we're not going to walk out. and one of the sit-ins' minister was very heavy, like about 300 pounds. [laughter] and he just lays down, and bracy -- who was the commander, wonderful man -- said to him, um, could you lay down closer to the door? [laughter]

>> very expensive. every day but it's occupied or not costs money to maintain. and seeberger was the chairman of that particular committee. he was at this seminar. and i was present because they were celebrating the museum of the city of new york at an exhibit. and they said do you have a question? i was in the audience and i said yes, did i do the right thing, everyone said absolutely. but i didn't. why?

because the symbolic values to the black community was far more important than, i think he was actually $9 million that we saved, aside from health care. but it was the most costly hospital in the system with the worst hospital care. i could have been a hero in the black community if i had saved it. instead, they said no, medical care is bad and we're wasting $9 million. i was on several programs a long time ago, and he said what's the worst thing you did in terms of you regret. i said nobody asked me the question. i volunteered because i believe it was. from the point of view of symbolism and sometimes war --

were important than substance. now, unfortunately nobody told us what the time limit is. i think we should take some questions. >> mr. mayor, if someone asked me a close friend who left down at the end of your regime and came back in 2010, asked me, what changes have taken place in new york in terms of the pace, the social life, the problems, the general couple and visual changes that you can observe during that period from mayor koch is term of office to today? would you comment on what those might be? thank you.

>> firstly, new york city, new york city is so far ahead and any other city in america as it relates to coming out of recessions and then ultimately able to resume where it was when it was at the peak of its career in a very positive way. when you look at the city today and you read that 10% of all the jobs created in the united states in the last quarter were created in new york city, that's incredible. just incredible. i think new york city's population is about 3% of the united states. and so we are way ahead in terms of prosperity, current and yet to come. but the most important thing that mayor bloomberg has done, which he gets very little credit

for, is he's changed the whole tone of racial relations in the city. to the best of my knowledge, there simply is no racial problem in this city. there was, not just that which we refer to under my administration, for the reasons i'm giving you, but under giuliani, under david dinkins who was there. mike bloomberg changed it, and the question always will exist how did he do it? it's his personality. he's not -- he's a man of vision, but he's also a person who is a great technician and does not show great emotion. and that's helpful. that's simply helpful.

early on when he entered city hall, al sharpton was coming out and he went over to him. and introduced himself. that was wonderful to do. al sharpton and i are very good friends. whenever we're together, the first thing he will say to people is he made me famous. he arrested me. [laughter] and it is true. in 1978 he came down to city hall, and he didn't have an appointment. i said i will see him anyway. yes, what can i do? i didn't know him well, reverend. he brought in about 25 other black ministers, and he said we are here with a petition that we want you to sign. and i said can i read it?

now. i can't take it with me? read it now. all right. so i read, and it is, you promised to give all summer jobs, the federal government provided 60,000 summer jobs to the city, which were minimum wage and what i did you change what they did before me, i put it all on the computer and it was a lottery where as before i came in, he would sign the jobs to people and they give it out. and i remember a preset to me, we know that good kids are. we want to give those jobs out. so i wanted to lock them in and i said, father, there are no bad kids. of course, that's a lie. [laughter] but the fact is that i thought fairness required the distributed on a lottery basis.

sign up everybody, 120,000 kids. we assigned only 60,000 would get jobs, lottery. no favoritism. so i said i can do that. i can't do that. then he said, the second one was that you commit yourself to, i think it was $50 billion in reparations to the black community for slavery. so i try to dissuade him from continuing by saying, let me know, if you don't signed i'm going to sit down and not let anybody in or out of your office, three other ministers jointed. i said you can't do that. you can pick it outside on the steps. know, he sits down. so the police officer is standing there. and i say to them, to the police officer, we moved them.

well, nobody at city hall under been told to remove anybody. and the police officer whispers to me, what if they resist? [laughter] i say, have you never heard the word arrest? arrested them. and they were arrested in. then i get telegrams from every member of congress, how dare you a recipe for black ministers? how dare you? i'm saying to myself, this is crazy stuff. you can't allow lawlessness at the city hall. and the prevention of access by others who want to see the mayor and other commissioners. but in any event, sharpton and i over the years became good friends and have worked on and are currently working on a project. when he ever talks about he says

one can't he made me famous, and number two, he never stopped talking to me. which was true. i always reached out. i'm very proud of that. so, too long an answer to a very short question. the cd is in far greater shape, good shape than it's ever been outside of the effects of the recession, but compared with the rest of the united states. >> all right, next question. [inaudible] >> i'm also death, partially. >> i just want to talk about that very difficult situation with eleanor bumpers. you handled it well. i just want to tell you that.

