work closely is any doubt that when they are finding these damaged brains or former football players it has been the colleges that have collisions that have happened. for years the idea that colliding with someone are hitting your head can lead to some sort of damage separate from football was an accepted thing and has been. i think to a lot of people the debate about whether you could end up with some sort of damage hitting your head time and again almost seem silly. the larger debate seems to be around what percentage of players will end up with this issue, how substantive it will be command how young you will be when you run into some of these problems. >> caller: i'm originally from new zealand. the world champions, and i played rugby for about 20 years. i'm sure that the incidence of concussions was much lower. and i am wondering whether or not the nfl could take a

much stronger position on tackles. there are strict rules about tackles that prevent a lot of injuries, particularly at the international level. also, the absence of helmets , ironically, might be a cause cause for fewer concussions. could you please talk about the difference between rugby union and american union and american football, whether or not you have looked at that? and if you have not looked at that, take a look at the new zealand rugby union seem and maybe open up a dialogue with the national rugby team to see whether or not you could learn something from new zealand and maybe they could play more games of the year. thank you very much. >> it's interesting. i have heard from a number of folks.

this issue is raised repeatedly. the biggest.is the one you hit on about helmets, the absence certainly changes the way players tackle in the game. we we address this in the book. in many ways, the helmet has made the concussion issue worse. it is overpriced piece of plastic that has emboldened players to tackle in much more aggressive ways than they had the helmets were leather. that. that said, the idea that the nfl would basically go back to leather which is an extreme suggestion, i i think there's no way that they will go back to the. it is as popular as it has ever been, and one of the reasons is because of the aggressive nature. the helmet is a big part of that. >> host: our fans culpable? >> guest: that is sort of

a loaded question. it suggests that there is an ongoing problem. for me there are two pieces. the nfl is what it is. it is a violent sport. and now that the denial, denial, whether the league is in denial or not is to be debated. for the rest of us the denial is over. this board is what it is. i would like it to continue the way that it is. i don't think there is a change necessary. players no what there getting into. the issue, the crux of the question, what is interesting, the youth level where kids are -- their brains are still developing and there are questions about whether you want your kids to be playing and how much we value football and want to contribute to the discussion. i think we are all hope will called in part of the discussion. i don't necessarily have a position a position about whether we should have

tackle football at a certain age. the number you pick will be an arbitrary one, but there is a reason. >> host: do you support the league being a tax-exempt organization? >> guest: it isn't the topic of our book. thankfully i am not paid to give my opinion. i am paid to investigate and look and issues. i think it raises a lot of questions when you have entities as large as the nfl that are financially huge, billion-dollar industries with the commissioner making at one time $45 million year , i think there is a question to be had about whether you can call yourself a nonprofit. >> host: our next question

>> caller: yes. i have an anecdotal statement. i would like to touch on the coaching aspect of the against -- the youngsters. and a lot of this, the coaches need to be schooled as an, when i was coaching the team i kept up with what the other team was doing because what you have at that level, you have different levels of maturity. in other words, you have some skilled players who can bring it. you have little boys who have not developed a they are out there together. what i would do is look over at the other coach. when he substitutes in, i would substitute in. i try to put put my little guys against his little guys. some of them, 1st of all,

over half of them barely belong out there. a lot of them discover by the time they get to high school. >> host: can we ask, were you worried about this issue? >> caller: absolutely. i w caller: absolutely. i would set up my teams. we had 100 after playing. upset my team up and try to make them said michael, but you have to play them all. i would get playing time. if the truth is known, a lot of the little guys don't want. >> host: any response?

>> guest: coaching clearly is a huge part of the issue. the question always comes back to kenya coach your way out of the issue? it's a collision sport. i think proper tackling is obviously important in teaching that and having kids were not in over their heads is a huge peace of it. the end it comes back to whether you can really figure a way to legislate your way out of this. >> host: good afternoon. >> caller: a great deal of blame has been given to the increase in size, strength, speed of the players increasing intensity of the impact the game do you have any data that you have gathered related to natural

turf versus synthetic turf? it seems to me that synthetic turf increases the speed of the players as well as being a harsher surface to come in contact with. >> i don't i don't have data, and i don't think we came across any. there was certainly a lot of anecdotal discussion players and their families who talk yerst what it was like to and their families who talk about what it was like to play on astroturf. now it's a different animal. at that time there was no question that it did not make players faster and consequently when you fell in your head in. we heard players and families talk about that. whether they're will be dated it looks a decrease these kinds of issues since we had gone to grasp and were different remains to be seen.

