terrorism. so it's been a summer of lighter reading and a lot of enjoyment. >> for more information on this and other summer reading lists, visit booktv.org. .. am going to read a bit from my new book, a section that takes place in d.c. at the bethesda naval hospital and also at a

dinner later that same day for wounded soldiers. and i might hop around a little more and talk about writing, about the military which i have done -- i want to do more of it. i am a recent father and want to hang out with my baby and talk about my baby but i won't do that tonight. somewhere between e elizabeth and prince senate looked at my speedometer and realized i was going 120 miles per hour. in my mind i was in the desert driving home the. we were spraying fire everywhere me driving with my left hand and my m-16 in my right and the barrel out my window and letting loose on first. didn't care who or what i hit. i let the engine dropped speed slowly.

in the shoulder ahead of me and i changed and his leader truck. i first thought was a vehicle born explosive device and then i saw the white and child holding hands in the rear of the vehicle. they waved. the man wore dirty overalls. in black and white it could have been a scene out of a novel by steinbeck. people driving beat of cars, someone should write a dissertation. my right hand gripped the gearshift where the pistol grip was my life. as though the pistol grip on my life on my rifle but i had no ammunition in bethesda and the targets remained unclear. i poured water over my head and walked to the radio. i took the speedometer back to 90. i thought of young kids missing limbs in bethesda. what would i say? i made it to bethesda and in the

labyrinth found office that i needed to find. a naval officer from the bethesda media team met the injured marine floor and made plans with marines to meet them later at the dinner in d.c.. my first impulse was to bolts. i hadn't been to hospital since my brother died. i knew the smells and sounds and antiseptic and the world of machines that give and take life. i knew the collective heart beat of a hospital for holding so many lives in balance. i did not belong here. i would wreck the balance. that was not the plan of the day. the naval officer showed me into a room where a mother bent over her young marine son who arrived two days before. they were not sure the kid would live. week earlier he had taken a sniper round to the forehead. the swelling was down. he blinked when his mother spoke to him but only for a few hours a day. i remember the family was from

ohio. someone from the naval media team asked me to sign a copy of jar head. i rode it out to, your tenure whatever his name was knowing he would never read it. his mother was overly polite and took the book for me and smiled and said she would read it to him and i thought jesus, please read the kids something with a little hope, not my oblique book. what you give a mother to read over the death of her 19-year-old son? i walked out of the room with my blinders. my brain heard. i was short of breath and other sea. the minors got called away and asked me to stand by. ahead of me in the hall i saw a man in his 50s leaning against the wall outside a patient room. he wore a red t-shirt. the guy was big and somewhere in the middle left -- i approached him. excuse me. can i ask you a few questions? who are you? former marine officer, vietnam's

68-70. i see it in his eyes. up former marine and a writer and just here and listened to the stories to see how the marines are doing. my boy, he said and pointed at his sweatshirt and looked at me as if i was stupid. he is in surgery right now. below the knee on one leg and above on the other and once it shakes out. i was in vietnam. i saw a lot of stupid died but spent three weeks here and never saw it so heinous. the boys are ripped to shreds. go room to room and you will see and look at all the mothers. i'm one of the only father is here because the fathers are back home earning money or have never been around. i am lucky. after my time i was an executive at a bank. i retired year ago. i have two pensions. i can afford to pull my heels and look after my son. i can do this for the rest of my life but look at the mothers. some are married.

you know this story. many of these boys are from broken homes with single mothers. these women thought they were going to fashion themselves after 50. the new and dazzling adventures. they will be feeding and bathing their sons for the rest of their lives. he placed a hand on my shoulder and asked me to watch out for any marine that i could. a woman approached clutching copies of a newspaper article to her chest. this is the article they ran yesterday in the paper she said. so touching. they captured him. he couldn't speak but blinked his eyes and they captured is sold. the woman began to cry and the marine bad comforted her. may i give you one of these about my son? yes. i glanced at the article. the front page story with a color photo from wednesday's paper in cleveland or cincinnati or wherever. this woman and her son's bedside the sun in mobile neck brace oxygen mask, legs in fraction. he was very -- barely visible

