with very few preconceptions but as i found out very early on i had lots of preconceptions. the first one being since these wars are so unpopular and these combat films are so dangerous with all of the i e ds and mortar attacks that go on, i thought women would be reluctant to go to iraq and afghanistan. the first interview i had that disabuse me of this idea was a colonel in the marines, one of 50 female colonels who told me serving as a public affairs officer for the second battle of volusia was the high point of her life apart from or giving birth to her two children and i thought she is a public affairs officer. of course she will say that but then i heard this from more and more women including lot of women who volunteered to go and who volunteered to go to repeat tours of duty. ..

one woman i spoke to, jocelyn parada was a marine sergeant who had been very remote chance to go to iraq and had been ducking out for deployment she said because she had a 1-year-old at home and she said as soon as she

got on the bus to go to cherry point and fly over there, the monumentality laughed and the marine mentality hit me and i thought great, let's go. this is work. and she ended up extending her tour of duty because she really wanted to stay with her unit. and this unit cohesiveness overrode not only the way that women felt about the mission that they were on. because i was interviewing active-duty personnel i could not mathematically felt about the war, but many of them made it clear that they were antiwar. and one of the most striking interviews i had was with the sailor, choline fagin, who had left the war and was in law school and she was very antiwar and talked about going to thoughts of protests when she was out of uniform and made her feelings perfectly clear. but at the time the exhibit

opened in the fall of 2008, calling could not attend the opening because she was on a steamer had to cyprus. she had gone to officer candidate school because she felt that she needed to support her fellow sailors no matter how she felt about the war effort. so there were many surprises along the way. i think that these wars and women's involvement in them have really changed the way that we need to look at motherhood, the way we need to look at women and combat and i think that we are going to come out of these wars with women having brought a role in the military. everyone in the military knows that women aren't combat. many civilians don't, but they are in fact using explosive sniffing dogs to find hidden ied's. they're doing house to house searches. the military has a program called the lioness program, which brings women into roles

that men cannot take such a searching muslim women because of course male soldiers cannot do that. so there are many, many ways in which women are serving and are in the line of danger. and i interviewed women who have had their shang destroyed by mortar attacks and i interviewed had had her life blown up by an ied and she had 18 surgeries to repair it. and she was considered deployment ready even though she could no longer run or carry weight. she said well, i'm sure they can find me a place to deploy where i won't have to do any of that. i'm not so sure about that, but she was ready to deploy play again and she was dedicated to staying in and make you met her career. the other surprise i had was with this. like many outside the military,

i hope i'm not the only one who's so ignorant coming in. i thought i was being somewhat monolithic. and of course it is one of the most diverse workforces that you can find in the united states. and recent study by boston university sociologist actually found that within the army, the people with the greatest job satisfaction are black women. and the people with the least job satisfaction are white men. and this sociologist hypothesized that this was perhaps because the military is one of the few american life that they meritocracy unaware white skin and be e-mail will not necessarily give you an edge. and i think when you take that study and sent it along the recent department of defense studies at those rates of abuse

and harassment are still very high and the military a third of all women report being harassed or abused. i think it's an idea of how complicated the questions of women in the military art. so i'll end with that and we've got to take your questions. [applause] >> will have -- will have volunteers available with microphones. and because we are recording this for television broadcasts, will want the questioners to speak and to the microphone. so will want you to research and knowledge knowledge of and the volunteer will bring you the microphone. but i'm going to take advantage of my microphone here to get to ask the first couple questions. i have one for each of you and i'm going to go back to the vietnam era first, cara because i think what gore is describing in terms of women be much more involved in combat than ever before has to do with the kind

of wars we're fighting now. but i also think it probably has to do with cultural changes. so the vietnam war hip in the 1950's, 1960's, 1970's. this is a time when women's lives here were changing a great deal. any type little bit about how the military had to adapt to accommodate those changes here? >> sure, when you think -- or when i think about nursing in the military, sort of the iconic demeanor from world war ii. and in my mind i always cemented this ad was to recruit women and it has this white partners leaning over a bad i'm a wounded soldier and it says save his life. it is very romanticized po. you might kill the boy and then go home and marry him. and in the early 1960's when the army started to recruit for vietnam, that kind of image wasn't going to cut it entirely. they tried a little bit of that, but they also needed to say, if

you become a nurse, will help you specialize. will pay for your education. you can become in the nasa says, and our nurse, all of the specialized training. and in the next ad would be a woman dancing with the position and so you can have a grand time in the army. [laughter] as other of these two contrast and people have always -- have often asked, welded it progressed from this romanticized recruitment ad to this more specialized? but it doesn't. they're all mixed up at the same time. and i think part of it is that the army knows that a lot of the women and it it was privately whether they were trying to recoup, 99% of the women's country nurses in the country at the time were women. but they really did recruit women and they knew that women's lives are different, that women wanted different things. they were going to college in greater numbers than their mothers had your a lot of the nurses i interviewed that i had three options.

