he came back from his world war ii experience being completely against war. he was searching for peaceful resolution to conflict, and supported other approaches to solving problems. i would also point out a photo that was taken after he came back from the war. he got married to change was from indianapolis as well. this photo was taken on their honeymoon, and as you can see he is in uniform. vonnegut and jane had three children, mark, d. and many. and in many years later his sister, alice, died just a day or two after her husband had died in a freak train accident. alice had four children, and

three of them came to live with a vonnegut family. so they had quite a large household, seven children, and vonnegut at that time was writing books that at that time were less familiar, but he has published several books and articles for magazines, as well as working a job as a car salesman for sob. the expense of writing about dresden and what happened to him was tremendously difficult for vonnegut. it took him about 20 years to be able to publish the book, slaughterhouse-five. jane, his wife had encouraged him to write it. she worked as his editor on the book. she asked questions and get clarity on issues that helped

him to retrieve a lot of the memories that he had repressed. because of the family situation with the addition of more children, and the success that was coming with the publishing of "slaughterhouse-five," his marriage with jane was rocky, just -- is thought i'd mention about a month ago that that experience and the publishing of the book and all that brought to vonnegut contribute to their marriage dissolving. and at that time vonnegut had met the photographer, jill, and eventually married jill. and she was, you know, his second wife and was the only other person he was married to during his lifetime. i'll move you over here to what

we call the political activity exhibit. and vonnegut continued to talk about his interest in finding peaceful solutions to conflicts. i think that's another thing that made him very popular during the vietnam years, and after. this photo which was given to us by the "new york times" was taken during the first gulf war. and there is vonnegut out there at columbia university, you know, i'm sure it was a large crowd, because even to his dying day vonnegut would attract a large crowd. i have been told he was like a rock star coming in to his different speeches and large auditoriums, always filling the auditorium. so here we are in the art

gallery portion of our library. i'd like to take you over here and show you a vonnegut quote that is signed, those given to us by his artistic collaborator. it says i don't know what it is about hoosiers, but wherever you go there is alwaysdoing somethit there. this quote was in the book cats cradle, and it's a very funny exchange the main character has with a fellow traveler on a plane, and a fellow traveler. so next we have possibly his most famous piece of artwork, the sphincter. vonnegut in his humor, he associated the asterisk with his anatomical feature. and we actually had used this

asterisk in other pieces of art, including our timeline which you may have thought had stars in the sky. but they are actually vonnegut's asterisks in the sky. we also have life is no way to treat an animal. this is the tombstone for his famous character who appeared in many of his books. and it is understood that kilgore trout is based on vonnegut himself. and interestingly, the character or kilgore trout died at the age of 84. and vonnegut also happen to die at the age of 84. >> what did kurt vonnegut die from? >> he collapsed. he fell down the steps of his new york city home, and he was

in a coma and never came out of that coma. he often joked that cigarettes would kill him, and he would sue the makers of pall mall because the warning label on a cigarette package said that pall mall for children and they have not yet done so. but he actually happened to be smoking a pall mall while standing on these steps. so next we have here two pieces of artwork created by morley safer of 60 minutes fame. morley is one of our honorary board members. he was a close friend of kurt vonnegut. they actually both shared a close friend op-ed who wrote the last of the came out. but these two pieces of art, the first on the occasion of kurt vonnegut's birthday was great in

2003 as a gift to vonnegut. and then the second was created when morley found out that vonnegut had died. and that was 2007. we are in the front of the kurt vonnegut library come in the gallery room. we have kurt vonnegut's typewriter that was used in the 1970s. this was donated to us by his daughter. he wrote many of his more familiar books during the 1970s. and we are happy to have this typewriter. he was not a fan of high technology, and he did not use a computer. he preferred to use a typewriter through his dying day. he like to work in his home in an office chair and a coffee

table. he would slump over his typewriter. vonnegut would go out into the world every day. he talks about how he'd learned that he could buy postage stamps over the internet, and he just thought that was horrible because then, you know, if he chose that route he would not have the everyday experience of going to the post office. and those everyday experiences of people he encountered in his daily walks with a basis for some of his stories. he met a number of very interesting characters in new york city, and going out and meeting people, you know, was a way for him to capture new material for his work. vonnegut is timeless because these issues, we still have the same issues. we are still suffering with war,