>> eleanor bumpers situation was simply this, this was a woman who was behind in her rent, a recluse perceived as in need of mental assistance, who, rumor had it, was cooking light, l. y. d., to resist the cops who might be coming in to her apartment to evict her. they came in and she -- i think it was three cops they came in, and she attempted to stab with a big bread knife, and under the protocol, under the protocol there was one officer who had i think the shotgun, that was their protocol, and when she

sought to stab a police officer, he shot her and he killed her. very sad. terrible. the case -- every time there is a shooting, not just a killing, the shooting by a cop it goes to the district attorney. and my recollection is, is a long time ago, there was an indictment and there was a trial and the cops, the one who shot him was exonerated. now, the police officer was found to have protected under the police officer from being injured, which is his job. now, why was it that there wasn't some other way to deal with this? by the way, she was clearly in need of help, the bathtub was filled with feces. i mean, it was awful. my recollection is she said

ronald reagan had put it there. well, -- >> she was clearly someone who needed a good deal of help, and you know, the background of the case i think what is really tragic. and i think one of the reasons people reacted strongly against the administration at the time was because clearly the social services had not been held up the way it should have been to help somebody who was in that desperate -- >> i would say the reason was that they didn't use another method to remove her. i mean, there were some who said just let her stay there. how do you let somebody stay there in their feces and not eating? i mean, maybe that's not the humane way to approach someone who is in need of assistance, but what they did before, before they changed the protocol was

they used nets and they would throw a net over somebody, and then people said that so dehumanizing. that it was safe. you to a net over some and then you didn't have to worry about how you removed them if you needed to remove them. but they ended the protocol. and now i'll bet the protocol is let them starve until they would come out on their own. >> i don't know what the current practice is. probably that's what it is. >> could you comment on the mayor having a third term and everything that -- >> i supported that. from the very beginning, i was forced term limits, but always for 12 years. and i am for that today, but it's going to revert back to two terms. now, mayor bloomberg chose to

have the city council change a law created by referendum. people thinks that's terrible. it's not terrible at law. the law that we have says that you can adopt a law by the city council. you can adopt a by referendum, or you can adopt it by having the state legislature just impose its will with it often does on the city of new york. i thought that it was important that he be given an opportunity to run. and what was interesting was the outcome. the outcome was, everybody thought he was going to do a runaway election, and i think he won by four or five points is my recollection. and the reason is very simple. at least as i see it. a huge number of people were very angry that he didn't seek

to have a referendum change the law, and they wanted to punish them but they knew if they went to the polls they would have to vote for him because there was no question that he was far and away the best equipped to serve the city. in my judgment was the judgment of most people, so that's a huge people who didn't go to the polls goes they wanted to punish him and deprive them of their vote. the second large number that he lost were those who said what does he need me for come he's 15 points ahead according to the polls he's going to win handily. why should i have to go to the polls? so you take those two groups. he was deprived of them and suffered a very small margin of victory compared with the dollars spent. but i voted for him. i supported him and i campaigned for him.

>> okay, we have done i think the one more quick question, and that's it. >> your honor, you have a famous question that you've asked many, many years. and i think most of us you will agree, not all because it's new york, but i think that most -- >> give me their names last night. >> i think most of us will agree that you are doing just fine. [applause] >> thank you very, very much. >> that's it. thank you all for coming. >> thank you. for more information visit tenement.org. >> with you at the national

press club talking with maurine beasley about her new book "eleanor roosevelt: transformative first lady." can you tell me what aspects of her life you concentrated on? >> yes. this book concentrates on the way out of the roosevelt wrote a script for firstly. ever -- every first letter says al or has either follow the script or hasn't followed the script but at least they've had to read descriptor deadhead you know about it. lots of books on eleanor roosevelt but what this book does is tell what she did in the white house to make the job of first lady more than just that of a hostess or somebody with interest perhaps in a cause or to. she'd really made the first ladyship a potent part of the american presidency. >> so was the script that she wrote giving the first lady our role to play in policy?

