perspective. i wanted to do with in a very near to avoid. >> host: thank you very much. . .

you are watching book tv on c-span2. 48 hours of nonfiction books every weekend and we are on the campus of george mason university in fairfax virginia on the oscars of washington, d.c. for our university series we have the chance to come to universities and talk with professors who also read the book you might not have heard about and joining nellis meredith lair a history professor and her book is not quite out yet. it should be by the time this

airs but here is the cover of its. armed with abundance. consumer is signed soldiering in the vietnam war. professor lair, what was the typical experience of the american soldier in the vietnam? >> guest: that is the great question to start because the american public has an assumption what it was informed by television, movies, media coverage of the war that tends to focus on the experience of the ground in the boonies in imminent danger living a life of obscurity and degradation and enduring the frequent danger and that is a powerful image and experience that many vietnam veterans have during the war but it is probably not the dominated experience of the war because by the late 1960's the united states had built an incredible logistical a apparatus to support its combat so most

soldiers and the viet nam or serving in some kind of a support capacity living largely out of harm's way and as the war went on the and increasingly comfortable quote with the of life to minimize the difference between living conditions in the u.s. and conditions in the degette mom. >> how many u.s. soldiers of vietnam? >> guest: 1968 it was about 542,000 americans. >> and how many were told that your do you know? >> off the top of my head i don't know it was the deadliest in vietnam because of the tet offensive and the marking of operations after. so certainly i don't in the book denied the hardship the soldiers endured and the cost of the war.

what i'm trying to do is complicate the was ideas what it meant and what that experience was like and also to give some credit to soldiers who don't see their experience as represented in film or television or other representation of the war. >> you have a chart in here sales in vietnam 1915 to 1972. $1,968,325,000,000 is what you have. why do you include this charge? >> one of the things i examine this consumer is some and the role but it's played. military authorities in vietnam recognize that providing goods to soldiers is a way of maintaining a strong moral and that is important because it is controversial and there's a lot of people serving who don't want to be there so providing easy

access to consumer goods becomes a way of ameliorating some of the problems that militaries are seeing so they create this enormous post exchange apparatus a retail operations of the u.s. military is functioning and becomes innocence the third largest in the world as a consequence over a three or four year period and those figures are not adjusted for inflation so if they were adjusted for inflation i don't have those numbers would be but it would be staggering. >> what is this on the front of the book? >> that is a photo i found in the archive at texas tech university and three guys playing and not with their camera and it's something that was talked about a lot in publications for soldiers and things guys would say about their paychecks to buy and these

were pricey to read these were not the little $99 we've become accustomed to but sophisticated that could run several hundred and it was an iconic purchase of the war and i felt there was interesting because here they are taking pictures of themselves taking pictures and that is in essence with the book is about because it's all soldiers and other people regard the experience of the war. >> professor what was living in saigon for the u.s. soldier in the late 60's like? >> would depend on a few variables. some were living in saigon stations in quarters that were hotels that had been rented out by the u.s. military. living in saigon created problems for the military because you had by the mid 60's,

lead 67, 68 it created a lot of problems because they were going out after hours patronizing that is eroding relations with the vietnamese that for political reasons need to be better and also presenting themselves as target's if they are not john or occasionally for the viet cong studying car bombs in the city, so if you are in saigon life is really pretty good and there were random acts of violence and the tet offensive did bring four mcginn 68. as for the most part people who lived in saigon or near their whose experience was very isolated and something like what in the book soldiers saying it's not the information about the war i'm getting from stores or

strips or the radio i wouldn't even know that i was in a war. i think it was taken on the coast but that is basically some guys who are getting ready for a party so it's a different kind of beach landing where they have to acquisition to be your and hot dogs and probably had coral's set up so you can make out they are in their swim trunks and they are going to have a party and the photographer who took that particular image its of guys standing there and barbecues and the beach is literally just littered with empty beer cans so with what we traditionally see of the viet nam war to read who is the look jones griffiths? >> i believe he's an englishman who covered the war and was one of just a couple of photojournalist interested. that is something that proved very difficult when i was trying

to find quality images to include in the book. i did find lots of mosul quality images taken by them themselves who had very little facility with a camera they were using so lots of blurry shots and darken the interior. the professional journalists were charged with getting a story that would help to sell papers and the war they tended to focus on was the killing and the dalia and war and the images they produce are powerful and beautiful one. there's a photo in the book that's also very famous but there was another photographer i talked a lot about, mark jury who was a soldier journalist. they took photographs that captured this other side of the war and underlined the impression that the war was of great urgency for most americans fighting it.