>> host: a few minutes left with our guest. >> caller: i saw your documentary. can you comment on this doctor? he seemed like he did not know what he was talking about and just supporting the nfl type. >> guest: so he was a gentleman and i were cast and that nickname for an appearance he had hbo for you was asked repeatedly about the connection between football and brain damage. he was one of the few neuroscientists associated with the nfl. he had a background in neuroscience and have done a lot of research about around the issue of berkshire's current brain damage. contrary to a lot of the

other folks who had been part of the nfl medical team that was aggressively denying this issue, there actually was a school that had a background in the brain. however, he along with the other doctors who were in charge of the nfl program repeatedly seem to deny a connection between the.brain damage than the other two-pronged attack as we lay out the book not only denied the issue is about the when they were doctors who began to raise this issue and talk about the problems of potential brain damage from football there was an aggressive attack against those doctors, and effort essentially tossed her size them. >> caller: my question has to do with whether or not mark founded found in research the spoke to address the issue of how colleges educate student athletes with regard to the dangers of confessions were

injuries. it would seem to me that with a college-age student, they begin to make their own decisions. after one are you connected to football in any way? >> caller: my question came about because i was teaching at a big university. several of my students, we were talking the performance. and so the conversation area 18 and 23. if this is being talked about at public universities, universities, it would seem to be an ideal time.

move forward possibly into professional careers. >> guest: it is interesting. we did not spend much of anytime focused around the college issue. i no that there is an ongoing debate and discussion around colleges as this issue has become more and more discussed. there are lawsuits at the college level. one of the things i heard was there was a definite suggestion, any substantive way including to the.that they were very slow at even hiring a medical director to begin to focus on look at concussions. i think at i think at all levels we have seen that slow response. the colleges are no different. going here is the book. coverag

on booktv on c-span2. >> welcome, everyone to the 31st annual chicago tribune printers row lit fest. i would like to say thank you to the sponsors before starting. we are broadcasting live here on c-span2's booktv. we will reserve time at the end of the presentation for audience questions so you can line up here at the microphone off to the side so the live television audience can hear the questions. you can keep the spirit of lit fest going year round with a subscription to the print's role journal that is the premium book series.

... >> marc jacob of the chicago tribune. thank you. [applause] >> hi, thanks for being with us. it's my honor to be interviewing kenneth c. davis here. you know him as the author of the don't know much about series of history, he's written for the op-ed page of the new york times, has appeared on npr's "all things considered," and is one of the folks in the world of

history writing who is really terrific at translating history to a modern audience, to a general audience and also i find having, you know, just finished his excellent new book "the hidden history of america at war," that he has a real way of getting past the boring history that we were taught in schools to the interesting stuff in history that we really would like to know and that is really true. so, ken, thanks for joining us. >> it is a great pleasure to be here, thank you for having me. it is a great pleasure to come back to printers fest, printers row. i was here a few years ago and had the good fortune to follow john green onto the stage, and that was a challenge in itself. today i follow erik larson onto the stage -- [laughter] i don't know if that's a compliment of just a very, very highly placed second violin. but i'm happy to be here, thank you very much.

[applause] i actually, since we just heard the word "twitter," i actually tweeted out the other day -- yes, i tweet -- the notion that, you know, let's play two. i think a famous chicagoan said that, erik larson and me back to back, a great history doubleheader. let's go for it. >> some of the themes of your book, and one of them i thought was, and just to explain how the book is constructed, and correct me if i get any of this wrong -- >> oh, i will. >> it's six essays, the really interesting thing about book is how there are certain themes that go all the way through.

one of them is who fights america's wars, and you talk about how in the american revolution the militia versus the actual members of the continental army and all the way to the iraq war, you get into how at one point in time there were more military contractors in iraq than military personnel, uniformed, which is kind of an amazing thing to think about. and so can you talk a little bit about who fights america's wars and why that matters? >> absolutely. let me just explain, first of all, that many people do know me from the don't know much about series, don't know much about history which was published 25 years ago. [laughter] i can't believe -- well, i was a very small child when it was -- [laughter] first appeared. but that book was written in a question-and-answer format. i tried to ask very basic questions about american history like what does the declaration of independence declare, what three-letter word isn't in the constitution. that's not so basic, but it's