beneath his bouquets of medical material. who are you with she asked. just then, introduced me to the women. she asked for a signed book and i gave her one. she said a week before paul wolfowitz had been on and she was more excited to meet me. the woman told me the care her son received was top-notch and the support staff had been wonderful. i glanced at a photo of her son on a cover of the newspaper. he is a sweet boy, she said. the marine dad walked away. woman looked at me and said i am happy for him his son has a small wind. losing both of your legs is a small wound i would never be able to truly understand the depth of despair these marines and families are suffering. during my war i spent a short time at the entry point of this calamity at the end when bombs blew and rifles and our peachy shattered bodies, fired on friendly troops and totally forgot about the destroyed end,

the other ruin of families. may i put you the woman asked, yes of course. i felt awkward but couldn't say no. she hugged me tight. she gripped me for life for a memory of who her son had been. young, clean shaven, strong. i was none of these things. she would never hugged her son while he stood up right. she wept into my soldier. lost her family. the moon darkens. icecap melted. how can we go on? she locked on to my eyes in a wild and erratic way her face full of tears. was attractive in that high school librarian way. hanson. that is what she was. and sturdy. she possessed the order of the smell of all good mothers. her son would be fine. he would never walk and he might not talk but he would ve his mother and somehow they would both know this and be well. this could not have been true but it is what i told myself and then and it is the same why other americans have been telling themselves for a decade

and we believe this because we have to. nurses and order les swam around us in green and blue scrub and the nauseating sound of resuscitation prolongation, beginnings of altered lives. one of the miners grabbed me and assured me to another room. in the two visitors shares at an extremely old woman and the girl who could not have been older than 10. a war colorful clothing but to my untrained eye shouted bolivia. the woman shooed her lower lip and beam the smile as incongruous as the dress. my -- introduced me to the marine. he was a staff sergeant who had been blown up in a convoy. both his legs were in fraction. he said i am going to walk again. his face bore the burn serve human shrapnel. my guys got blown up but i live. i live. i got blown up and i woke up right here in this bed. how many days later i don't even

know. i was having a dream in the philippines like a little island and i was there with my platoon but i opened my eyes and looked at the end of the bed and there is in my grandmother and my niece. haven't seen anyone from bolivia in 14 years since i left. i guess i'd died in baghdad and here i am in heaven with my grandmother and my niece that that i think they aren't dead. how could they be dead? walked up to my side and said you are all live. grandmother ride me suspiciously and the little girl continued her intense and beautiful smile. and of the war, the sergeant said. got blown up in baghdad and wake of in the u.s. and they bring my grandmother and my niece. i had to admit i was totally impressed. all i wanted to do was go back and fight again. fight for my dead brother's. i could see he was doped up. he faded away into a deep mind wander.

where did the drugs take his brain, wondered. back to the desert war that philippine island, shangri-la not unlike the muslims promised land and flowing for virgins for every martyr. they should me out of the hospital. i had never driven in d.c. and only had the slightest idea where i was going. wanted to visit the marine corps war memorial in arlington prior to heading to capitol hill for the wounded warriors dinner which started at 7:00. i found the memorial. it was a replica of the famous flag raising at iwo jima. the second one. around the base of the memorial were stenciled the names of every campaign large and small that the marine corps ever participated in. the crowd was under those truly american collections of people,

latino and middle eastern and european immigrants. some of the men were vietnam vets. of its sons and daughters. a man being pushed in a wheelchair had to be from the island hopping campaign. he wore a cap with a badge of guadalcanal. created specifically to jump the islands to the heart of mainland japan. i looked at the war memorial and scorched asphalt from decades and centuries and arlington and two funerals' underway each held underneath the carbon. one coffin had been dropped with family and friends staring into earth above the box in mid prayer offering absolution. i wonder who rested in the coffins. young men from current wars or emphysema or colon cancer bad in a head from alzheimer's or peaceful sleepy end just one last breadth.