i could be a teacher, secretary or nurse and i picked nursing. a lot of women said i want to go to med school and couldn't afford it so much nursing. they came out this traditionally feminine occupation, but a lot of women said, you know what, i don't want to get married and start having babies like my friends are or i don't want to live in my hometown anymore. i want to see the world so they joined the army for this kind of different reasons, these progressive reasons as they still are doing a traditionally woman's job. once they get in the core, and a lot of women wanted to have marriages and they wanted to have children and they didn't see that as an end to their career which it had been before. and so in the 60's you see the army that you and relaxing his policy that before it automatically kicked you out if you got married. if you are women and you got married you were gone. once they even relaxed the marriage, if you got pregnant, you were gone. you can have children, you couldn't be a mother and a

nurse. you cannot career any child. and they start to relax that. it takes some time, it goes in pretty small baby steps at times, but it starts to change in that era because they know they can't continue with -- they're not recruiting the same women they had recruited in generations before. and so you see a lot -- really a lot of substantial changes that even after 73 with the all volunteer army allows for the army to exist. you know, after 73 we wouldn't have an army if we didn't have women. pentagon said that. and those changes i think even probably shaped terms of motherhood policy and all of those issues with women in iraq today. >> you know it's interesting the director of the women's army museum when such of me, the army has never changed its policies towards women because they wanted to, but only because it was forced. and i think we're seeing that today just as in vietnam. >> lara, i wanted to ask you,

since this research and doing the interviews, we've seen a shift in focus from iraq to a tennessean. and i don't know what extent you're still talking -- i expect you're still talking to your interviewees. we've heard these reports of women deploying and being used for intelligent, talking to afghan women and the villages who sort of know everything there is to know about the taliban and the insurgents. i'm just wondering, have you talked to them about how the shift in focus and how afghanistan might be changing face, to? >> i haven't talked to anyone to afghanistan recently, that struck by recent rec page photo in "the new york times" which showed a whole group of female marines and helmand province, afghanistan, one of the newest dangerous places to be all sitting and eating lunch together. and as jesse says, you know, women are absolutely crucial to the effort out in afghanistan

because women in the villages know everything there is to know and they will not talk to male marines. the only talk to women. and so i think that we are going to see women even more in harms way, even more involved in this new kinds of efforts as the war in afghanistan goes on. >> i think we're -- i thought there's a question way in the back year. if the microphone will make its way over there. >> thank you for this really informative talk. as a couples and family therapist, i'm concerned about the other side of it, you know, that it's great that these women are able and willing to do this and have their families. i'm wondering if they spoke about or if you know about the research about what has been the impact of that on the other end

of it on their families and how that may differ from how it is with the men. i know there's been quite a bit of research about the really negative effects on relationships and i wondered what you could tell us about that. >> well, you're absolutely right. the divorce rate in the military is much higher for women than it is for men. and i can immediately think of two stories, two women i interviewed who came back on the war and there has been said, you've got to make a choice between me and the military. and both women chose the military. they got divorced because of that. i think the kinds of frequent deployments we've been seeing has been incredibly tough on families. i interviewed one woman whose baby was six months old and still breast-feeding when she and her has been were deployed to the same platoon in iraq come out which is not supposed to have been. and they came back less than a year later to find that their daughter did not recognize them

and cried when she was left alone with them and it took them months of weekend visit before they could get her to come home. and it was absolutely devastating. so i don't want to paint a rosy picture. i think it's an extremely tough situation, but i think that every time we see one of those front-page photographs of a male marines coming home and having a happy reunion with his children, we have to remember that there are many women in the same position and that once those initial hugs are over, times can get very, very tough. it's very interesting. i spoke once to journalists joshua coursey writes for the nation and does a lot of work on veterans issues. and he asked me, you know, did you talk to women about ptsd? and i said, horse. and there they were many, many women who would talk about their