kind of interesting. and then kind of offbeat and quirky questions like why is there a statue of benedict arnold's boot, and we can come back to that because he's an interesting character. this book is very different from the "don't know much about" series which was written in that question-and-answer format and was supposed to be this refresher course that so many of us need because all too many people, i have discovered in doing this for 25 years or more, say to me exactly what you said a moment ago, history is so dull, it's so boring the way they teach it. it's all those dates and battles. well, this is battles, too, but it's not boring battles, speeches. i never had that sense. as a child growing up, our summer vacations were usually throwing an old army surplus tent, an old army surplus mummy sleeping bags into the back of the car, and we went off to places like fort ticonderoga or

gettysburg or valley forge. so from the time i was a kid, i always had the sense that history is something that happens to real people in real places. and, in fact, i have a souvenir from going to gettysburg in 1963, and it was the centennial of the battle, of course. and it's a small wooden revolver. and i remember standing in that field being about 9 years old at the time and knowing something extraordinary had happened here, feeling that this was the hallowed ground that lincoln was talking about even if i didn't really know the gettysburg address then, that this was a special place. and i kept that, i still have that souvenir gun on my desk. i keep it to remind me of that feeling that i had standing there in the summer heat when i was a kid and knowing that history is something real that happens in real places, and it's about what we feel and see and smell, and it's not just about memorization. i came to this book which is a

story of six narrative accounts of six battles that stretch from the american revolution to the war in iraq to try and get some sense of that because we as a nation, as a people are not good at history in general, but specifically not very good about our military history and the place of war in our history. and so i've tried to focus on these six battles as a way to talk about how important and how significant war has been in our history. and, as you mentioned, who fights our battles. and, ultimately, we start to ask the real big questions, when is it worth going to war. abraham -- i'm sorry, benjamin franklin, i quote in the beginning of the book, says there was never a good war or a bad peace. he said that in 1783 just as the revolution ends. and i'm not sure that i agree with that, but the trick is to figure out when is a good war.

and that's certainly part of the question that this book tries to explore. >> so talk a little bit about the militia in the revolutionary war. i don't -- i cowrote a biography of benedict arnold's wife, peggy shipman, and in that book we dealt with a little bit about militia and how you couldn't order militia around the way you could regular soldiers. there's one case where benedict arnold's aide tells a militia member to fetch him a barber, and that causes a giant incident in philadelphia which arnold gets denounced in the newspapers and all that, because you're not supposed to give orders to militia. >> well, this is really part of the mythic narrative that we tend to learn if we learn anything at all about our school book history of the revolution, you know? the minutemen grab their trusty muskets, they dropped their plows or took off their shopkeeper aprons and raced off

to fight the war. that was certainly true at lexington and concord in april 1775. it wasn't true for most of the rest of the war. george washington feared relying on a militia, and he wrote to the congress to rely upon the militia is to rely upon a broken staff. every colony before the revolution had the provide men to a militia, and they would be required mostly to defend their hometown, their local towns in the south, particularly the militia had a very specific duty which was to suppress slave rebellions. part of the story we don't quite talk about and certainly one that i talk about in this book. what washington discovered was that these militiamen often were

only enrolled for nine months, three months, six months, and this is why in 1776 thomas paine writes a very famous essay called the crisis in which he said the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will soon be gone. he was talking about militiamen. summer soldiers. they would come when they didn't have the harvest crops and didn't have the plant crops, but then they were going back. so this is why washington needed a real, professional, standing army which became the continental army. and so there was a real discrepancy between the militia governed by the states and the governors and the continentals, washington's continentals. that was an army largely composed not of farmers who were rushing off with their muskets, but immigrants, german and irish largely in the revolution. one in five of them was an african-american, 20% of

washington's soldiers were black even though he resisted and wouldn't enlist blacks when he first took over the army. and young -- teenagers, eventually, out of work, landless with not much else to do, their friends joined, and so they joined. very different picture of the men who served and fought and, ultimately, won the revolution from the kind of heroic minuteman myth that was created after the war. >> and there was great fear of a standing army. >> that was the fear, and that was why the narrative was crafted, that the militia had done it. people like thomas jefferson, james madison, samuel adams really feared a standing army. they knew the history of republics before the united states of america. they often ended with a military strongman marching in and taking over, going back to the time of julius caesar in the end of the first roman republic. so they were very, very afraid of an army. they considered soldiers to be

basically men of the sword, as they called them, or men of the blade. they thought the officers' corps which they associated with england was just a bunch of aristocrats who had nothing better to do, and then the soldiers were the dregs of society. so it was a very, very negative image of the soldier. and that's important because it carried on in this country for a very, very long time, and it's certainly reflected in how the congress at the time took care of our soldiers, the american soldiers. washington had to really beg for most of the six years of the revolution for money to clothe and feed his troops. he writes a letter from valley forge basically saying that his man servant -- and we assume that that means a slave named william lee -- was basically naked at valley forge. washington didn't seem to suffer the same discomfort himself. but that's another story.