>> the script showed what a first lady to do. description oh that the first lady makes the job of the president to live into one in which she could promote the administration. she could show the public that the presidency was interested in individuals. she was the public face of her husband, a political program, the new deal. but because she traveled so much and because she would had and made love of the people, she personalized the presidency and she made it a lot more than just passing laws. she made it a way of connecting with people. >> did you come upon any facts that you had briefly known about her in your research? >> in doing the research for the book i was struck by the way her personal life impacted on the

way that she developed the role of the first lady. for example, when she first became first lady she had some reservations about this because she said i just don't want to sit in the white house and poured tea. at the time she had a friend, a newspaper reporter, a political reporter for "the associated press." and it was her who introduced eleanor to the plight of miners in west virginia they were living in horrible circumstance. so one of eleanor's first projects as first lady was to try to do something about these miners come and set up a model community called arthur dale. but she probably wouldn't have gotten interested in arthur dale had it not been for lorena hickok. similarly, before the second world war eleanor had a very

warm personal relationship with a young man named joe lasch was a socialist and a leader of the student movement. and eleanor had always been interested in young people but because of this very warm relationship, she became especially involved in causes of young people and international student work and ways of trying to get young people as part of the political process. also in doing so, because he had started communism, in fact i think he was a communist at one point, she learned a lot about communism. she said she did it and the faction learned so much about communists prepared her later on in the united nations to know how to deal with them. >> thank you very much for your time. >> booktv is on twitter.

follow as a regular updates on our programming and news on nonfiction books and authors. twitter.com/booktv. very that people are now startingo >> thomas, what do you think about hip-hop now? collee >> sunk to new lows. the inspiration for this book started thinking about the ideas [laughter] >> the inspiration for this book -- i started thinking about the ideas -- >> sunk to new lows, you say? >> i do. i started writing this book -- well, i wrote the op-ed in 2007. and i believe the dominant artists at the time -- not the sole artist but the artists that were really driving the media coverage of the genre and that

were really setting the cultural tone were soulja boy and others. if you compare that either to like the so-called gangsta rappers of the early '90s or jay-z or biggie that's such a decline in artistic quality. >> so you're cool with biggie. >> i have problems with biggie but i think he had a lot more complexity than what you see right now. i am kind of interested in watching -- in watching a guy like drake. but i don't think that, you know, one artist guides an entire culture. >> so you say it sunk to new lows. explain to me why you feel that way. i mean, these are our street poets, okay? why do you feel that they've sunk to new lows if they are expressing their reality? >> well, it's debatable if they're expressing their reality. a lot of them are simply propagating some of the worst

stereotypes about black people. that ever existed. [applause] >> but if that's their reality, should they be silent? >> it's not many of their realities. some of them do have pretty gritty realities. >> but there's been a movie about biggie and we can clearly see that he rapped in the streets. >> biggie was a guy who observed more other realities than he rapped about his own. i lived in the fort green area of brooklyn for a few years and the part of clinton hill that biggie comes from is quite nice compared to the parts of the rural south where a lot of -- it's much nicer than what james baldwin grew up in and ralph ellison grew up and far more -- >> the guy was a drug dealer. >> i grew up in the suburbs around guys who chose to deal drugs because it was very cool. >> right, right. >> his mother was a school teacher and he didn't to have deal drugs to feed himself.

>> right, but that was his choice -- >> it was, exactly. >> so let me ask you this. what is good hip hop to you? >> well, i want -- i want to be very clear about this. my book is not about music. it's not -- it's not a critique of the artistic merit of hip hop which i don't dispute. >> well, let me repeat your title. losing my cool: how a father's love and 15,000 books beat hip hop culture. >> it's about a system of values that the music doesn't create but it provides a soundtrack and an echo chamber -- it magnifies often and it glorifies and romanticizes these things i'm not -- a lot of older black critics of hip hop have a problem with hip hop on a musical level and find it inferior of black music. that's not my feeling at haul i'm trying to attack ideas and cultural values and critique them and talk about what i really see as the secular

religion of hip hop which is it's a way of living. it's even a way of reaching for a cup of water. it's a way of greeting someone in the street. it's a way of dismissing certain ideas that's not real. i'm not talking about whether an artist like andre 3000 has ability because clearly he does. and i think that the music -- i wouldn't even need to critique the culture if the music was trash because one of the reasons the culture is so powerful and seductive and the music -- the culture is aesthetically pleaseing in a lot of ways. >> but that's the history of african-american music in a sense -- >> well, not really. i mean, if you listen to a love supreme by john coulter there's no similarity in something like gucci mane and the burr print, too. [applause] >> so -- am a john coltrane fan. >> me too.