arlington's austerity chilled me. tapestry of green and right silence. most of those men and women died horrible deaths in combat. two for buses unload their passengers in front of the rest are the few blocks from the heart and senator office building. these were the soldiers, sailors and marines undergoing outpatient care. they use crutches and walkers and wheelchair's and some of them walked on their own. he with a prosthetic leg. i could tell by the flag like snap of the pant leg or she missing an arm and choosing to go without the prospect delicate the folded and pinned to the front. the phantom hands, half of prayer and half of the finance. and more mothers of the many legacies this war produced the one not yet considered by most observers was this which the

marine that pointed out to me in the hospital corridor. a few as young as 40. when a man might age might date looked at the core rise in and saw themselves supporting their sons to be a hospital for the next 40 years. the greatest burden of a war always falls on the mothers. men on both sides killed and blow each other up and posted the deeds on youtube and the mothers carry the casualties to the river. and count casualties. they saved the wounded at hiroshima and have done so on many other rivers. the missouri and the danube. name a river that received the wounded from the bed -- backs of mothers. i watched the staff sergeant from -- up the hill. both were wearing dress blues and took a nap from a bottle of whiskey.

and i couldn't decide which. we should head in, a serious queue at the elevator. we were expected on the ballroom, and climb the stairs. they met me up stairs. he didn't struck my scrawny civilian legs. and the middling version of the new york parties, attended a few years. the food spread was not as ambitious in hollywood party. and poetry magazine. and in sex appeal and food and drinks and the number one spot and the art world, television magazine books, one guy behind a folding table two kind of bad lines, red or white and the

number of 60 gallon coolers but it didn't matter. the troops were pumped and not eating hospital food. they were rubbing prosthetic limbs to be affluent and influential. i saw the secretary of the army and an admiral who's facing recognize from a congressional hearing. i saw bob dole and have a dozen congress men and a few senators whose faces i knew from papers i couldn't recall. the party didn't grow priorities for these kings of social d.c.. a bit of power in the room. in the city as in every other city in the world when you are the power and money you can only spend so much time around the masses before an uncomfortable silence falls over the room. the troops and their families will not be able to hold conversations about holidays in europe or the new sailboat or the summer home remodel. this gathering is supposed to be a gathering or social hour but the masses want to talk about

health care and prescription drugs and living wage and how many times can you ask a kid with a metal plate in his head or the kid with no legs or bomb blinded kid where he grew up and where in iraq or afghanistan did this unfortunate awful thing happened and how it was progressing and if he missed the men in his unit. how many times can you ask these questions without the guilt and for blinding you? these princes of the ocean would debarked from our listing cocktail lounge within 20 minutes and jump in a scooter and sailed to a party where none of the tough questions had to be asked with no visible injuries or good martinis and i was right. 20 minutes later someone on a microphone asked us to be seated and the power left through the backdoor having done their good deed for the week. i sat at a table and staff sergeant and two injured army personnel in two female volunteers for a nonprofit veterans advocacy group and two members of a lobbying firm perceive to be a couple.

sorry. the couple was quarreling next to me and i expected myself from here shark and said hello to the young woman at my left. young girl i thought. she looked about 16. strawberry blond hair, sweet smile, bluejeans and a blouse. i wondered if her father was one of the injured men among us. i look for him. he said to me i serve as a private in the 80 second airborne military police. she lifted her right leg and with her knuckles pound on it. the sound was of titanium. guess how they got me? i guess you don't have to guess. i e d. she chuckled. it was the first time that they are found myself speechless. this girl, this woman who looked as though this very morning her mother made her scrambled eggs and rushed her off to homeroom was living the pain of war right next to me what the same table lovers quarrel stupidly about

nothing. i thought i had been handling the carnage fairly well. the mother holding clippings from her son's newspaper story. the bolivian sergeant with her grandmother and niece. alone with his lessons in sex. none of it had been pretty but it had all been powerful. in advance of this trip i prepared shells for these brands of trauma war i thought i had. the injured young female private drilled this war too deep. our salad plates were replaced with entrees. hello, i said. i was in the marine corps in the first gulf war but i am out. how is your treatment? mostly good, it is a long process. the worst i've ever had -- that is why i come to these as often as possible and got an autograph from tiger with a couple months ago and i get to see fernandez. emotion to her left. a young kid sat up straight in