>> so, all right. so fast forward that to the iraq war where you have this situation, and you deal with this -- i personally feel it's a very important issue in our society now that the sense of shared sacrifice that you may have had in world war ii and in other major conflicts really doesn't seem to exist in the same way in the modern, the contemporary war. and the idea that in iraq especially we were hiring a lot of hired guns through halliburton and other companies, and it just changes the whole face of war, and it also changes the way public views war. >> well, that's one of the important threads in this book, "the hidden history of america at war," because i want to write and tell the stories over 230, nearly 240 years of who has fought our battles. and exactly as you say, the armies that fought for us in iraq, we like to think about u.s. troops going off, but the

story that i tell in this book in the last chapter is the story of the battle in fallujah. that was a battle begun when four americans were -- and this is a very grisly, gruesome moment that many of us probably remember well -- four americans were attacked and brutally killed, two of them were dismembered and hung from a bridge. and that scene was shown around world. what many americans did not realize was that those four men were not soldiers. they were private security contractors; essentially, mercenaries we might call them. working for a company that now is much better known to most of us than it was in 2004, company known as blackwater. that name is no longer in existence, the company has been sold. so the idea that these four men -- and they talked about americans being brutalized, and they compared it to somalia and blackhawk down in mogadishu.

this was a very different situation. those four men had gone into fallujah with poor equipment, underequipped, not properly staffed in very lightweight equipment. they did not speak to the marines who were outside of fallujah who were having trouble in fallujah at that point. of course, this is already a year after we've had the mission accomplished moment. so put that into the context here. this is supposed to be a war in which major combat is over according to the president. what happened, though, is that once those four men were killed, the united states army and the marines have to go in to suppress what is now becoming an insurgency in fallujah. they go in as the men in the first chapter, the chapter about

yorktown, go into yorktown with cold steel or fixed bayonets. the marines in 2004 go into fallujah with fixed bayonets. that's one thing about war that hasn't changed, and i think it's a kind of neat irony of sorts. but the marines go in, and very quickly it's a brutal fight. and the casualties, especially civilian casualties, are mounting in fallujah. and so the word comes down from washington to pull out even though the marines are very close to completing their mission. what that means is that they have to go back in about six months later and finish the job. so this is the intersection, of course, between military affairs and political affairs, because this was all being carried out as the presidential race was going on in 2004. and so we can never separate military history from political history, and that's certainly also one of the lessons of this chapter of the book.

>> well, it's also one of the threads of your book, the idea that sometimes the reasons that americans have gone to war have been suspect, or there have been misleading statements made. i mean, there are great examples of that. obviously, the battleship maine, the explosion that set up the spanish-american war. i'm sure you, on your book you get an endorsement from evan thomas who wrote just a wonderful book called "the war lovers" about how william randolph hearst and teddy roosevelt pretty much sent america into that war whether they wanted to or not -- >> and many did not. >> yes. well, right. and i read that book, and when i read that book, i couldn't stop thinking about the invasion of iraq. and i couldn't stop thinking about other instances where there have been, there's been intelligence that's been wrong, or there have been some people who wanted to take things as pretext. the interesting thing about the

battleship maine was at the time they said it had been a mine that had blown up the battleship, and it was probably spanish. and it's pretty much thought now that the problem was that they put their ammunition too close to their boiler, right? >> that's what the navy determined after many, probably 70 years later. >> right. 70 years later. a little too late to undo the war. >> right. [laughter] >> and -- >> the horse closing the barn door after the horse is out, i believe. >> what's interesting is that some people at the time seemed to know it, because there's one member of the investigative committee in thomas' book, he talks about how one member of the investigative committee was an admiral, and he took his battleship, and he separated -- he created more separation between or more padding between the munitions and the boiler. >> right. >> so he must have thought that maybe that was the cause. >> let me just point out here since we're talking about a lot of different battles in a lot of different places that this is a