disease, death, famine, environmental issues, you know, he said your immune system is trying to get rid of you. he thought we should take care of the planet. these issues, you know, have resurfaced. and it does not look like we have had any viable solutions to these problems. so, you know, i think. specs he spends local content vehicles are traveling the country visiting cities and towns as look at our nation's history and some of the authors who have written about it. for more information go to c-span.org/lcv. >> author and former cia analyst and head of the cia's bin laden unit, michael scheuer has a new book coming out in february 2011. it's a biography on osama bin laden. and michael scheuer joins us to

preview his book. one of the things you write in your book is something i would like you to expand on. bin laden is not the caricature that we made of him. indeed, if i only had 10 qualities to enumerate in drafting a thumbnail biological ditch of them, they would be tell you, charismatic, patient, visionary, stubborn, egalitarian and most of all, realistic. >> yes, sir. i think he's very much an enemy who we need to respect. because of his capabilities. much like the allies felt about rommel during world war ii. they know they need to kill him but they had to be respectful of his ability to fight them. and i'm afraid what we have gotten from some others and most politicians is a caricature of bin laden as either a criminal

or a thug or somehow a nihilist or a madman. and i don't think that's true. and i think it retards our ability to understand the enemy we face. >> what's the danger of that caricature in your view of? >> well, the danger is we underestimate capabilities of the man. bin laden runs an organization that is absolutely unique in the muslim world, for example, because its multiethnic, multilingual stick. and it is no other organization like it. it's more like a multinational organization that is that serve a terrorist group. we also, the danger is simply we underestimate the patient, the piety and most especially the motivation of bin laden. he is truly within the parameters of islam. is not somehow a renegade or

someone who is outside of islam or making, or hijacking the religion. he is a pious, what is called the sunni muslim, and his appeals comes from the fact that he is believably descending -- defending the faith against an attack from the west. >> well, knowing that or presuming that he is within the muslim faith and tradition, what should the u.s. strategy be? >> i don't know exactly what our strategy should be, but i think before you can every strategy you need to have the american people on board in terms of understanding what the enemy is about. we have spent that 15 years as of this coming august when bin laden declared war, 15 years ago on us, 2011. and we have spent all of those

years telling the american people that we are being attacked because we have liberty and freedom and women in the workplace, and because we have elections, or one or more of us may have beer afterward. and that really has nothing to do with the enemy's motivation. if we were fighting an enemy who simply hate us for how we live our lifestyle and how we thought, the threat would not even rise to a lethal nuisance. because there wouldn't be enough manpower to make it more than that. we are really fighting an enemy who is opposed to what we do, what the u.s. government does. and until we really understand that, i don't think it's possible to perform a strategy speculative subchapter a new book called looming america. you talk about how osama bin laden wanted to lure the u.s. to

fighting in afghanistan. >> yes, sir. he worked very hard for 19 and six when he declared war on us, until 2001. and i think we frustratefrustrate him in several occasions. he wanted us on the ground in afghanistan, so they could apply, day, the mujahedin, the al qaeda people, the al qaeda people. they could apply the same military force against us at the fight against the red army in the 1980s, believing that we were a much weaker opponent than the soviets, and that is very limited of deaths would persuade us to leave eventually. and so the attacks on us in saudi arabia in 1996 and 1995 in east africa in 1998 come on the uss cole in 1999, were all designed but failed to get us into afghanistan. but 9/11 did the trick. >> in your upcoming book, "osama

bin laden," mr. scheuer you also talk about some of the other books that have come out on osama bin laden and his family. what do you think of those? >> i think, i think many of those books are very worthwhile, and what i try to do is take a different attack than those books i wouldn't be repeating what had been written already. there are a number of very good books on bin laden. jason bergmann wrote one, british journalist. and the problem i had with those books were, they were primarily books that were based on what other people have said about osama bin laden, not what he had said or done himself. and i found over the past decade that whenever bin laden speaks, he's very often described as ranting or raving, or issuing yet another diatribe.