diagnoses of posttraumatic stress syndrome, but no mothers would hear it only childless women would talk about it. i don't think that's because the mothers did not have ptsd. i think it's because they're such a societal taboo against being a bad mother, a mother who cannot take care of her children and feel as though they could. >> we have a question right here and i'll also put in a plug for our program with good reason. also did an interview and i don't remember the name. it was a nurse, a former and maybe current reservist nurse who was in the air force, is in the air force and also researcher and professor of nursing at george mason university who had done a pretty comprehensive study of this very question, looking specifically at the mothers deployed in how that affected their family. and so if you go to with good

reason.board and search for that i think it's a good interview. >> you know, i'm sorry got here late. i had intentions of being here in time and i wanted to hear everything. also, i do watch the show army wives and i'm still anxiously awaiting for season four to come out in april so i can find out if one of the carrot is i really like a lot if she made it through with a lieutenant colonel if she made it through that ambush or not and if she's okay. also, i read an article in good housekeeping conduct unbecoming. it's about women not getting the help they need during cases or women not getting good care at va hospitals. did you have anything to interview on those situations? >> many, many women i spoke with talked about the high incidence of soldier on soldier rape.

they also said that the military is taking rate much more seriously than it used to. you know, there were really a variety of responses. one woman talked about a young female friend of hers who was being harassed by spurrier officer. and even though this officer was writing letters and touching her inappropriately and harassing other women, that complaint was dismissed and this young woman was forced to apologize to her roster. at the same time, there were many women who reported having very positive experience. at this point, it still unified unit. and a woman's experience depends very much on the commanding officer. >> i found similar experiences in the vietnam era. for female officers coming out of the settings to take with you

to vietnam and high malice were to party dresses. and people were a bit confused about this and it turned out that what that meant was that you were going to be required or suggested that she go to the high officers party, put on a dress and go. and a lot of women talked about feeling that they were being used for their sexuality in those cases. a lot of women complained about it. other women said, you know what, when i get to vietnam i was one of few women in the whole country, few american in the whole country and i like that. and there was this big difference and how people perceived it. in terms of sexual assault, only found one rape case and the entire vietnam era and the criminal investigation division. and the way the army fell without was to bring the women who had alleged that she'd been, essentially to her commanding officer's office along with the mann she accused a of raping her

and they were told to work it out. so when we said the army is dealing with a much better today, they certainly are. the rates is sexual assault are really appalling. and i think if we can deal with what's causing this and the gender issues behind it, we would really get somewhere. but i think certainly even more reports are an improvement because were even talking about it as opposed to just shoving it under the route were used to be. >> that's right. and i think as more and more women get into places where they are generals, where they are commanding officers, the culture is going to change. i mean, i think about when i started teaching at a university 15 years ago and it was extremely common for milk professors to use the classroom is the dating pool. and i don't think it's a common anymore. and when you look at the military, which was a very heavily male culture, you know, i think those same kind of positive changes are going to take place as women move up the

ranks. >> we have a question of frontier, too. and i should take, we actually -- we are well on schedule, so we'll have time i think for a fair amount of questions, which is great. but go ahead. >> i want to follow-up about the question before on families, but specifically children because it occurred to me that as time goes on, will there be any studies of how the children are affect the, if it's already been eight years, it's probably for the future. but i feel that the children of these mothers especially will be a fight they. >> there's no question about it. i spoke with one mother of four who had three year-long deployments to the persian gulf and she talked about how one of her children was so stressed out that he ended up having to stay

back a year in school. many, many mothers talked about how difficult it was for their children and how difficult it was for them to reenter their children's lives. you now how awkward they felt the parent teacher conferences when they really didn't know what the teacher was talking about because they had been gone for a year or more. [inaudible] >> i think absolutely well. and i think that the military is now implementing more programs in schools near bases to help deal with the trauma of separation, which is very real. >> we were also cheering on our program about military programs, when people and families are about to deploy at doing family counseling, so bring an entire family in saviors of things you're going to have difficulty with it it seems like just in the last three or four years they've become a lot more active or did about taking on that specific question. why do we have this question.