>> i am. so i want to go back my question which i want you to answer directly. what would be good hip hop? >> i could -- we could spend the rest of the panel listing good hip hop. >> what would be good hip hop since you're saying it's -- >> good hip hop music is like reasonable doubt by jay-z. it's ready to die by biggie schmaltz. now, is the content and the message that's involved in some of that great music poison, yeah, it is. if you try to live your life the way jay-z instructs >> to watch this program in its entirety go to booktv.org. simply type the title or the author's name at the top left of the screen and click search yo your. >> up next retired major general ira hunt recounts the u.s. army's 9th infantry division's operations in the mekong river

delta region of vietnam for several months in 1968-1969. major general hunt former chief of staff of the 9th infantry division recalls the divisions mission and details plans that were used to combat guerrilla warfare. he presents his book at the 2010 association of the u.s. army meeting held at the washington convention center in washington, d.c.. >> thank you for coming. in my book, the sort out the ninth division by employ all sorts of intelligence coupled aggressive innovative operations was able to compete in combat operations. that also include examples of the bravery and dedication of the ninth division soldiers. the ninth division is operations research, we concentrate on obtaining results, the key is results, of all activity. each activity had a result. so the ratio then of the input

to the output were normally measurable and we use those and then to measure how effective we would be. the war in vietnam was always about lands and people. the north vietnamese and all other papers that we want to have land and people. the government of vietnam, south vietnam water land and people to maintain their sovereignty. and so if that's the case, it was, been the focus of the north vietnamese its primary focus is always on the delta. the delta is a flat bit of land where we were covered with rice, water everywhere. you could walk 400 yards without crossing a stream. inundated completely. in 1965 the government of south did not do things are going bad in the delta. the north are taking our rice crop. we want an american unit there.

that was approved by the government. they said with two simulations. one, you have to locate these unit deep into the territory and has to be on the water. on the water because they had heard the french a great results and they want of river operations. so in 1966, the first of february, the ninth division was formed. one year later they came to vietnam. at the same time it was formed the u.s. navy was told to come up with the river to reinforce. so the 9th division close in vietnam in the first if ever, 1967, one year to the day they were located at barakat, bearcat cat was 15 miles east of saigon. the camp was being built there that responsibility for eight provinces. a hot a lot -- they had a lot of

static provinces. they had to protect communications. so that held back their ability to patrol. also, the second brigade, ken wallace with the national liberation front came from. that is the heart of the movement. in june of that year, the navy arrived. this was the result of crap. the second brigade had been preparing for this. they had fantastic results. y.? the vietcong had always made their defenses expect an attack by lenders to use of water to escape. so here came the river forces and they did know what to do. for six months they cleaned up down in the delta. about that time the north vietnamese and we will have a change in tactics. are going to go on the offensive. they put into effect what they

call general offenses, general uprising. they thought when he went on the offenses people would rise up. the first phase of that was ted. they attacked all the cities in vietnam. many of the major cities with the delta so the night, the only unit south of saigon had to work cut out for them. the third brigade, airmobile to drive the three battalions at the first brigade had to clean out, and military installations, get the enemy out of there. the second brigade of marines went far south. so at the end of the month they had driven them all out. they defeated the vietnamese, north vietnamese and vietcong. they had done it by land and by air and by water over about 200 kilometers. to me, that was a major piece of what went on in vietnam. three things, there was no

uprising. two, the vietcong infrastructure because they had help coming in was eradicated from the time on there was no problem with their infrastructure. the third thing was that the people were unhappy. they said why don't you protect us? why don't you give us arms to protect herself? that started a people's self-defense force. teams of 14 people, two leaders, 14 to three. you will be leaders but in a year now had 2 million of these people under arms. this helped out because at the same time just come it says we better upgrade the regional popular force. so now when the u.s. would go out and secure iron area these people would maintain the security and let the king of the people come in to help them. this is a second phase of what happened in the uprising. i was in the top. one night at 11:00 in early may,

