could restore the entire roman mediterranean empire in the sixth century a.d., and my favorite of all of them, matthew ridgeway. retook seoul, south korea, and got us back up to the 38th parallel when everybody wanted to evacuate and go back to japan. >> did you have to narrow the list? >> yes, i did. >> from -- where did you start? >> well, i had people, i had people as diverse as the spartan, i had richard the lionheart, curtis lemay. all sorts of figures. i thought rath or than trying to be successmatically chronological, let's pick what i thought were the most interesting, dynamic, controversial and then use them as a template in the conclusion to say they're applicable to other people across time and space. >> in "the savior generals," you write: savior generals are not mere cowboys. most are keen students, even scholars of war.

they garnered little notice, they never the less used their time in obscurity to systematically review contemporary tactics and strategies of an ongoing losing war. >> well, matthew ridgeway's on the cover of time magazine, and today called him old iron tits. he has a grenade here and a medical pack. but they didn't realize he'd been studying late at night strategy tactics, history, language of korea. or you take somebody like sherman, wild uncle billy sherman, war is hell and all that. he was a magnificent student of history. he understood the psychology of the southern plantation other than. and when he said i'm going to make war and ruin synonymous ideas, he really had thought about it in advance. so they're showy, they're sort of -- a good example is george patton. they're showy, they tend to be like moths to candles as far as publicity goes. but they are serious students.

petraeus was a part of our popular culture from 2007 to 2008, but for 50 years in his earlier career he was a ph.d., he was a serious student of tactics, strategy, political science. and yet the popular persona was not of a little egghead scholar. so they adopt these personas that are necessary, and they sometimes fool us into thinking, wow, they just came in and shot the place up and left, but they weren't. they were waiting there all along. >> you say that they're like moths to a flame when it comes to publicity. >> yes. and even their careers maybe because they do burn out. one of the things that was odd writing this is nest close committed suicide after saving athens from the persians. bell star russ ended up as a beggar. poor matthew ridgeway, eisenhower didn't like him, and he had a very bad time after

saving the korean war. sherman is sherman, people were calling him a terrorist within a year. and i thought, wow, david petraeus doesn't fit this model, because the galleys were sent right in november, and then all of a sudden the petraeus -- i don't know what we would call them -- innocent started to a-- incident started to appear, and it sort of fit the profile. >> um, victor davis hanson, were general patton, was jen macarthur on -- general mcarthur on this list to given? >> one of the reasons today weren't is because everybody knows of macarthur. everybody knows there's some fine -- and i have in the past written of both and especially george patton. but when you mention the name nest close or bell star russ or ridgeway, people don't know who you're talking about. i think colin powell at the arlington service for ridgeway -- who died at 98 in 1993 -- he said nobody knows who

this. nobody had really known what happened to him. he just sort of faded away. so i've tried to bring public attention to people that are out of the collective anticipation span. attention span. >> that's just a little taste of victor davis hanson's newest book, military book, "the savior generals," is the title of it. if you go to booktv.org, you'll be able to see many videos with victor davis hanson talking about his books as well as a longer version of him in fresno talking about this book. you're. watching booktv on -- you're watching booktv on c-span2. >> former senator kay bailey hutchison is next on booktv. she profiles numerous women integral in the history of the state of texas. this is about 30 minutes. [applause] >> well, thank you. and thank you to the dallas historical society for all you do to preserve our great history

of this area, but really the state. you have archives and memorabilia that no, nobody else has anywhere in texas, and i thank you for being such a strong organization that really is into preserving our history. i, my book is about the spirit of texas really and the spirit of the pioneers who built our state, and it's much like the people who built our country. but i wanted to write about the women's role. now, i have written two other books about the women who broke barriers in our country in sports, in aviation, in politics, in medicine, in the first nobel prize winner in science. and i wrote these books because

we have a great chronicle of the great men who built our country and built our state, but it's been very hard to find the information on the women. and without the women of texas, we wouldn't have had that great, e bull credibility excitement and spirit that we do have in texas. and i had, you know, i grew up in texas, a fifth generation, and i just thought everybody was like us. [laughter] but i moved around the country and around the world and went to the senate, and i realized that other states do not revere their history quite like we do. not every state requires state history for that state. but, of course, we do. every school child in texas learns about our history. and i think that is the beginning of the interest that we see in our children. so passing it through the generations is very important.