his chair chewing stake. pull down tough over his forehead. a black army jacket and alert eyes. fernand own nodded slowly and every move touched him with pain. the army doesn't want us to be dating to be together because he is a sergeant and we are both getting out. he broke his back and we are getting out. on my other side, i heard the low voice showed me hatred of two people know longer in love. i had no appetite to listen to that. i nodded at the private and excused myself to the terrace. mostly male soldiers and marines stood or leaned in smoke. i never smoked or had a cigarette in my life but i asked a young marine with a hair qaddafi could spare one. this is the one advice of military members i never picked up. you didn't smoke? i never took up the tobacco.

sure thing. and a california beach cliche. is buddy love that. the hair was longer than any military guys. i tried to fake the care of a u.s. marine especially around this crowd. a slimy civilians said so did those many extra pounds in my suit. i noticed myself looking at the men and grading bear. and behavior for military bearing and discipline. the marine lift my cigarette for me and i inhale deeply and coughed. the smoke was bitter and burned. there was a planter being used as an ashtray. a chorus of laughs. where did you learn to smoke? you owe me a dollar for that. some kid picked up my cigarette. that was my first one ever and

the last. can you go on a beer run? what are you guys drinking? beer, they laughed. i counted eight guys. i will see what i can do. there was desert in front of diners and at this stage a country band made reports show. i asked the bartender for 16 be years. he didn't want to give them to me. he said we can't get these kids too drunk. some bad stuff has gone down in the past. who knows what they are on? i pull the 50 out of my wallet and handed it to him and put 16 years in one box. on the terrace i put the beers to smokers and they all exclaimed and whistled and clapped their hands as though i handed them the spigot in the south of life. those guys will never give us more than one beer per person. they think we will get a fist fight back to the barracks. favor of beating each other up with crutches and canes. we all laughed.

they were able to skip the bus and go to a bar and get a fight with some civilians. how did you get 16 beers out of that guy? i pulled rank. back at the table the staff sergeant seemed to be making exemplary progress with two ladies from the non-profits. for these girls there would be true profits and veteran advocacy. i will take a little break there. i took this trip in 2006. i had been a friend of the organization called disabled american veterans since 2003 and when dan quayle reached out and asked if i spent time around veterans and i try to go out every year to aspen. the disabled veteran winter sports clinic is a pretty remarkable event that has been

going on for 30 years but they teach adaptive skiing and hockey and play some water polo. it is pretty wild. you sit in a buggy and go down the mountain. i skied better on that than i did on my two sorry legs. it is always a beautiful week. little strange because it is in aspen so there are people cruising around in their $1,500 piece suits and veterans wearing fatigues and chain-smoking and doing tequila shots before they head on the shoots. the matchup of the aspen lifestyle and these injured veterans is interesting to watch. this is my first time around injured that's.

you might have noticed from that reading that i was -- i didn't really know exactly how to approach these guys. i didn't really know how to ask about their injuries or how to speak about them but i found over the years now if i meet a guy and i know he is injured i say when did you get hit? what happened? what did you lose? how are things going? i found remarkably these guys want to talk about it. they want to tell their stories. the sharing of the story for the veteran is a healing act. yesterday i was a cab in portland and a veteran own cab company whenever i am in portland and there was a young guy -- i started inquiring and eventually had a 35 minute

conversation on the way to the airport about his injury and his time in the military and the process -- that is one thing that drives me to spend time around these veterans and find their stories is the process of recovery and which is really remarkable is the attitude and the spirit during the process. what we are finding now is many of these young men and women who would have died in other wars are alive now and they are living with these new adaptations and they wouldn't have lived in vietnam or korea or world war ii and as a writer and someone who is interested in combat and the history of combat i am anticipating -- excited to see what that will mean in terms of how the history of this war is written because we will in