>> thank you. don't ask, don't tell also applies to women and i'm wondering what she found out about woman to woman relationships, woman to mann relationships. >> well, of course because it don't ask, don't tell a good mask any direct questions. last night but women would sometimes bring their girlfriends to the interview or afterwards i would go out or a meal with a woman and her girlfriend and one woman i talked to, she and her women socialize with her commanding officer and his wife. so again, very much unit by unit the way this was dealt with. but i think don't ask don't tell us on the verge of falling apart because it has to because the military can't afford to keep so many qualified >> soldiers and marines out of the service. it untenable. >> we have a question right

here. >> is the motivation for women going into the military -- did you find it any different than the women that men go into the military other than the mayor says? >> i think there are whole range of reasons. it sounds very much like kerzner says, that they really wanted to escape their small towns and they didn't want to live like their friends who were marrying young and having lots of babies. other women wanted adventure. they wanted to go to war. they really wanted to fight. i talked to one woman who was german who would actually emigrated to the united states because she was too old for the german military and she really wanted to fight in war. [inaudible] i mean, what would be their motivation. i need -- the >> some of it was also economic. there were many women who i talked to who came from real

poverty. i mean very serious poverty and for them the military was a way out. i spoke with many, many women who have been teen mothers, you know, and had children very, very young and they saw this as a career path and it was a good career path. in light of the current debates over health care on the right? there were several women who had several women with diseases or health conditions and they needed good insurance and that's why they joined the military. >> that just makes me think, what was the socioeconomic background of the women who are joining as nurses in vietnam? >> it was pretty widespread as well. the economic factor was a big motivator for most younger says. there is a split largely in the vietnam war of career nurses who had been in for quite sometime and then the young nurses who were recruited straight out of nursing school, most of those had signed up through what was

called the army student nurse program, which is essentially the rotc foreigner says and most nurses had signed up for those educational benefits. so again, don't range of motivations. many were nurses find out because they knew if they were drafted the army might decide they made good on countrymen as opposed to good nurses. so the draft is essentially explains man's motivations. women were obviously quite different. >> we have a question in the back, the far back and then we'll will work our way forward to your question. >> i have a question. if we were to bring back the draft, do you think that the united states has changed its stance as such it would be like israel, where they would draft both men and women equally? and then i have a second. i live in a big navy area and they just are now announcing that possibly women are going to serve on submarines, which is a

big departure from anything the navy has done. they've been on aircraft carriers and other vessels, but not onsides. a comment about both of those? >> well, the draft question is a great one and i'll have to answer with a not great answer, which is i don't know. it's very hard to say, but i do tank that as women are able to enter more and more positions in the military that bit by bit the barriers are really coming down. and as far as the submarines go, your question reminds me of a young soldier, a national guard's woman i talked to who was a convoy gunners said that when she and members of her little unit went out on convoys and they went to other fobs, people also wanted to separate them by sex, where they slept. and they refused. they said, you know, we are

unit. we sleep together, we eat together, we work together. and she reported that there really wasn't very much sexual tension that they were more like others on sisters and i heard that from many men and women as well. so i think onsides that should work out just fine. >> i don't really have a good answer for the draft either. but what i have heard and i wish i had more specific information is that if the draft question were to open up again, that there are all sorts of constitutional issues that would arise. the very constitutionality of requiring service of one sex and not another with a lovely knotwork. i'm not sure which congressman has proposed bringing back the draft essentially to end the war as a lets end the war through drafting women move, but that hasn't worked either. but i have a feeling of if the draft were to come back, everybody would serve. >> it would be sticky. >> we had a question right here.

>> i was an infantry officer in vietnam and i remember that era when women were not integrated in the army and the way they are now. they were there, that you had the women's army corps, which were all administrative clerical type jobs and army nurses. and they were largely, in my experience, all female. i never saw a male nurse. and you have the women's army corps. everybody else was us guys. and it's interesting that you said that the relationships now in the mixed mix units are sort of sisterly brotherly because -- at least from the infantrymen did perspective, you'd love to an army nurse because you knew that they were there in your

darkest hour. your mail that was there with you is like your buddy, but this women and if you never had an experience, a few were that lucky to have the need of an army nurse, but especially if you needed one was much more felt as your sister. i mean, you would've bonded with both of them. you would've protected either one of them equally. and actually, it was somewhat painful leader -- and later years to realize how much many army nurses of that era felt that they were not sufficiently respect it, you know, had difficulty with the memorial and that sort of thing. and any time i've ever been at the vietnam memorial and the

nurses memorial off to one side. in any time where there's a large gathering of veterans, guys are all over those women, patting him on the back and enveloping them in their son of oneness. and i want anybody to think that because women were in the army nurse corps during the vietnam era or world war ii vet by the people, at least two were there to help. they were decremented in any way. they were incredibly valuable people. and the question that i had about the current era, women in the service is while you can

have this site just sort of sisterly or familial feeling, to what degree do they feel truly integrated in their unit at the time with regard to how their brother or sister look at them and depend on them? is that an equivalency, you know, do the women feel like that the guys are looking after them more than their sisters would. i mean, you know, is it an evenly shared responsibility? >> i think the women make sure that it's evenly shared. one marine who was a master gunnery sergeant. naturally i heard this sentiment echoed by many women saying that when she went for the invasion of honduras, she was the only female, 2200 variants.