but i also saw something that was very different. it was this e bull minneapolis, this happiness. and i think that that was not the norm in other places where you had to fight so hard against the elements, the harsh land, in our case indian raids, especially the comanches were very brutal. and to fight those elements, you would hi that people -- you would think that people would be just hunkered down and sober and somber, and they weren't. they were happy. they, they enjoyed life. and i want to read a couple of excerpts that just made me realize how very special this happiness in the face of danger and even hardships came about.

i'll read first from an excerpt from mary austin holly's book. now, stephen f. austin, as we know, was the father of texas. and he came here, and he wanted more immigration from the united states into the mexican territory of texas. and he was trying to encourage people to come. so he asked his cousin to come and look at texas. of she was from north carolina, and he wanted her to see everything and how great it was and then go back and write a book and distribute it on the east coast. and she did. and here is what she wrote. she came in 1831, and her book came out in 1833. it is not uncommon for ladies to mount their mustangs and hunt with their husbands, to ride long distances on horseback, to attend a ball with their silk dresses in their saddle bags.

[laughter] hearty, vigorous constitutions, free spirits and spontaneous gaiety are thus induced and continued a rich legacy through their children who, it is to be hoped, will sufficiently value the blessing, not to squander it away in their eager search for the luxuries and refinements of polite life. now, i just thought that was a fabulous thing to observe, that they had that gaiety way back then when there was nothing. now, i want to read an excerpt from my great, great grandmother's letter. she was the daughter of the governor of tennessee, and i found that this was also something that ran through a lot of the women who came to texas in the 1820s, '30s, '40s. they came from genteel families, they had a lot of luxury are

is -- luxuries, and they were well educated. and they came to texas where there was nothing. nothing. and no be amenities. henrietta king who built the biggest ranch in the world, the king ranch, with her husband lived in a mud hut when she first married richard king. because there were no trees out in west/southwest texas. there was nothing to build a log house with. and the others like my great, great grandmother lived in a log cabin, and here's what she said, daughter of the governor of tennessee who actually was the governor who succeeded sam houston when he left the governorship abruptly which all good texans know because he had a disastrous marriage. and he became the governor. so his daughter marries a new

doctor that has just graduated from medical school, dr. frank sharp, and moved to st. augustine, texas. and she writes to her sister may 1, 1849. she says: out in this new country i see no one but strangers, but they are the kindest people i have ever met with. the society is as good as this any portion of tennessee. there seems to be as much refinement as you would meet at any place. there is no such thing as fine houses or furniture. they have very comfortable houses, but they cannot get furniture. it's too far away from navigation to get such things. by the time we make money, today will navigate this, then we can get all the little notions that we fancy we need. if i had been in tennessee, i would have thought the house we occupy would not do at all.

we live in a very small house with two rooms and a passage. we have not even a plank laid overhead. but with all these inconveniences, we are getting along finely. for the people do not require the impossibility of newcomers. now, this log cabin is still standing in st. augustine, texas, and it is clearly a two-room with a dog trot in the middle log cabin. well, at least in east texas they had trees, so they could do log cabins. but in west texas there was mud huts. so you can begin to get the gist of what it was like in those early days. and i was struck by the heartiness of these women. and when we were looking for the title of the book, here is what we decided would be the clincher. you all know thomas rusk was the

secretary of state of the war against mexico. and sam houston, of course, was the commander in chief. and they were very close, and they were great friends. they were bonded. they were the first two senators from texas as well. so i'm in the rusk line. john cornyn is in the sam houston line. but thomas rusk was a beautiful writer, and there's not as much written about him as there is about sam houston. but he was a wonderful writer. and when he reported on the battle of san ya sin toe and the revolution, here's what he wrote. now, this was in 1836 right after the battle. the men of texas deserved much credit, but more was due the women. armed men facing a foe could not but be brave. but the women with their little children around them without means of defense or power to resist faced danger and death

with unflinching courage. and i think that acknowledgment of the role of women even back in the 1830s was so appropriate. and i wanted to make sure that the role of women in texas just like the role of women in america from my first two books was part of our history. so i do talk about the revolution and the women who were there in the revolution. anna -- [inaudible] is in the book. she was the love of sam houston. he dedicated the battle of san jacinto to her. but she loved robert irion who became the secretary of state. and so there's a part about her. and then pretty soon after she rejected him, sam houston went to alabama and met margaret lee. and they had an almost instant lo, and it was the one -- love,