fact have more men and women who live through war with these injuries and it will paint a nuanced and different picture of what the return from more is. a lot of these men and women, like to get out and tell their stories. i am going to read a bit more. it is more of a private part of the book. had a bit of a struggle when i returned from the marine corps. we used to joke it would take five years to get over the reporting watching the marine corps did to us which i don't believe they brainwashed me but i do believe it is an intense tattoo that military service and especially combat service puts on someone and it took five years to get out of that. i realize now my mistake was

leaving the marine corps in 1992 and thinking that is it. good-bye, marine corps. you are the past and will never be a part of my life again. i will be a college student now and become a writer and liver radically different life. i thought i had done that and done it well. and it ended up that i hadn't and i was so -- i had returned from the war but the war was still present for me and it became very present for me and i wrote this book about the war and there was no way i could say it but i wasn't the marine. i very much self identified as a writer and as a citizen and only really in the last decade when i had the company of veterans again have i discovered the company of veterans is a healing moment for me. i recently wrote an article

about psc and suicide in the veteran population and spent a lot of time talking to dr. john mcshea who has been treating veterans since the vietnam war. we were on the phone for an hour-and-a-half. i wanted some practical advice. i said what happens if woman calls you up and says my son or my daughter is in pretty bad psychological shape and a are in need of some help. but they are not trying -- they are not seeking it out themselves. i can't force this on them. bring them into a circle of veterans. two things will help any psychologically injured veteran, sleet and peers. they need -- to remain need therapy but i have never treated

a veteran who was getting a lot of sleep who couldn't find his way out of it. then he said piers. you get a veteran in a room with other veterans where they feel safe and feel they can share their story and won't be judged by it, a guy or a woman in that group of peers will be well on their way to health and healing. so remember that. sleet and peers for any veteran you may know who may need some help. i eventually found myself in a dark place. i had escaped manhattan and was living on the side of a mountain in catskills alone in a cabin trying to finish a book and

isolating myself. i had been in a series of trips with my father and my father is a vietnam vet and the strips were a way to kind of come together. we would share some stories and he shared stories of vietnam and i shared some of my own stories. have you ever been in a winnebago for a thousand miles? pretty intense especially if you are in one with your father. i love my father but a thousand miles in an rv -- my father's idea and i give him a lot of credit for making the offer and

the effort. this was in houston and was 110 degrees in augusta couple weeks before i turn 40 and i was in a crisis and i had gone for a run and was pretty certain i initiated a cataclysmic cardiac event. my father was ill and i jumped into the full and watched him -- he has emphysema and was administering his medicine. i watched my father moving around. he lived alone in fairfield and mostly travel alone. i knew the solitary life he created for himself fit in well with his fantasies of being a clint eastwood character from a western or a war film, the epic wanderer who lives on canned beans and shoe leather and the reality of the road and warfare but with my father have been happier if he were in love with a woman and living in a clean

and tidy house. and the possibility that i might end up a loan and buying scared to death out of me. i was naked on my back in the full west of houston. it frightened me so intensely that i told my father i couldn't make it to california. i needed to return to new york to take care of some things and take care of myself and figure out my life. he made it to lockhart this afternoon and jumped on a plane home. i don't remember much of august. friends in the city threw a party for my 40th birth day. it was september. i thought of moving to los angeles where a friend was shooting a movie and i could live in his house for free.

or never return. eventually a friend asked me to meet a friend of hers. she had a friend of coming from brooklyn and we might like each other and have some things in common. i decided the next one and i dated had been the daughter of a waitress. doctors and lawyers and bankers and the idle rich and that never worked out. we met at a mexican place. for a few months this woman -- this is the first time that i met christa and i knew she would be in my life for long time. perhaps forever. she wore a short skirt and cowboy boots. at an end of summer she was dark but with her her skin would turn white. she said funny and flattering thing about yippies and honks and yoga masters and when she had a chance she smiled. she had gone to college in the 90s and one semester she worked at the mexican restaurant. when she said as i stared at her