>> when did you get interested in the vietnam war? >> very early in my life. i did my first research and seventh grade on vietnam because i'm the daughter of a vietnam veteran and a officer and soviet mom war he spent two tours in vietnam and i think it hk mark on my family and my parents' marriage and their relationship with their children sires fascinated by that and i growth in the 1980's and vietnam was rocked a budget for adults and while i recognize my father was willing to talk about his experiences most adults were not and i was trying to reconcile from the messages i was hearing about what his war was like with what was being represented >> what did your father right in the prologue to your book? >> i wrote the prologue but it is about his experience in the

war, and i wanted to do that because this is a personal subject for me and i wanted to explain the genesis of the book so i described the contours of his service in vietnam which the first to come to the province and living on an advisory compound which is just maybe 20 americans working with the vietnamese infantry it was dangerous, and i think much more in the spirit of how the vietnam is popularly represented so for the second tour he went back in 1970 and found a world he could scarcely recognize in vietnam so forth have the second tour he was at the london post which is among the largest space in vietnam and it was like an american outpost in southeast asia. it was home to upwards of 60,000

people. there were hundreds of opportunities to drink and party, movie theaters come bowling alley, every amenity you could imagine and he worked in an air-conditioned office in that to work and had a profound questions on what am i doing here and what kind of a war is this? so i heard those competing versions of the war as acadian really it's not as though i set out to write a book about that but then when i was a professional scholar doing this research and started to find the evidence of this other world and that captured my imagination once again. >> did you think potentially the word abundance and consumerism and connection to the vietnam war iraq might be controversial? >> it has been controversial.

i've done speaking engagements where i've had some hostile reactions from vietnam veterans or from people who feel by pointing to the more comfortable conditions americans enjoy in vietnam on was eroding the missing sacrifice americans made. that's the wrong way to look at the problem because even if somebody went to vietnam and spent a year in one of these bases, basically working a 7-5 or six job and party in on your off-duty hours you are still missing a lot and there's a great deal loneliness and alienation. the world at home is passing you by and complicates your relationships. there is a sacrifice to be made and what soldiers don't often see their role in the world acknowledged. there's very few published memoirs and a vast majority by soldiers to serve in this capacity for self published.

apparently the market doesn't want to hear those stories. >> you mentioned drinking and partying. was there a lot of that? >> there was and it's something of that i think the american public has to take responsibility that our soldiers abroad in the vietnam or not always angels and a trendy and corrals and was largely a i think encouraged by the military in this sense it wasn't strongly discouraged. there was no sanction for visiting brothels and in fact there were brought was on american streets that were tolerated and american politics were sent to treat these trenary all prostitutes for venereal disease. so there was a wink weak approach boys will be boys to this trade in viet nam which i think is a harsh reminder that

this is ultimately an expletive encounter americans were having with the vietnamese women that these women were participating in net not because they had aspired to be prostitutes but because the war unsettled the countryside and create 5 million refugees families were struggling and often the last best hope for a family was to prostitute their daughter so american soldiers didn't seem to pay much thought to that. not all of them but a lot of them so there are consequences for the vietnamese. as far as the drinking is concerned, drinking was rampant in vietnam. a lot of attention is paid to drug use because americans of the time like the world over were experimenting with pot and other drugs and that carried into the vietnam war but drinking was essentially encouraged because the u.s. military was the purveyor of

alcohol. at times they were delivering to the field and was by the case that set limits on what they can buy and was like four or five cases a month was the limit and you are expected to consume because there were concerns of the stockpile did they would create a black market or a blowout and drink and party that couldn't be controlled and then there were clubs that there were hundreds and vietnam storch veldt by a unit where everybody was holding up $25 to get the club going and for the course of the war the proceeds are then reinvested in making it nicer and nicer says some of them don't have running water and there's just a little back room where there is. then they've got swivel chairs and the west motif and it's a nightclub with live entertainment and slot machines

and from literally generating millions of dollars in fact there was so much money generated by these clubs the u.s. military air around 70 conducted an object kith and received 16 million in cash laid out in these registers and slot machines and there was to build a high rise hotel for military families on and on. >> professor lair, abases you were talking about in vietnam, are they the models for what we have today? thinking of iraq and afghanistan as other foreign bases. >> i wouldn't say they are the model for it. i don't think he's been to replicate what happened in vietnam but they are the antecedents of those bases and like during the vietnam war we don't hear about that that the bases were the enormous and they

have in their mn these eight distinction between a rhodes men and statesman recite the living. so the book quotes that in the in an epilogue that talks about the consumer is in bed purveys the war and the consequences sharifs and meredith lair assistant professor of george mason university. what do you teach? >> guest: american history of the vietnam war mechem american society triet >> her new book is published by the university of north carolina, armed with abundance consumerism and soldiering in the vietnam war. thank you for joining us at george mason university. >> thank you. >> the age of 25 had this best seller and he's very brash and thinks he knows everything and sometimes he really does. in 1785 to he decides what's wrong with america and he's spot on. the problem is under the

articles of the confederation, the federal government didn't have enough power so he writes this pamphlet called sketches of american policy and when he has an idea he does something. he takes it to mount vernon and he takes it to george washington, and washington wasn't a college guy. webster was a yale man and madison was princeton and john adams was harvard. washington wasn't a college guy, he was impressed on the interesting idea and he's a great delegator so he said i will give it to mr. madison it seems possible. he gives it to madison and once the pamphlet becomes instrumental in the drafting of the constitution and then in 1787 webster is at the constitutional convention against to be cut in these moments are evolving into the murphree and shaker