and it was the one that lasted. so i have two chapters on margaret houston because he and she wrote so many letters. she didn't accompany him very much. she was quiet, and she too was very cultured, a wonderful musicianing by all accounts -- musician by all accounts, very educated. but she liked to be quiet and at home. and so they wrote a lot of letters which means there was a great record about her. now, one of the things i never knew in the history that i had read was that margaret houston had, she has two children, and right after her second birth she had a breast tumor that became very, very painful. and her brother-in-law was very worried about her, sam houston at this time was in washington as a senator. this was 1847. and she -- they decided that she

really needed surgery. so asheville smith who was the yale-educated physician who was sam houston's great friend, and he actually started the texas medical association and the university of texas medical school in galveston, but he came to margaret, and he said we have to take this out. and, um,. >> she wrote to sam houston, and she said this, this is going to be a little surgery, it won't be bad, and i am resolved to take it like a soldier. and asheville smith wrote to sam houston after he did take the breast tumor out because she refused even the whiskey that he, that asheville smith offered to dull the pain, and she would only clench a silver coin in her teeth. and it's, it was because they thought she was so strict with sam houston about stopping his drinking -- which he did -- [laughter] that she didn't want anything to mess around with that.

so with a silver coin in her teeth, she endured that and had six more children. [laughter] so another one that i wrote about was emily austin perry. this was back in the revolutionary time, and len mcbee is a cousin of her. stephen f. austin had no children, but emily was his sister. and steven kept writing to her many missouri. that's where they were from. and he said come to texas, come to texas because pretty soon the free land is going to close, and you need to come now. and he said whatever you do, don't bring heavy furniture. you just have to deal with it here, and everybody has the same thing. emily brought her piano -- [laughter] from missouri by horse and wagon. and it did take months to get

here. but, again, she had been well educated, she was a pianist, and she was not about to lose her culture. and that was another example of the spirit. i also did a chapter on the parker raid, the comanche raid of fort parker. and all of us from texas know cynthia ann parker's story, that she was 9 years old during the raid, and she was adopted by the indians and clearly became an indian. loved the indians and married the chief and had as her son the last great chief of the comanches, quanah parker. i also, though, wrote a hot about rachel parker plumber, her cousin. her cousin, who was 18, had more of the experience that other

captain is -- captives had. a great historian wrote in his definitive history of texas that it was the people who were killed in indian raids who were the lucky once, because the captives were tortured. it was a very brutal existence. and rachel was one of those. she was 18 years old. she was pregnant when she was captured. she had the baby, and they killed the baby if front of her -- in front of her and then threw it in her lap. you know, just things that make you cringe. and she actually was ransomed and had a diary. and that's why we know so much about her captivity. but she, after she was ransomed and came home, she was so weakened from the whole experience that she died probably of a broken heart. she had another baby with her

husband after she got home, but she died very shortly thereafter, within a month, and then the baby died as well. so she was just not healthy. but it was very much a part of what they endured, and you could tell how hard it was. i then go into the trail drivers. now, you talk about hearty women. these women, there weren't a lot of them, but the ones who went on the trail drives once they were out in west texas and they were driving cattle, they had to drive them up to kansas and colorado and missouri and chicago to sell the meat and the cattle. so i did quite a long chapter on the trail drivers and ranchers, because they were incredible. and one of those i learned about from lucy johnson. when lucy was giving my children and me a tour of lbj ranch which

is a national park. and she told us the story of her great grandmother, lyndon johnson's grandmother, who again, came from a genteel family in the east, moved out into texas where a number of her cousins had moved for the land. and they had one of their neighbors, the couple was killed by comanches in a raid, and all of the men went to search for the comanches that had killed those neighbors. and she was alone with her baby, and she heard the horses being rustled out outside. she rushed down into her basement and covered the floor opening with a rug, put a diabetesser in her baby's -- diaper in her baby's mouth so

that the baby wouldn't crew. and sure enough the indians came in. she heard them smashing her china and everything she had in the house, and then there was silence. and then the next thing she heard was her husband coming home, and he was just, obviously, devastated. so she emerged from the basement and said, you know, i think we're going to move to zahn marcos. [laughter] san marcos. so they did. they kept the land, but she also rode trails with her husband. and there's a letter from one of the cowhands. he said i had the honor of riding with mrs. johnson 8 miles ahead of the herd. they were the scouts, for heavens sakes. so i verified the story. lucy said, oh, you know, this has been handed down through the family, and i verified it though. it had been used in the caro books, and there was even more information. so i was able to put her in the book. and it was right at the end of my writing it, so i was really