and she made a point of saying if upn the bushes, i'm going to be in the bushes. if you're going to go without a shower for a month, i'm going to go without a shower. and women today feel very strongly that they should not accept any kind of special protection from men if they want to be taken fiercely as soldiers and they very much want to be taken seriously. so i think that that kind of other sister relationship grows to the women's insistence that they not be given special consideration. the convoy gunners that i was talking about earlier, a young woman and page bumgardner was involved in an ambush. her unit was ambushed and won one of her best friends was killed and her unit to any casualties. and she was the woman who kind of hobbit altogether, you know, cleaned up the human remains, called in for reinforcements. and before that she was in the

national guard and so there were people from all walks of life in her unit. and she said there was one older cop who have consistently made sexist remarks to her. she said after that moment a changed and everyone respected her and they said, will follow you anywhere. so i think that women are proving themselves in combat and that's also hoping to change that dynamic. >> kara, in light of the comments about the appreciation of nurses, you know, it brings up a lot of complexity i think because anybody who has ever needed and benefited from a nurses care, mann or woman, appreciate that care. i mean, that's part of what nurses do is help you feel better when you're not feeling well. and so i just wondered if he wanted to comment about that because there is also the obvious gender issues that come up in the appreciation. >> i have several stories were

female nurses, not milner says the talk about patients who would wake up and to attend injured on the field, brought to the hospital, wake up and say did i die, are you my mother? you smell nice, where am i? what happened? but they don't talk away about their physician who was a male. and so the appreciation is certainly there and a lot of these nurses talk about feeling very professionally valued for their nursing skills. that was a big contrast between military nursing and civilian nursing for them was that in the military they felt that the physicians respected their opinion, depressions that preceded them and civilian nursing they felt very different about that. come back from the wormy told you if you practice getting an ip to an orange. i've done that 10,000 times in the last month. and so that professional value was certainly a highlight of most nurses experience in the war. it almost than just with this

woman, you represent home. you are clearly different than other things around, particularly for a time where there were few in the army at the time and isolated in saigon or particular place is. american female nurses represented home to america soldiers. >> this is a great discussion. i think we have time for probably one or two more questions. so we have one right here and then at that point we may wind down and moved to -- so we have one over here, too. >> i wanted to ask kara. we know that many vietnam soldiers returned to account of a hostile atmosphere because of the war. what about nurses, did they come home to a different type of public? >> i don't think they receive the same sort of obvious association of the war -- the war was associated with the soldiers. i don't think nurses got that

same association that soldiers did. what i found interesting in the way their members or shape was in the 1980's when they started to talk about this particularly with the vietnam memorial was that their experiences were not couched in a more conservative era, postfeminism, but in a more conservative climate. so their experiences got shaped back with a memorial that this memorial needs to be women holding guiding voice. it can't be a memorial to women, certainly not with weapons, certainly not doing more progressive things. but if we're back to those images of those more traditional images. >> is a question over here. i think -- should we make this the

last question? >> thanks. i'm interested in pursuing something you hinted about the women today and that is, you were talking about somebody who she and her has not been deployed at the same time and they had a child who had to be taken care of in some fashion. so my question is, what we're looking at is an organization like others here spike that was really structured for the one wagering or, i mean, the underlying assumption or process that there would be one wagering or come usually nail on the other ones are staying home and taking care of kids. what direction is the military taking, if any, to kind of restructure the way things operate. you hinted in one way that they're not opposed to deploy to parents at the same time or something. are there other ways in which the military, for what you saw is changing kind of the way it operates about, given the new reality that there could be to two parents, both in the military or the fact that there

is a somebody, you know, back home waiting. have you seen any indications of what they're thinking about or doing? >> well, i think in response to recent public scandals having to do with women who have deployed and found that their child custody was taken away from them, that they were considered unfit mothers, the military is now having to deal with that situation much more. yes, that's happened to a number of women. and again, it really points to how in some ways we've come a long way, but in others we really have not. and we're at a moment of real change in the military and i think five years, ten years from now depending on how long the war goes on, things are going to look very different. and we also have to remember that many of the women who are deployed joined the national guard or the reserves for

college benefits, rights? they did not necessarily think that they would ever be going to war and then suddenly there they were deploying once or more than once. and so, the entire structure of the military is changing in response to these wars which have gone on and on. [inaudible] >> in general that suggests they're going to limit the number of these repetitive deployments whether it's for men or women, which i know has been very difficult on all of those people and their families? >> well, as you know, the military is stretched very, very thin, almost to the breaking point out. and unfortunately, the military, to continue to fund and keep these wars going has to deploying people. and many soldiers have their deployments extended once they were over there. you know, the army deploys soldiers for up to 18 months, which is a really long time.