stupidly and longingly. she might be the one. not only had she been a waitress at the same mexican restaurant. her mother had been a waitress at the officers club on camp lejeune. as a child she lived on camp lejeune in a development called terrace 2. the bloodiest battle of world war ii. joining the marine corps 22 years earlier the fact had been drilled into my head. some nights i had nightmares where in a drill instructor yells for room of recruits are a lot and a crew to be included standing and straining and distressed position or another involving a rifle and heavy rucksack replied tarofa, bloodiest nightmare of world war ii. the nightmares of cleaning of war with brass hope. the smart and engaging in beautiful woman had heard of that, small inconsequential island in the pacific that was

still soaked with the sanctified blood of marines. most beautiful women from new york city would have guessed that it is a new kind of chevy. she went on to tell the story about being a student council president at her school in camp lejeune and how each morning she and a secretary worries possible for running up the u.s. and marine corps flag and i knew for certain i was going to be in love with her. so i can open it up for questions. everyone has heard of tarowa. >> to your colleagues at the new york times accept a veteran as a federal reporter. >> i don't work for the new york times. one of my favorite new york

times reporters, c j shivers is a former marine. he felt like a fish out of water at the gray lady. >> you didn't mention why you joined the marine corps. what is your -- was a good decision? didn't turn out too well? >> i wrote a whole book about that. took me years to realize i joined the marine corps to discover the essential mystery about my father which was vietnam and combat. i was in fact conceived when my father was on our and our from vietnam. my mother got a call when someone told her to step on a

plane the next day to meet her husband in honolulu who had a week off from the war. i was the result of that. my father was very much colored by my father's vietnam war experiences. not something he really talked about. only occasionally. some of his friends would come over and in the backyard, with the men talking and i wasn't allowed in that circle. at the time i joined the marine corps because some of my buddies were doing it and my recruiter had a pretty good sales pitch and i was excited about the possibility of inserting my country and also escaping this town i had grown up in. a real romantic attachment that i had to the idea of military service and particularly to service in the marine corps. >> does anyone ever bring of the literary tradition of the marine

corps? writers in the marine corps. >> it wasn't part of my tradition. i was just a ground. there was a lot of reading. a tiny library, a converted barracks that had probably 4,000 books and pull it out and read that. i discovered it on my on after getting out of the marine corps. in the officer corps, i know that now more so than i think in the past in the officer corps, and the literature of war. and a line, the list of tasks

they today. >> ten minutes left. in new york, what is your experience the general sentiment for veterans of the current work toward you and other veterans and is it here? >> in sentiment, there's a lot of respect from veterans from war to war. i can walk into a real of current war veterans, i know the codes and the gulf war was a much smaller war and was over quick but most people, students of recent american history and practitioners of the war understand the beginning of

these wars which was the gulf war, and in my experience respect from generation to generation. >> jar head was autobiography all. >> yes. >> i got the impression that you didn't see a lot of combat in the gulf war. the marines had done a big push. was my impression wrong from the movie? i didn't read the book. >> i was in task force ripper and we ripped up the middle of

kuwait. and after six weeks of bombing which was seen in january. there was no resistance. the m ps were overwhelmed with trying to take care of people who surrendered. >> columnist -- only a small percentage of the congress men in both parties serve in the military. the regard this as significant? >> i do think if members of congress had service experience or family history of experience we might be a little more careful with how we wage war and when we wage war. there's a great military

civilian disconnect that i think is the result of vietnam and people were very comfortable with that. the military was comfortable with that and the civilian work for a few decades. that was a gap that needs to close in order for there to be a clear outlook on the cost of the conflict. the human cost but also the cost in general to society and the culture when these men and women return. in the back. >> how do you feel about the military draft? do you think we're better off without abortion we have again? from the military standpoint and a broader national spectrum? >> i am in favor of the draft. there could be a national service aspect of it.