the artillery commander rushed in and said the radar picked up a huge movement of enemy towards the south of saigon. the division command ordered our two battalions to go to south of saigon your they had strict orders to secure the only entrance to saigon. when they arrived at dawn, they met the enemy the time with the same orders. that started what we call about a of saigon. that was the second stage. the enemy had been defeated on phase one and phase two and they change their tactics. they decide they're no longer on the offensive. they want to go on the defensive that you had to dig them out. you had to find them. that was difficult. we only had about a thousand men in the field. the reason was we had 4500 casualties that had to be replaced. mostly we didn't have the means to do it because the organization was a right. vietnam we needed a for company battalion and we were stuck with

a three company battalion. but everything changed in june. in june dogtown was raised. we got rid of all the defensive to ensure we all had responsibility for four provinces. and so we were able to build up the troops. we told our companies you have to have 120 men in the field everyday. infantry company is 160 people. soon we had huge number of people that's a 44% increase of the amount of troops we had, the county at edge. annexing we had to do was we had to get rid of the overhead in the division headquarters. we were surprised to find that this overhead was all support,

not support but infantry troops. a little research showed us that was the biggest problem, everybody has foot problems. the french when they were there had 500,000 hospital admissions for foot problems. so we had to solve a. with walter reed help it took us two months to solve. the solution was simple. whenever you keep a trip in the field for over 48 hours the curve of the problem went up. so we said no troops in the field and leisure in hot pursuit over 48 hours. annexing we get a source people go, we wanted to increase -- this is a sign that you couldn't even take arrested i want to show the water. the troops who wanted to take a best had to sit down in the water. if you had to go after the immediate across the rivers and things. the other thing we want to do is want to increase our tiger scouts.

these were the people that surrendered from the d.c. to the government and and and dr. baker they found him a job with the military. we had about 250 of those. we wanted 400. we wanted one person wanted one for platoon. so we said now that we have the troops in the field we have to support them. what's the best support to get people? intelligence. intelligence who had all sorts of both human -- see how this thing works -- and centers. we could respond within 12 or 15 minutes. it was carried in the elevation -- the helicopter. it is any they're hiding out, you get a reading and you could attack. the other that we had was the reaction program. and what was that? we required all of our medics to go out every day, every day and

treat the friendly villagers. this was so well received. we said let's go out to the enemy villages. we're trying to get them into the government. we will also get a lot of intelligence. we couldn't get any intelligence. the reason for that was there was no men in the village, only women and the women would not talk to the soldiers. the men of the vc were out in the field. we said give us some women tiger scouts. they laughed at us.zy, you whatn tiger scouts? when we got them down there, they are the ones who gave his all the information. the best results we had. now that we have that, the other way we support the troops was aircraft. you couldn't do a thing in the delta without aircraft. so that the men we need there were mechanics are they work night and day and got her a pass ready so we could use it over the plains of the delta.

you could see for miles. annexing we did was look at tactics. what about art tactics? mcafee said you have to have artillery but before. you put again, they stood away. although we must do that we always have artillery coverage for our troops. everywhere they went we had the single platforms we put out in the delta come in the water, et cetera. the men were always under artillery. annexing we said, you can't insert your troops within five yards of the enemy. we said that's baloney. have to do it within 300 yards. they were afraid and we were afraid and we lost a lot. i hate to take this in july and august we lost 31 aircraft, but after that nine. after that we had less lex. one slick for every seven to pick we had to have 170 troops to we said we want five. what we do is have five troops ago after the target. if it was hot to put the other five there.

if it wasn't there we go to the next target. recall that jitterbug and. now we had the area covered by air. but knight was a problem that in the delta everything move. there were a lot of enemy there. you have to get personal replace, ammunition replace. they couldn't talk on the radio. they had runners instead of talking on the radio. the people were ducking. they're hiding out. they couldn't stay in the same place on because if they did, you would find them with your people sniffer. before they could move ahead of guerrillas dig a new play. we had to get some kind of tactics and ambushes at night. one of our brigade commander said let's use a push master. a bushmaster was a simple thing. we would pick out three platoon ambush sites, insert the company at dusk. when i time came they would go out to the ambush site.

