: let us let s.c. gwynne take those up. he hung up, sorry about that. guest: i was trying to find the question in the early -- what did you think the question was? host: start with the chiefs. guest: it depends on the tribe, a lot of tribes wealth was measured in horses. comanches measured it that way. the higher your rank, you did

tend to have more horses than someone else. there was not any other -- i cannot think of what other private property there was, not much as we would define it now. host: was parker a chief? guest: he was, a young war chief. the comanches had a tremendously flat hierarchy. meaning there were not a lot of vice presidents and assistant vice president and so forth. you had technically a civil chief and a war chief. any 23-year-old was completely free to go recruit. let us say he has an idea, we are going to go raid and get a lot of horses and he goes out and sells the idea to his

friends. if he can sell the idea, there is nothing stopping him. they would go on a raid. you would steal their horses then come back. if it was a successful raid, the next time you said let's go raid the navajo. they would probably follow you. you could become a chief. you did not have to climb some sort of ladder, there was no ladder. it was completely flat. if the tribe was in five different bands, each one was autonomous. white men were always getting this wrong, they thought you make a treaty with the head supposedly of one of these bands, it did not mean anything as far as the others were concerned. a very flat hierarchy and easily entered if you wanted to be a chief. host: you talk about the end of his life, a celebrity in the

united states if not around the world. you talk about what he ended up with when he died, it was not much. guest: no. he became the chief of his tribe , the most important person in his tribe in peacetime. which means the comanches have surrendered, they are a reservation. he got the job because the military gave it to him and it took a good deal of politicking for him to keep it. he was -- he was a remarkable -- he was the most successful indian of the reservation period . the white were always coming up with these games to cheat them out. he made money. he went to washington and testified brilliantly, which i

quote in the book. in favor of getting land for his tribe. he lives in the most magnificent house any native american had, certainly on the planes. it was one of the most magnificent houses. he lived in this great place and was tremendously influential. but his approach was always that of generosity. at any given time, if you went to this great mansion, double porch mansion, you would see all of these lodges -- sometimes there would be 100 of them around the house. what were they doing? a lot of them had come in because they needed help. they needed help with money, they needed help -- he founded

the native american church, they would do a ritual, healing. they would come in because they needed money for a funeral and he would give it to them. he was so generous for so many years. he really gave away almost every cent that he had. at one point, he had a fair amount of money. just as terrifically generous man who led with his generosity. one of the greatest americans i have ever heard of, he carefully suppressed -- he was known to be one of the fiercest warriors on the plains and he carefully suppressed that. knowledge of a comanche raid would not have gone over well with white people on the frontier. host: to maryland, you are on. caller: it has been postulated

that if stonewall jackson had not died before gettysburg that it is quite likely the confederates would have won that battle, largely because stonewall jackson's talents were intelligence, reconnaissance. i would like your thoughts. number two, why gettysburg for the battle? my understanding, the confederates were on their way to harrisburg to capture the railroad hub, then they would take the trains down to the capital and capture that. your thoughts on both. guest: first of all, i am not an expert on gettysburg, it is not something i've written about. but i am interested in the subject of jackson because jackson died in may and a couple months later, we have gettysburg. the moves at gettysburg --

jackson simply would not have done that. jackson was the most aggressive commander america has ever produced. jackson would have moved forward, jackson would not have stopped moving. the battle would have changed, the entire character of the battle would have changed. as for what happened after that, it gets hypothetical very quickly. i think the chances of the confederacy winning that battle were very high. the problem is a battle one did not mean the army -- the union army was going away or going anywhere. what becomes interesting is the question of -- let us say you have a victorious confederate army. the union army licking its wounds. let's say the confederate army takes off, harrisburg was

supposed to be the original destination. what does that do to northern politics? you have a victorious confederate army with jackson running around pennsylvania. it is hard to imagine what happens to northern politics. it is hard to imagine how the army militarily response to it. it is entirely hypothetical and it is a fun game to play, because he only missed it by two months. another question, i am not enough of a gettysburg guy to answer that question. host: about 10 minutes left with s.c. gwynne, in chicago, good morning. caller: my question is -- i understand this gentleman is a historian, but he speaks in glowing terms of the southern