you don't want everyone in the military. generals don't want everyone in the military but that has to deal with this divide. generals senator not everyone is fit for service. maybe some people fighting fires--some people rebuilding infrastructure in the inner cities and then you have some people who were part of battalions. a few years ago i was in israel for month and that is a country where everyone serve. at dinner your waiter got out of the military a year before and now going to college and everyone understands the cost of service. that is something that couldn't hurt here. it is the population issue. >> from one marine to the next thanks for everything you are doing to make it a lot easier

for those who advocate on behalf of veterans to get the message out to those who haven't served. the sacrifices a lot of people go through. the question i have is it is easier for you now -- more so you mentioned earlier about your romance with the marine corps. the work you have done and the books you have written and the traveling you have done. is it easier now to have that law and get the message out to those marines and those others that have an serve? >> like a lot of marines i have a love-hate relationship with the marine corps. the system is sometimes brutal. i was recently rereading a memoir -- injured in vietnam and near the end of it, he said i loved and hated the marine corps. that is something that unless you have been in the marine

corps you don't understand and i spent some time after the marine corps hating it more than loving get. after writing jar head i spent a lot of time in the company of marines and veterans. it is about individuals. it is about camaraderie and history. i am still a marine. some parts of me are still a marine and it is important to tell not just marine corps stories but military stories and tell them well and make sure that the story is from these current wars are told and i take that as a real responsibility. >> you talk about meeting with current veterans coming back. what is the largest challenge for them once they return both injured and not injured in the current war? >> it is different for every one. some guys can come home and

become a math teacher off the bat and don't have any difficulties. or a science teacher or a librarian or mechanical. other guys lost their footing. always a tough transition. it is important that veterans realize there are services for them. service organizations and they are not alone. the thing that i hear again and again when talking to veterans for families of veterans and practitioners is the most dangerous thing is when a veteran isolates himself and pull out from society. i would just say reach out. if you know a veteran who is isolating reaching out for him or her and try to pull them back in. to me the thing that helps was going to college. i got out of the marine corps and went to college and kicked

around community college in northern california for three or four years but that always kept me tied in some way to a community. i was no longer part of the marine corps but i was part of this community of learning that meant everything to me. allow me to study and allowed me to be here telling you this story. >> question right here. you talk a little bit about your writing process and how it has devolved sins riding are head. >> i am a bit of a sprinter. that is what i say. my wife says i am lazy. i hang out on the couch and read books for a month and she says would be doing? i am working. i am a sprinter. i work really hard for six or eight weeks and work eight for

ten hours a day and then hang out and read books and watch movies and slowly re-enter the work i have done. jar head was a very episodic book. i wrote a novel after that which forced me to be more narrative in my story telling. this is now i think this third book of mine is a more mature book in terms of how i am approaching the world but also in terms of how i am approaching narrative and telling the story. >> what did you read? writing or books that were relating to the military or more literary? >> my reading is all over the place. i am a fan of presidential biographies. anthony beaver will be here in a

week, one of the great military historians of our time, best military historian. i read everything he writes. i will read falkner and hemingway and dropping to the old classics and the new stuff coming around. i am very catholic in my case. i watch a lot of food network. >> considering you have written both fiction and memoir how do you feel about the process of writing autobiographical and do you feel you can trust your memory completely or what process you go through to remember events in specific details? is there a process you go through and do you think there is -- obviously an element of truth to everything you are saying? do you think this memoir sometimes is in the eye of the beholder? >> for me writing is an act of

memory retrieval. when i began writing about a period in my life the memories come flooding back. my father is part of this book. i am certain he remembers these trips somewhat differently. but i am the writer of this book and i remember them this way and i craft them this way and it is prose and narrative. the events are real events. the dialog is close to what occurred. they say send 100 men 2 war anyone come back with 100 war stories and that is true. i know that is true. i trust my memoir telling. i like memoirs because i feel one thing that memoir has in america is a lot of room for

invention. we expect novels to do certain things in terms of narrative and the memoir is quite new. the memoir as we know it today started with frank conroy in 1967. there is no some room for narrative invention. that is why i wrote another memoir. i am not certain i will writ another one. my next nonfiction book might be a reporting book. >> another question. about a minute and have left. this is a web question from jake in chicago. you conclude your book by saying fatherhood might be more affected in man's greatness than combat. since completing the book how are you doing with that? >> i think i am doing well. my daughter is 9 months old so she can't offer a contrary narrative. just yet. i am sure she will.