that would cover about 400 square yards. things got better. we would do a checkerboard. we had nine squads that would cover a square kilometer. the last thing we did to go to work at night with the infantryman. our most famous man we had for our snide. he wanted stivers. he got 44 sniper rifles. they came over and train our troops. when they first came out there were 68 with one sniper into a dumping infantryman. this raised the whole elevation of things we're doing. now we had the night coverage. we said how can you cover the whole area at night? that's when they were moving. we decided we would go with what we call our aviation, that we put on night vision device into

a helicopter and then the man looking down and we would find enemy down the he would send a tracer bullet and they would come in and that it. night search. i had the g3 come down with it when i. he came back and came back outside and he said we killed 18. we killed 18. what's the most interesting tactical operation with a night raid, we had a young officer he said look, if the men -- they come in at night, let's go get them at night. we work on a plan where we were checked at a village and sent to houston with 14 soldiers. they would land in the middle of the night, that was the tactics we had. so now we had a covered by night. we had a covered by day. this is the type of thing that

you would see. this is month operation we have by squad, a total of 3572 operations. 1120 may context of what does that mean? and 4452 did not. in one year period we had 20,330 operations of which 22550 made no contact. 85.5%. seven out of eight made no contact. people would say the reason it's such result is your pressure with your results oriented. unit pressure on these people and had to come up with numbers. that's not too. with great results because we had a lot of enemy there. good company committed to quit innovative tactics. and we also had a good plan. this constant pressure plan. so when the general came down, and april 1969, the change of command, this is what he told. they had been magnificent, and i

was in the last three months unparalleled and unequaled performance. i was talking about the soldier and have been talking about the aviators, but every man in the division health. the cooks and bakers would go out on the perimeter. the snp people, fine transport. 38 trips through boat -- through roads. medics, the medics were wonderful. and so the idea that i was talking about how we maintain security, the in game was application. we wanted to get the people that we had the land and the people. and if you did that how do you measure? a survey to get of military, clinical, community government. 165 questions. we went out every month.

they wanted to find out who was under the government, who is on the vietnam control. so he was the hamlet for us, the first of january, 31st, this is before tet. this is after tet. in our area but 1.7 million people. before tet there were six under 62000 d.c. after transport through 653. they didn't have the uprising. it took a terrible beating. well, he lost 24,000 people. it's true we did. but let me keep your eye on the six under 62000 people. that's what the war was about. these are the people are contesting it is other people want to get into the government. these are the people at vc wanted to cheat. how did we get them into the government? we worked in in to the army. we went on joint operations. operations with we can't control.

we taught them airmobile. we taught them rifle. we taught them basic training. it gave us intelligence. we built schools. we built the centuries. we gave food. we gave money. we took orphans. the government of vietnam told us what we're doing. 500,000 trained. we have medical treatments of 5000 people in one year. in a five month period we had 2000 made caps. with 2700 i caps. that's the integrator when the i cap would spend the night with 550 of those. so that is what, 538,123. i'm trying to tell you 45 times a day our doctors and corman went out to treat the vc. so the government of vietnam, the 9th division, the first

time in history that a military unit had ever been given specific action of metal. so this is the result that we had when we left july to go back to the states. 603 did come villages were no longer under viacom control. 420,000 people were not. 420,000 people that were not oppressed in what they were doing. we can save ourselves definition of the ninth was introduced with access to the resources of the region and approved -- improved security. we thought that mission was performed. the south vietnamese said so. but i also want to tell you a north vietnamese that's a. the g8 you -- top secret documents out of hanoi. they were leaking all over other place. they knew everything we did, we knew everything they did. and in that this is what the

north dignity that is a about the period were talking about the general office uprising and 67 and 69. they are attacks were committed. the point a lot you do no more than anything is it was successful. and i end on a common, this is what he had to say in 1991. what sets the record of the nice part is benevolent totally dominate the enemy, they did over appeared over a long period. my book is an interesting read about guerrilla war in the delta. and if you have any questions, i'll answer them now. [applause] >> my husband was in the delta.

he did 180 airmobile assaults. he loves his tiger scouts. and my question is he's always had, want to find out what the fate of the tiger scouts is. did the 9th division or the army or anybody every keep up with the fate speak they did not unfortunately it does we took care of the tiger scouts until 1975 and the north vietnamese took over. i hope if it was not good, but i worry about my the conference. the whole time we pulled people out of pits, we pulled people out of saigon. some of the troops that we had, they had tattooed on their arms, killed communism. and also what happened to those people, i do know some of my friends were putting indoctrination camps for 18 years. what happened is a tiger scouts, good question. i wish i knew but i'm sure that north vietnamese treated impartially. but they were people who surrendered and then fought