chronological sequence, and the battle we're talking about or the war we're talking about is perhaps one of the most obscure now to many americans, although it seems that all of our wars are fading into that black hole we call american history, unfortunately. and that's certainly another reason i wrote this book. but the spanish-american war is a fascinating moment in our history because it is the moment at which we become a global power. almost by accident, but certainly by design of some of the men you just mentioned, theodore roosevelt, henry cabot lodge chief among them. but just to go back for a moment to refresh your recollections in case, this was a war over cuba, a war -- spain held cuba as well as many other possessions around the world. this was a vestige of what was once the greatest global empire

a european nation ever held, and it included the philippines. certainly, when william mckinley very reluctantly took the nation into war, william mccan kinly, the president at the time, was a civil war veteran, had seen how horrible the civil war was and was not eager to get america into a war but was really kind of provoked into it partly by newspapers that pushed what was known as yellow journalism at the time, really ramped up the emotional aspect of going into war. and what mckinley didn't realize, and he said it at the time, was he had no idea where the philippines were. they were a spanish possession, and theodore roosevelt -- a fairly young assistant undersecretary of the navy who was in charge because the real secretary of the navy was on vacation -- orders admiral dewey, who's in hong kong, to

steam for manila bay because he knows that this is going to be, he knows that the war is coming, this is going to be the moment that america can now seize a very crucial piece of territory in the middle of the pacific ocean. he was, had no qualms about it at all. and that's how america got involved almost by accident. and this is part of another theme of the book, the unintended consequences of war. very often we don't think about this. and mckinley certainly had no plan to make the philippines an american possession, but he later did. and that created a war, a conflict that was larger, actually, than the fighting in cuba over, with spain over cuba, and more protracted. and, actually, the story i tell is set in the philippines of a massacre of a small company of men who are getting ready to celebrate or commemorate the death of william mckinley by

assassination which puts theodore roosevelt -- the hero of the spanish-american war -- into the white house. it's a fascinating story on so many levels, but theodore roosevelt is certainly the central character. and i want to reiterate how important the people are in this. these are stories where we're certainly talking about policy and all that, but this is really stories about people whether it's the men who were around george washington at yorktown, the men, young boys who go to the philippines or theodore roosevelt as a real force of nature in american poll the ticks. it's -- politics. it's really the people that are driving these stories. >> yeah, i'll second that as far as, i mean, the title, "the hidden history," i think, is appropriate because you do mention people who i've never heard of before who were, you know, people who were right there at the, where the battle

was happening. i wanted to ask you another thing about this. you also sometimes go to obscure places like in the philippines which is not -- you know, if you were telling a general history, i'm not sure that's the first place you'd go to if you wanted to explain the spanish-american war. but it's a very smart place that you end up, and you can -- and everything kind of comes from that. i really like the way the book goes through the specific and then kind of broadens out and tells kind of the big picture but doesn't lose the small picture as well. >> well, the point of it was try to focus on an extraordinary moment, a dramatic moment, usually one that our schoolbooks do leave out that then allows us to speak about much larger issues. and a question here was the massacre of a group of american soldiers by fill filipinos which created complete outrage in this country just the way i call them pearl harbor moments.

we've had many of them in our history. when something disastrous happens and the nation really comes together. well, this was a pearl harbor moment in 1901. and the chapter is called "the water cure." and it's significant, and the reason i called it "the water cure" and focused on this moment in the spanish-american war is that this incident really leads to a horrific series of events in which atrocities are committed by american soldiers against filipinos, and a method called the water cure was used by americans against filipinos, a method in which a prisoner was, basically, laid down on the floor, and water was poured down, forced down his stomach until he was willing to confess to anything they wanted him to confess to. obviously, while i was writing that waterboarding was very much

in the news. and so the notion that questions of atrocities and torture were being addressed in 1901 in the spanish-american war was certainly something i was not really familiar with. and this wasn't a matter of doing some historical dig into secret documents. this was actually a senate hearing was held about these issues. william howard taft, the future president, was the civilian governor of the philippines. he actually has to testify in congress about the so-called water cure. so i think it's incredibly instructive to see that this is a story that could have been torn from today's headlines, but was happening a hundred years ago. and that's really the point of studying history in the first place, isn't it? that we learn something from it. but if we don't know the history, we certainly can't learn from it. >> that's exactly right. and i did like the truth telling you did in this about there were

american atrocities in the philippines. you know, i grew up learning that the united states had liberated the philippines and given them their freedom after world war ii. which is true, but it's not the whole truth. i mean, clearly, clearly the americans tried to suppress an independence movement in the philippines at that time with rhetoric explaining that they were, they couldn't self-govern themselves, and america's goal was to christianize them which you point out was ridiculous considering the spanish were certainly christians and had been there for centuries. [laughter] >> and many filipinos were very devout roman catholics as well. but this is an interesting small point, that mckinley says that he actually has a dream, and he tells to a group of evangelicals who come to the white house. yes, there were evangelicals in