and with stop-loss, you know, the rule that says even though you that you left the military, you really didn't. many people who thought that they were retired or been called back into action. and so, that changes things as well. >> well, i think we will move to the less formal part of the program in which we have our authors here, and their books are for sale. there are also these yellow or orange and evaluation forms and it would be really great if you build those up so we know how many of you that were here and what you thought about t ihi tof of the virginia foundation for the humanities, thank you so much for coming and participating and let's thank our guests, our authors. [laughter] [applause] a conversation. and if you're watching that tv

discussion and charlottesville virginia. coming up next, a panel on book reviews. "washington post" ron charles will be there. david montgomery at the "chicago sun-times" he also writes for "the daily beast" and into freelance authors will also be participating in this planet. rebecca skloot and katharine weber. that's next. >> we have here today the book reviewing challenges and changes i believe is the name of the panel and all of us here are members of the national book critics circle, which is a powerful secret cabal book reviewers. and once a year every march we just did this a couple -- a week and a half ago, we get together and decide which books are going to be successful in america. [laughter] and we give them prices. and most of us followed each other on twitter where we make nefarious thoughts and replay things like book review or

bingo. so today we are going to have a transient, luminous incisive and put down a bowl discussion led by beth ann kelly patcher at who is the star of w. dta's book room and she twitters as the book maven, which she has. a fan. >> thank you so much, they'll appeared wooded level introduction introduction. the wt custodio can be found at the website and the reason i want to mention that is because what i do there is interview authors and right book reviews and that's what we're here to talk about today and i've got four fantastic book reviewing superstars. adults all you that they have less or more, you know, experience book reviewing, but i know why we chose them. so we have to my left ron charles who's the deputy at herder and weekly fiction critic for the "washington post" book world. thank you so much for being here. to my right we have the lovely rebecca skloot who is the author

of the immortal life of henrietta? , some of you heard her present this morning on the nonfiction panel. that's up from crown and she's also a critic, a science journalist who has published in many places including "the new york times" and the oprah magazine. and then we have katharine weber who is an acclaimed novelist, true confections is her latest purchase a book review with many, many clips in many places including a stint of several years of publishers weekly, which as all of us who have written pw reveres nose is a very tough and thankless task eared and then finally, we have david montgomery, the author of thriller two. he is the critic for "the daily beast" and works for the "chicago sun-times" in an occasional writer fiction who lives in northeastern virginia with his wife and two daughters and i want to welcome you all. thank you. [applause] this panel is called the business of book reviewing as i could just open by saying, what

business? today someone on twitter so to me, actually as yesterday, said how can i make money reviewing books? [laughter] q. the laugh track. i wrote back and said, i'm sorry to tell you that you can make money, but not a living. and so, one of the changes that we have all seen is that we really cannot as book reviewer's per se make a living. so what i want to do is ask each of you to give me a little pre-state of your book reviewing experience, lack thereof, you know busy writing a book, you know, for 11 years yada yada yeah appearance a letter with your rebecca, please. >> i was saying this morning that i haven't written a book review and a little while because i've been a little busy with being on the receiving end of the book reviews for the first time. i started reviewing ten-ish years ago.

and for me getting into the creature he was part of how it i broke into writing in general. this is something i talked to students about a lot. you know, the business of book reviewing is not one that generally pays very well and it's not one that a lot of people can do for a living and particularly when it comes to science writing. but there are not a lot of people out there who want to read the really fat physics book and review it for a paper and get paid $250 for the whole process. but it's an incredibly important and to do as a critic. it's important for the world of books. and for writers that can be an important part of being a writer. you know, i often talk about the fact that i think i really -- i think i learned for writing book reviews than i did anyone of my graduate school classes about writing. because having to read a book really that carefully and try to articulate on paper what does and doesn't work and what makes the book affected and what