back. any other questions? thank you very much for your time. [applause] >> this event was part of the annual association of the u.s. army meeting. are more information visit a u.s.a..org. >> 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 shoot anything you see on booktv.org easily i click and 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. tv.org. >> we're here at the national press club's book and author not

talking with veteran newsman jack fuller about his new book, "what is happenening to news." tell us what is happening to news. >> what's happening to news is that the audience is changing fundamentally, and it's much as anything else we shaping the way we are getting our news feed. >> in what way? >> well, there are obvious ways. the attention span is short. but there are deeper deeper ways, too, not the least of which is that the information environment we live in today actually because of the way our brains are designed, built, causes us to be much more drawn to emotional presentations of information than they were in quieter times. and that really manifested itself in the way people are trying to communicate with us, with a lot more intensity and

often anger and passion and so forged -- so forth in 15 years ago or 20 years ago. anyone would have thought was appropriate. >> what are some of the examples of this phenomenon that you have in the book? >> well, the commentators on cable news, for example, just one example. it's probably the most prominent example. you can even see it in the rhetoric of britain is, particularly commentary, which is extremely in text. you see it in the internet world, and the kinds of things that attract attention and audience in the internet world are often not sort of neutral disinterested reports of this or that. but, in fact, our grants, why is that?

why our intelligence people being drawn to that information? that's what i ask we try to answer in the book. >> what do you see as the ultimate outcome for the news industry of the current attention span that the audience has? >> well, i think for young journalists it's a little bit scary, but an exhilarating time. and the reason is that it's not enough for them to just do a little better than the masters of the craft of the generation preceding them. they have to completely redo the craft. that's exciting. it's also scary because nobody has a template for how it's to be done. by accident confidence that as

journalists again to really understand what's happening out there to the audience they're going to spee-2, indicating -- and begin using a way to speak to them, that we will see a renaissance. it will be different. it will be a different kind of journalism and it will look different. some of the old practitioners of my generation will sniff and say this is not right and so forth. but the important thing is journalism that is verified, journalism that puts the message first. that is, besides what is important to say first and then figures out how to say that. not besides what people are going to be interested in first and tells of them only that. >> thank you very much for your time. >> here are a few of the upcoming book fairs and festivals from around the

country. >> martin tolchin is the founder of the hill newspaper and a co-author on with his life

suzanne tolchin of the new book, "what is happenening to news" 11. where did you get the name for your book? >> oshawa is a chicago term. and it describes payoffs to the rich and powerful. and how does that tie into washington? >> washington is full of rich and powerful. but we talk about a usb the christmas turkey. now it's earmarks. now it's privatization. outsourcing, the contracts, and the hundreds of millions in the case of halliburton, a billion dollars. and these go without bidding to people who are very, very well-connected politically. that's what this book is about. we have no problem with cronyism as long as the crony is competent. we have no problem with a marked as long as the earmarks of the

projects are worthy. but a great many other cronies are not competent. heckuva job, brownie. and a heckuva lot of the projects are not worthy. bridge to nowhere, which, of course, was not built your the theme of our book, from jake harvey who said there aren't many definitions of politics to the art of complex, the art of impossible. but he said to him politics is the art of putting people under obligation to you. and it's true, politics, politics you have corporate politics and politicians are very resourceful at devising strategies that put people under obligations to them. and as i say, you know, we feel

patronage is an essential tool of government. arauca bomber could have gotten his health care reform bill through. lyndon johnson could make a new civil rights bill through. ronald reagan could have gotten his tax cut through. remember, the famous comments i can be bought but i can be rented. so patronage has been used to get a lot of legislation through, and how you feel about patronage really depends on how you feel about nafta and the bill clinton gave away the store, and about all the initiatives and berries residents, republican and democrat have had. and patronage is absolutely nonpartisan. republicans have used it. they used it when they controlled the congress. not that long ago. democrats had used it.

liberals have used it. conservatives have used it. and we think that it an essential tool of government but an extraordinary susceptible to waste, fraud, and abuse. a thousand public officials a year are convicted of felonies, which makes one wonder why more hasn't been done for prison reform. >> that was martin tolchin given to the summit of his new book, "pinstripe patronage: political favoritism from the clubhouse to the white house and behond." >> up next allan meltzer presents "a history of the federal reserve: volume 2, 1951-1986". mr. meltzer is joined by paul volcker, federal researcher during the carter and reagan administradministrations. they discuss past and present economic issues. mr. volcker talks about his experience in office. this event was hosted by the am