the white house in 1900. [laughter] and he tells them that he had a dream, truly a divine dream in which he was told to take over the philippines in part to christianize them which must have come as a surprise to the pope. [laughter] because there were quite a few roman catholic churches spread around the philippines at that point. but it also is a reflection of the deep anti-catholic mood many this country -- in this country at that time. and, certainly, it's a much older story. catholics in the 19th century in particular, for all the talk that we have of a christian nation, were the dreaded, feared, evil religious minority that was threatening to take over country. and this wasn't a small group of people who thought this, this was being preached from many of the most prominent pulpits in the country. there was a belief that catholics were coming to america

in large numbers -- specifically irish catholics -- to take over the country and turn it over to the pope. and they were going to build a new vatican in cincinnati, of all places. [laughter] i've never quite figured out why cincinnati was this catholic, new vatican target zone. >> when al smith ran for president, there was campaign literature against him that showed the building of the subway in new york, and they said there was going to be a subway all the way to the vatican. [laughter] >> well, and we laugh at it now, but it was part -- it was truly a part of the political dna of america at the time. famous campaign slogan against al smith was that -- who was a roman catholic himself, was that he was going to bring rum, romannism and ruin. the rum because he was opposed to prohibition, and romannism being catholicism ruined because he, obviously, would do things like raise taxes.

so that element of anti-ca thofl schism is certainly a big piece of the story in the spanish-american war. and, again, part of the untold story, part of the hidden history, as i like to call it. and the wonderful part of all of this, i think, is that when you hear these stories, some of them can obviously make us angry, some of them can make us cynical, but they're so much more interesting than the kind of pap that we are certainly told as very young children and some of us never get past. >> i really enjoyed what you wrote about the african-american soldiers in various battles. and one of the things that was really interesting was that most of the time they were discriminated against and were not given any, you know, there was an attempt the diminish their bravery. but they were sent down to cuba for the spanish-american war, and they were called immunes, right?

they were considered immunes because, of course, they were going to be immune to all tropical diseases just because they were from africa. >> that's right. and that was actually a belief. these were the famous buffalo soldiers, and i describe their transition from the u.s. colored troops, the usct, of the civil war. and they are featured in the second chapter of the book which is about the battle of petersburg, actually, because it was a year-long siege in which the u.s. colored troops performed valiantly. and after the war, many of those troops were sent to the southwest to fight indians. and it was there that the native americans -- partly out of respect for the frosty of the african-american -- ferocity of the african-american soldier, cavalryman in the southwest -- called them buffalo soldiers. certainly because of their hair appearing like a buffalo's skin, but also the fact that the buffalo was sacred to them, and they felt a kinship of sorts

with these african soldiers because of their bravery. they had enormous respect for them. but when the spanish-american war begins in 18 -- at the turn of the century, they are brought specifically to fight in cuba because they are thought to be immune from tropical diseases. as slaves were much earlier in american history. because they came from africa, the presumption was they would be immune or less likely to catch tropical diseases. of course, utter nonsense. but to this theme of african-americans in this military history, it begins, certainly, with the first chapter because, as i mentioned, one in five soldiers in washington's army was a black man. certainly not depicted routinely in the patriotic paintings we see. but more to the point, this is the one i'm sure they didn't tell you in school, that the first thing washington did after the battle was over was -- and it was written into is surrender document -- was make sure that

he recovered the property being held by the british garrison. and everyone understood that that property meant about 5,000 escaped african-american slaves who had joined the british in hopes of winning their freedom. i know they didn't tell me that one when i was in school. but this included 17 people from washington's own plantation, mount vernon, who had left about six months before with a british captain who sailed to mount vernon and said come with me if you want to be free, and they did. they were in yorktown. included about two dozen people from jefferson's plantation. washington made sure all of them were returned to slavery. and this is, of course, the great contradiction of the american revolution. and one of the threads that is woven through this book is how important slavery and the race relations was not only in military history, but in all of american history. and we certainly have to understand that today if we want