things need to change in a book to make it work better or whatever, things go into review, you think about writing and a very different way when you read as a reviewer. about the downsides of that is you can't make never read a book for pleasure anymore. at least i can't. i've been very high time turning off by reviewers. but i think it taught me a lot about writing and it also helped me break into the world of getting myself published. you know, and i think part of that is because i have this specialization. and my science background and i rates, you know, not fiction. and there aren't that many people who put those two things together and also do book reviews. so i was able to contact book review editors and say, all agreed that big fat physics book and i don't actually know what i'm talking about and i can actually interpret some of the science of things. actually not so much with physics. and having a specialty was

really helpful and not so i was able to start reviewing books and reading my bio is a young reader to have "the new york times" and "boston globe" and chicago tribune in san francisco chronicle -- >> keep going. >> "washington post," sorry. [laughter] but that was a little later. but yes, so, you know, that was an incredibly valuable for me as a young writer sort of break into the professional world of writing. and i think the benefits of what i've learned about writing through it i kind of didn't -- i guess i didn't think much about that when i started, but actually not really encourage writers to go that route. but i definitely did not make much money doing it. there are a few places, magazines that will pay, you know, a decent amount of money for a book review, meaning 1 dollar a word, but those reviews are usually 500 words. but it was never about the money

it was about the experience of doing it. >> and speaking of the "washington post," mummy turned to mr. charles. tummy a little bit about your experience. >> well, for schoolteachers like that book reviewing is really lucrative. i started freelancing for the christian science monitor in boston and then begin their book editor and then moved onto the "washington post" to be their fiction editor about five years ago. i only know two people who have ever supported themselves book are good. one was john freeman has become the editor and the other was myrtle rubin who route for the "washington journal" and "the l.a. times" and she passed away last year. it's really hard. john would do three or four reviews a week. i don't know how we did it. we pay 350 -- $350 a review. i've had people ask is that $3.50. [laughter] a lot of places are giving you the book for free. that's your payment.

there's no way now to support yourself as a critic, as a popular critic. >> and you know, we should talk to later about the ftc and giving back to books, but will say that. first i want to hear from kathryn and your extensive experience. you've got clips in a lot of different places. >> yes, and like rebecca was pretty much on-the-job training for me. reviewing whether to literature very fiction titles a week for publishers recurs for about five and half years i am incredibly well read and adjust your first novels in the mid-80's. , which actually has been helpful. because i get assignments now, yeah i read her first novel in 1986. but it was a way for me to really understand fiction from the inside out structure, pacing, and having to write reviews, even concise anonymous ones that are reporting the way publishers weekly reviews do.

it was an incredibly rigorous training and understanding something about how novels are made. now as someone writing a first novel, this had a grim side effects because i knew all too well what happens when you publish her first novel. the world isn't waiting for your first novel and then someone like me is going to be the first reviewer. and sometimes they say you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. [laughter] first reviews still. those first reviews about the extent, the trade reviews, they pay 35, 45, vb $50 for those reviews and they are inexperienced people or their beer experience bitter hard-boiled people. you don't know who they are necessarily, you know, what are they. i do think of a published novelist note that this novel just out and having received a lot of reviews, i think that even before you publish a first novel, the fiction writer i've always had a certain sympathy

that i brought my to my reviews of fiction knowing that it's somebody's baby and that usually there is something you can say about it. i don't mean that facetiously. i really love the treatment of the flying monkeys, you know, i think there are ways to find a good in a book even if you have very negative things to say about it. so i think i do bring that block on both sides of the street. i do bring that. i like to say about those $1 review. it's 500 words that you have to write over and over and over and each time the phone rings with an urgent, urgent revision of going to keep you from a dinner party for your her child's birthday, you know, the rates kind of drops down lower and lower. but i have reviewed -- i told beth and when she asked me on this panel, i think i'm the light weight here. but then i look back and my clips and i have reviewed over 40 times for "the new york times" book review and i have

reviewed for the "washington post" and "the l.a. times" and the san jose mercury news and type of cisco chronicle and the chicago tribune and in almost every case, those editors aren't there anymore or the section is gone or they no longer pay for original reviews. they buy them off the wire for $8. you know, the landscape has changed tremendously since i began reviewing. >> very good point. and david, you've reviewed for many different places and now you have a couple of semi regular gigs. so tell us what that's like. >> yes, i've been reviewing for about ten years i guess the first few years was as an online reviewer. i had my own website. and about seven years ago i said within four and publications, exclusively newspapers as a freelancer. i review primarily popular fiction. i review mostly john of fiction, mystery thriller suspense, stuff like that. i written for most of the big newspapers are one time or