i love fatherhood. the best we 9 months of my life. something happened when my daughter was born and this is probably nothing other men don't experience but she was on my chest five hours after she was born and had an even tiffany. i realized i would continue writing books and do other things but the most important thing i will never do now is the a father to this young daughter who is on my chest. that was very freeing. all my anxiety about writing and work and what am i going to do with my life disappeared. focusing now on fatherhood and i have done the best writing of my life since she was born. >> anthony swofford. [applause] >> we would like to hear from you. tweet as your feedback at

twitter.com/booktv. >> in the book publishing world, chris derose is one of the oldest book publishers in america. sarita varma is director of publicity for f s g. we wanted to talk about new books coming out by this publisher in fall of 2012. sarita varma, i want to start with william chase's new book bill and hillary. >> written by william chase, professor at duke and specialist in race and gender studies who gives us a fascinating portrait of their relationship and how hillary supports a bill during various personal crises afforded her the opportunity to increase her platform publicly and become more prominent as a politician and in turn the same thing happened with bill. a look at the new partnership in

a modern presidential relationship between the president and first lady. really fascinating insider tidbits. >> the market and the american public is very market for more clinton books? >> i think there is just from the initial sort of release of the early editions. people cannot put it down. fascinating the insight you get about their family history and personal stories and interviews with stephanopoulos and many power players in the public's fear today. i think it will change the way we look at the relationship between presidents and their first partner is going forward. >> is it coming out before the election? >> september 4th. just-in-time. >> patrick tyler has a new book out. new york times reporter. >> he has been a correspondent for the times and the washington post and wrote a book on the middle east before this and the

new book is looking at the history of israel and making an argument that the military has always been a large part of a strategy for the country and a very essential part. they basically need to come to terms with their military history and the role of the military in the government in order to achieve peace in the middle east. complicated situation and he looks at it through a new lens. >> host: i want to ask you about the book on the 1958 chinese -- >> guest: the great famine. really quite a fascinating look at that. he is a member of the communist party. unprecedented access to archives and personal connection in that his father was a victim of the famine so he goes back and looks at the specifics in the records and recreate how public policy led to this so-called natural

disaster. the famine could have been avoided for happens to a lesser extent if policies were allowed to flourish that would have allowed people to migrate. just a fascinating look at an unknown story. >> host: sarita varma, what booker you excited about? >> guest: so many. for the c-span audience another book is robert sullivan's my american revolution which is a fascinating matchup, looking back at the american revolution and reclaiming it for new jersey and new york and revisiting that history but also through a modern day lens of re-enactments and the legacy of the revolution today. >> host: a quirky writer. >> guest: he was. earlier talk of the interest were the meadowlands and wide-ranging writer. hopefully one to watch. >> host: booktv on c-span2 and we have been talking with sarita

varma, director of publicity. >> for as important as this project has become to my life i can remember the first time i learned about this historic congressional race between two future presidents in 1789 but what i do remember is reading about it in a book and it was treated with the typical one or two sentences you would see about this congressional race and i thought to myself all of a sudden we are in this race between two future presidents. james madison and james monroe debating the most important issues we ever talked about as a country. whether we should have a bill of rights and what kind of union we should have and all of a sudden you are on the next page and there in the first congress. i decided to read everything i could about the 1789 election and i found no one had written anything about it before i decided tell the story. the book founding rivals, the inauguration of george washington. what many people don't know is when he took the oath of office

two of the 13 states were outside the union. north carolina and rhode island did not ratify the constitution because it was missing a bill of rights. a guarantee of fundamental liberties. this was common for the anti federalists' throughout the continent with the common denominator in the anti federalists' was they opposed the constitution. many of them came at it from different angle. some believe you could not have a union that covered these different and diverse states and independent state or regional confederacy's but they didn't think any government could be suitable for this confidence. james monroe represented the majority of anti federalist opinion in that his objection to the constitution was centered around dismissing a bill of rights. washington took the oath of office two state's, new york and virginia were agitating for a new constitutional convention.