and so i thought that i would take the primary sources, based on interviews, statements and speeches he made and write a book based on what he said and see how it turned out. and i think very frankly that when you take the primary sources which number in my archive and i sort they don't have everyone that's available, and at over 800 pages. when you take that information, the man that emerges is not like the bin laden that emerges in lawrence wright's book or steve cole's book as sort of someone who is mentally disturbed or hateful of our lifestyle. but rather a man who is very clear about what he believes, what he intends to do it and most especially matches words with deeds, with which is very

unusual for any politician in this day and age. because of your back or what the cia, the disney to be cleared to the cia? >> yes, sir. everything that i write, whether it's a book or an article or even if i was a poetry writer, which i am not, for the rest of my life it has to be cleared by the cia. and this book was, in fact, review twice. once before i sent to the publisher, and then once after it was reviewed and we have made changes that the publisher wanted, or the editor wanted. so the agency -- i'm very careful to try to respect my obligation to have that review before it's published. >> was anything taken out of? >> no, nothing was taken out. in fact, i have work with the agency now for six years since i retired, probably have published -- well, to books and probably 200 articles, and i really only had four or five things taken

out by the agency over that amount of time. and i have to say that leads on four of the five occasions they were correct and i was wrong. they are simply looking to protect classified information and sources and methods. and they have been very good to work with. i found them very, very accounted in -- account -- a comedy and helpful. >> three different presidents have chased osama bin laden. are you surprised we haven't found him a? >> well, i think we have found him. certainly between 1998 and 2001 mr. clinton had 13 opportunities to either capture him or kill him. and certainly mr. bush generals had a chance to capture or kill him at bora bora in december 2001. i think now, especially in the last five years, it's not surprising that we haven't gotten him.

first, like any other thing in life, if you have an opportunity to do something and you don't do it, sometimes the opportunity doesn't come around again. but second, we have so massively undermanned our operations in afghanistan that they're simply not enough american soldiers and intelligence officers to go around. they have so many tasks and so few people to do them, that i don't think it's a surprise that we haven't gotten him at this point. >> well, that said, would you like to see the u.s. do in afghanistan, beef up or pull out or what? >> i think, sir, that we've been there too long. i don't think we have enough soldiers in the u.s. military if we committed every gratitude that was available to really rectify the situation. and america is a society no longer knows how to fight a war, no longer has the stomach for it. we have lost, you know, less

than 2000 people in afghanistan from a population of 310 million. and we are rapidly, rapidly wanting to leave. my own view is we should have fought and won there, but i am a hawk only if we intend to win. and i'm afraid mr. bush and mr. obama have never been able to define a winning strategy. and so my own view is that it's not worth another american marine or another american soldier's life to stay there. the one thing i would add though is when we leave, it will be a tremendous defeat for the united states. however, we dress it up, if we say the afghans got a chance and we couldn't do it, if we say that we have somehow satisfy what we went there to do, we may fool the american people but we will not fool the muslim world.

when we leave afghanistan without accomplishing what we said we're going to, it will be viewed as the mujahedin defeating the second superpower. and that can only mean rather that the muslim world will be more galvanized against us, and more young men will flow to the battlefield where ever they are, and certainly more will take up arms inside the united states. >> michael scheuer's new book "osama bin laden" will be in bookstores in february 2011. >> visit booktv.org to watch any of the programs you see here online. type the author or book title in the search bar on the upper left side of the page and click search. you can also share anything you see on booktv.org easily by clicking share on the upper left side of the page and selecting the format. booktv streams live online for

48 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. booktv.org. >> we are at the national press club talking with author ted gup about his new book, drank a beer can you tell us what is the secret get? >> the secret gift was a book -- is made in the deaths of the great depression by an anonymous donor to 150 families. and his identity remains unknown for 75 years. two years ago a suitcase was handed to me that contained hundreds of letters i in the period and the identity of that secret donor, was my grandfath grandfather. >> and can you tell us more about the gift? what was the donation? >> the kid was $5 to 150 families had written to him and for the last two years i have tracked down their descendents to find out what the gift meant to them, did it affect their lives, get a change the

fortunes, and so that's the book is about. >> thank you very much for your time. >> next from the booktv archives and event from 2003 with anthony swofford who discusses his