another, including the "washington post." "boston globe," "usa today," et cetera. and i do have a couple of regular gigs now, which is certainly easier than pinching yourself all the time. i write a monthly column for the "chicago sun-times," which i've been doing for about six years i guess. and for a while was a regular contributor to "the daily beast" come at a website started by tina brown, which has no somewhat in a state of flux. so it's a lot of fun book reviewing and you better love it if you want to get into it because as they made clear, there isn't a lot of money and it. i think the least i've ever been paid for -- actually you're right, you can write as many reviews as you want for free. least i've been paid a $50 the most i was paid as $500 i was by "the new york times" and nobody else pays that much. typical pay for a book review

which is usually somewhere between 601,000 words is around $150 to $200. so depending on how long it takes you to read a book and write a publishable review, you can figure out how much money you can make if you're lucky to get the work, which is the really depressing part of it, as katharine has mentioned. and the seven years i've been writing for newspapers, which is a late that on. the contraction in the industry has been significant. numerous newspapers have cut their sections completely of it. everybody else has downsized. i don't think anybody has not downsized during that period of time. so the amount of work that is available is much less than i was. the amount of space that's available to talk about books is much less than i was. the flipside of that, of course, is that there is now a substantial amount of book review coverage given on the

internet, which is somewhat of a mixed blessing in the sense that there is unlimited space. there's as much room to print the previous as there are people willing to write them, but that goes hand-in-hand with the fact that it generally not paid, which means that it's generally done by amateurs, which can be mixed bag. there's some big welfare do it purely for the love and who are very good at it, but those people are few and far between. the more typical amateur review is something you would read on amazon, which is, you know, not the best quality. >> and david, i want to interject a couple of things and then ask another question to that point. and some interjection would be, i want to ask her what's my fellow panelists have that. i just finished two different reviews, one for a publication that pays $2 a word for $500 for 250 words. a lot of edits. and another for publication a

patriot or dollars for about a thousand words and i've never been during editing process like this before in my life. i literally -- i think i ended up making a penny for this review. so it's not something that we are doing for the money. and so, before we get to the question of what kind of reviews are out there, let's talk about why all of you have mentioned a little bit about why you do it, you know, what you've learned, without you professionally, et cetera. the let's talk about the people who are reading the reviews for a moment. what are they looking for? what have you learned about what they need? and our book reviews important to them anymore? so would anyone want to volunteer or should i just go down the line? >> i'll jump in just as a science perkin i think there's a specific role that book reviews play for science people and i think some of that is in a sense telling the public how much they can trust a book and i feel like

my role as a reviewer of science book is often to sort of read it and say, is this conveyancing to the public in an accessible and accurate way? is a telling a story that's going to be interesting to them and disorder give people a sense of whether, you know, the reviewer did for ron not that long ago where there was some sort of side issues with the book. i thought it was a really fun read and i have a lot of positive things to say about it, but at one issue is sorted the way that some of the science was being interpreted. and i feel like it's my duty as a person who read science to be out there saying that because i feel like it so important to convey science to the public in an accurate and accessible way. so for me in particular, i feel like i have an important role -- i sort of have anomalous obligation to do that. >> that's why you're on this site. [laughter] >> you know, it's not like i know anything either.

just to sort it be a critical eye and that way, but also to do the science reviews. and there arnott above. braun, i don't know -- i guess you do a lot of fiction, but i don't get a sense that there's a huge pool of people out there doing science reviews and as a person who writes science books, and i know a lot of editors at different sections. i know that sometimes i often turn down reviews because i don't have the time to do them and i wonder are those science books then not getting reviewed and is the science book then vanished because no one hears about them? so i think one of the world roles that reviews really play is sort of putting books out there so that the public can know that they exist. >> you know, all that fiction, ron, you can rot the brain, but it can also do a service for readers. so what do you see that readers are looking for and that you are providing? >> we get 150 bucks a day.

>> i'm so jealous. >> and we review 15 a week or so it's an overwhelming number of books that come in. i'm looking for good about this and i've gotten arguments with other people but i don't see anything wrong with us providing the reader service like helping people find what they might to be. people don't know for that walk into the bookstore in the overwhelmed. they choose books according to state to put that stack of books by the door. whenever i talk to readers, that's all they ask. what should i read? what do you like what they don't ask about critical standards committee to ask about theory, the doormat a lot of the stuff that real critics think is important. i think a lot of the book reviews died because they were pouring, unrelated to anything but actual newspaper's readers wanted to read. >> testify. [laughter] >> but still, there are far too many book reviews out there that are plot summary or that are involved with the critic's own particular taste of it don't matter to an audience at all. as book reviewers we've got to do a better job of reaching our real