glad to have rebecca baines johnson. and then i did an end chapter on the two great -- well, not two great. we've had some great hand ranches in texas. but there were two men who were a factor, of course, henrietta king who, again, a genteel woman who had to tame a hard-drinking ship captain, richard king. but she did. just like margaret houston did. and turned them into the productive entrepreneurs that they were. and both molly goodnight and henrietta king started out in mud huts. but the ja ranch is in the -- [inaudible] canyon which is one of the most beautiful parts of texas as many of you know. and then my last chapter was the bridge to the 20th century, and

it was two great businesswomen, the two -- probably after emily austin who was the richest woman in texas when she died in the 18, i think, 50s, then the next time that you had really rich businesswomen who had made it was sarah cockrel from dallas and -- [inaudible] from houston. and sarah cockrel, of course, built -- she took the first ferry to go back and forth across the trinity river. that was the first time you could actually start going out west from east texas, and then she eventually built the bridge. and she was a great investor and a wonderful businesswoman. and by all accounts was a very generous and good person and was revered and considered one of the founders of dallas. and ovita in houston was much

the same way. she was of a national figure because she had married the governor, william p. hobby. but ovita ran the houston post and expanded it into owning television stations which were sold for hundreds of millions toward the end of her life of. but she also started the wax in world war ii and made it such a success that it was clearly the precursor to women actually being able to come into the military. and ovita is the only woman that has an inscription in the world war ii memorial. now in washington d.c. and she was asked by president roosevelt to write a description of what volunteer women would do in the war, was -- because they needed the men to be able to fight and fly airplanes. and they wanted women to do the

desk jobs, and they began also to be pilots, the wasps also were part of world war ii training pilots to fly. and ovita set up a plan, and roosevelt looked at it and said you have to be the head of this. and she said, oh, no, no, i'm going back to houston where i belong. and her husband, william, found out about that and said, no, your country's calling, and you need to be there. so she did that, and that's where she met eisenhower. and she so admired eisenhower after meeting him and seeing what he did in the war that then she became the head of texans for eisenhower when he ran for president. and if you ever want to hear kind of some tongue in cheek

stories, ask bill hobby, who was a teenager at the time and went to his first and only republican convention -- [laughter] about that experience, he will give you some stories. [laughter] so that's how i wrote the book about texas. there's a lot of history in here, but my main reason was to show the stamp that women put on the spirit of texas which is so vibrant and so much fun, and it was much what i've done with the american women in american heroines and leading ladies, the other book i wrote. now, i will just end by saying that, you know, in washington sometimes people think that texans are a little too loud and have a little too much fun, and i always say, you know, it's not new that they didn't like texas in washington. actually, when we came into the nation as a nation by treaty,

they couldn't get the votes in the senate to ratify the treaty. because it took a two-thirds vote, of course. so president tyler had to introduce legislation to put texas in. so it was really a law that brought texas in. it was by the terms of the treaty, but it only passed by one vote in the house and one vote in the senate. so it's not new that they think we're a little too loud -- [laughter] i always try to mention that, you know, we probably are, but our hearts are as big as our mouths. [laughter] thank you very much. [applause] i'd be happy to take questions. >> questions before she goes upstairs, so if you have a question, raise your hand, stand and speak loudly. >> and i will be signing books. >> [inaudible] >> oh, you know, someone asked me at the san taupe owe book festival last weekend where i

was doing a preview, someone said, well, which of the women would you trade with? i said, none. [laughter] after reading about all that they went through, you know, we think we are on the cusp of, you know, getting there. but, oh, my gosh, the obstacles that we have are nothing compared to what they endured. so i cannot tell you a favorite because each one was so amazing in her own right. they were just strong, vibrant and resilient people. >> another question here. >> i would just like to -- i don't know who it's attributed to, but i've always liked that quote about texas that someone wrote -- [inaudible] >> oh, yes. texas -- >> hell on women and horses. >> yes. texas is -- this is a quote, and

i never could find the source. but it is in my book. [laughter] as an unquoted source. it's not mine, but the quote starts the chapter in the very beginning that texas is heaven for men and dogs, hell for women and horses. [laughter] >> any other questions? >> i'd like to ask you, what was the most difficult issue that you felt you had to deal with in the senate? >> oh. >> the men. [laughter] [applause] >> no. you know, there were -- immigration reform, very difficult. negotiating the wright amendment, the lifting of the wright amendment, are difficult. i mean, very diflt