to understand some of the very, very serious issues we're facing every week, it seems, around the country. >> yeah. it kind of drives me crazy when you hear people say, well, the founding fathers worked really hard to free the slaves when four of the five first presidents owned slaves. >> indeed, they did. five of the first seven, ten of the first fifteen. >> right. >> so it's not what we talk about. >> and, you know, and you also quote another story nor tom fellow -- story in tom fleming who, i was talking to him about this, and he dismisses that as what he calls presentism, you know? the idea that you shouldn't judge people from the past on present-day standards. but i do think that there's something to judging people on basic human standards, you know? slavery was just plain wrong, and i think there are plenty of people alive then who knew it. >> well, of course. and washington himself knew it, and that's why i would -- as much as i admire thomas fleming,

i consider him one of my literary mentors of sorts and rely, have relied on his books for many years for my own research. but george washington was aware of this contradiction. he was aware of this conflict. and, certainly, one of the themes in the first chapter about yorktown is the fact that these three young men -- alexander hamilton, the marquis de lafayette and another fellow named jack lawrence who are the washington men that the chapter's named for -- were probably, they're all in their mid 20s. they were very, very close friends. they had been with washington through all of the defeats and disasters and disappointments. but these three were probably the most outspoken proponents of putting black soldiers in uniform. jack lawrence -- john lawrence -- was a lieutenant colonel. he's there in yorktown that night. he's fixed his bayonet. he was the son of henry

lawrence, the president of congress. and henry lawrence had made his fortune trading slaves, shipping slaves to america, as many as 8,000 is the estimate i've read. lawrence was sent to england and europe as a young man to be educated, got completely caught up with the ideals of the enlightenment and came back a complete abolitionist, writes to his father i don't want those slaves, i think we should sell them. he's actually given the privilege and the assignment by congress to go down to south carolina -- of all places, which is where he's from -- to recruit and arm 3,000 emancipated slaves. the legislature of south carolina sort of politely but not so politely says, no thanks, to that idea. but this is part of the story. and washington, as i said, realized the conflict. he writes in 1776 there is no

man who wants more than i to the see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery. while he says that, he doesn't really do too much to bring it about. and i think that, yes, presentism is a real thing, but i think you can judge washington by his own standards of what he thought was moral. same thing with jefferson. they knew this was a contradiction to their ideals. they knew it was an affront to talk about liberty and equality and justice and keep these people in chains. they both, perhaps foolishly optimistic, believed that slavery would end in america. and on that, of course, they were tragically wrong. >> i think we'd like to take some questions, if possible. anyone want to step up there and throw something at mr. davis? >> not literally. >> not literally. [laughter] >> throw some ideas at

mr. davis. >> thank you very much. one question is with respect to the revolutionary war, the idea of the british quartering homes for soldiers, was that in any way a violation of the magna carta, of any principles laid out in the magna carta? >> a greater scholar of the magna cart that than i would have to answer that question, quite honestly. of course it is then established in the bill of rights. the third amendment is the quartering act, i suppose? but i'm not really sure if it goes back to the magna carta. i think it's down in washington right now, so maybe we should go down and check. but it's a, an interesting question. >> well, in general, i mean, any relationship -- was king george violating the magna carta in any way that provided some justification for the revolutionary war? that's my only question. >> i don't think that the men who were fomenting the rebellion and raising arms and up in arms

were really too concerned about the magna carta. they certainly thought that their british constitutional rights were being cut short. but i think it's certainly more about, ultimately, about who was going to to have the power over this enormous place called america. it wasn't even about a few votes in parliament, you know, no taxes without representation was a great slogan, but it wasn't very meaningful. so i'm not deliberately dodging your question, but i am because i don't think that the magna carta was really the driving force for the men of the revolutionary generation. >> and there's some people who even thought they were undertaxed compared to people back in england. >> well, and, of course, this thomas -- samuel johnson who asks in 1775 how is it we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of negroes?

>> right. >> a question that we -- [laughter] still don't really have an answer to. >> yeah, it's a good question. yes. >> i feel misrepresented in a way where you said, quote: we became a global power, end quote. referring to the spanish-american war. i have severed my ego from the state. consequently, i do not identify with power. i'm a pacifist -- >> okay. >> and that's that. >> do you have a question? >> now, my question is this: do you think that 9/11 is part of the hidden history of war? considering that mossad and the bush crime family planted explosives that wrecked the -- >> okay, thanks. ken, do you want to talk about 9/11 and what it means to -- >> i certainly, i certainly