confederate traders -- traitors. these folks tried to overthrow the government. here is my question. speaking about stonewall jackson or any of those traders -- tr aitors, why isn't it talked about that these folks are traitors? guest: they are traitors, period . they are double traitors because people like jackson and lee were in long-term u.s. army people. they fought against their own army. i do not -- i do not see any reason to gloss over that. i think two concluded they are people in some way is something i would not go so far as to do,

i do not think they are. they are human beings, some are evil, some are not people. but they are not evil because they oppose government. i think these days especially, it seems to me like all the confederates are being treated as outright traitors, monuments are being taken down, they are being expunged from history, which i sort of disagree with. i am from connecticut, i live in texas now. i grew up with a really simple view of the war. they were bad people who wanted slaves and we beat them and they would not accept defeat and never got over it and kept trying to undo what we had done. real simple. we spent a lot more time on the revolutionary war because that was fought around where we lived. but anyway, my bias is a yankee

bias. i try not to be biased. condemning them seems beside the point. yes, they were traitors, they fought against the u.s. government, they try to defy the country. they tried to create an entire nation within the united states of america, it is astounding when you think about it. host: where do you think we are in terms of the ebbs and flows of writing about the civil war, history about the civil war? guest: i think things have changed. in terms of sympathy for confederates. i think it is a little one-sided to hold them responsible for the problem of slavery in the united states. people say they fought forward, right.

i will tell you stories about the middle passage that will make your hair stand on end. if we are going to be doing the moral balance sheet and saying -- he had jefferson, he did this, but he had sex with underage female slaves of his. that is a negative. it starts to become a little unrealistic and i think the path we are on now, which is to expunge the confederacy, tear down the monuments, that path is going to lead to getting rid of the jefferson monument and the washington monument, period. if you judge them by the same terms. they were slave owners and they were not terribly enlightened slaveowners. jefferson had sex with his underage female slaves. we can keep going. which is why it i like to read

lincoln's second in. at some point he wanted kindness and sympathy and understanding for everybody and for the country. we are what we are, slavery is wound around our core and it still is. tightly. i do not think anyone would disagree with that. it is the national sin of which we are still guilty. i am getting on my soapbox, but i think -- trying to understand it is a better way to go. host: one or two more phone calls, jimmy has been waiting in texas. good morning. caller: hello. this is jimmy, i am wondering what your opinion is -- why do you think most city-based civilizations collapse? host: a big question in the final couple minutes. guest: [laughter] i think that is above my pay

grade. that is for another type of historian. it is a great question. host: let me try to get in steve in wisconsin, about three minutes left. caller: this is steve, your books sound incredible. i am sure i would have enjoyed everyone, i read a huge amount of fiction and history, particularly about the civil war the last two years. the last book i read was about stillwell, i do not know if you have any interest in talking about that. the civil war, i read a book i think called devil stands, it was historical fiction with magical touches about -- do you

have any thoughts about that? guest: forest is a featured character in one of my chapters in "hymns of the republic." he was a remarkable man, we were saying how stonewall jackson was militarily speaking smarter than everyone else, forrest was a version of that. he was a hard man, a rich man. the most successful -- one of the most successful slave traders in the south, one of the biggest in the richmond area. as it turned out, he was one of these natural born commanders who is better than everybody else. sherman said he was the single best commander produced in the civil war. he had a fearsome reputation, he fought a type of warfare that

increasingly as the war went on was not standard warfare, it was more raid based, which she was very good. there was a very famous massacre -- largely or partly guilty of, i write about this in my book. but he was known to be -- i think a hard face of the south. he was brilliant, incredibly tough, uncompromising. you knew where he was coming from. one of the biggest slave traders in the confederacy. host: the final 60 seconds here, is that something you might

write about next, or what is next for you? guest: i have thought about forrest. i do not think i am going to do forrest, he is a fascinating character. i do not know what is next. i discover a great character -- i did not discover barton. but i did kind of discover an angle on her. people think of clara barton as the founder of the american red cross, this kind of matronly person. she is actually a kick ass action hero of the civil war and there is only one woman you can describe that way. so a pursue her. host: s.c. gwynne has been our guest for the past two hours on