discuss it at length in this book, and i have in other books. i am not a believer, to be honest, with a lot of the so-called 9/11 conspiracy theories. i'm sure there is hidden history, i'm sure there are answers yet to be determined. but i'll wait for a more full accounting before, before that. and just to the first comment about we -- >> from who? >> i certainly did say "we" meaning the united states. perhaps more correctly i should say the spanish-american war marks the moment where the united states of america becomes a global power. there were not -- there were many people at that time who would agree that this wasn't a good idea, chief among them perhaps mark twain who wrote angrily and was part of the anti-imperialist movement. he wanted to actually create a new american mag in which the stars -- flag in which the stars were created by, were changed to a skull and crossbones. [laughter] that was, that was mark twain's suggestion for a new american

flag in about 1911. >> thank you. >> thank you. next question? >> yeah. i had a couple of -- just i one comment and one question. the comment was i saw a television series called "liberty," i think it was that was -- really learned a lot about the american revolution. and they had, you know, they described the second half of the revolution as in the south. and there was an episode where the british just sent the african-american, or is the slaves, you know, to die, basically. that was kind of a caveat on what you mentioned. >> well, thank you. and we mentioned thomas fleming, and that is his work, actually, "liberty" was written by thomas fellowing and turned into a pbs series, i believe it was. what you're talking about is exactly what i cover in this chapter, you're exactly right.

the african-americans who sought freedom with the british in 1781 at the invitation of the british, many of them were dying rapidly because of disease and starvation in yorktown. and yen cornwallis, the british commander -- general cornwallis, the british commander, then forces many of them out of town. and the descriptions which i include in this story of the dead and dying african-americans who had been forced out of yorktown during the bombardment is part of the scene in this. needless to say, they were, they were victims either way you look at it. they were either going to be victimized by british, or they were going to be returned to slavery by george washington. >> right. yeah. another part i remember from that series was that there was terrorism, the way the british used southern, you know,

poverty, you know, types to be terrorists in the south to discourage, i guess, you know, people from fighting the british. >> i'm not sure what exactly you mean by "terrorism." the whole campaign of british in the southern states definitely took a very different tenor and tone. and in part, i'm going to relate it back to this question of slavery. a lot of the people in the southern states and other historians besides myself have written extensively about this, were really sitting on the fence about independence and revolution until the british make this pronouncement first in 1775 and again in 1781 that slaves of patriots -- not slaves of loyalists, slaves of the patriots -- would be freed. and it's really only then that a

lot of the southern slave holders become more vociferous in their decision to join onto the liberty cause. but the war and the fighting in general in that, in the southern theater there was much more vicious in many cases, and many more instances of what we would call atrocities on both sides than had been true earlier in the war in some of the northern states. i don't know be that's the terrorism -- if that's the terrorism you're referring to, but the most notorious british soldier at the time was a man who was famously known for not allowing soldiers to surrender and giving no quarter, as it was put at time. >> i remember the example was these plantation women, he cut off their breasts and had them hanging in the plantation home, you know, so there was cutting up of -- >> there were, certainly, accounts of that.

and there were accounts of that, and i include one of a woman who was actually a loyalist who was assaulted in her home. and not to take away from your question, but this is certainly a theme that is carried on in this book which is how we think about war. i know we're talking about armies, but there are almost always civilians caught between two warring armies. certainly was true in petersburg which is the second chapter of this book and more gruesomely in berlin, which is another chapter in this book we haven't even touched on yet where the women of berlin were raped massively by the invading soviet red army. which was in relately abuse for -- retribution for what the germans had done to the russian soldiers. so this is part of the horror of war that we have to realize and talk about and understand when we have this thing called war. and if we sanitize it and prettify it too much, it becomes

way too easy to get into it. >> i think your book does a great job of telling the truth and making us really understand what war is in reality. and the book is "the hidden history of america at war" by kenneth c. davis. really worth your time, and i learned a lot, ken, from it. >> well, i hope so. thank you. [applause] >> all right. well, thank you once again to kenneth davis and marc jacob and, of course, thanks to all of you for attending. mr. davis will be signing books right outside in theut islam" ae

at the freedomfest last month. his book comes out next week. >> host: glenn beck, "it is about islam," why do you open with thomas jefferson in the library of congress? >> jefferson changed my life. he wrote a letter to his nephew peter car and peter was 13 or 15, i don't know remember, somewhere in that area. his mother had died and his father was about to die. his father went to thomas and said thomas will you oversee the

ed ed education of my son when i pass on and he said sure. peter comes of age and writes this beautiful letter in mathematics learn this, when it comes to literature never read a book from outside of the native tone because you will lose too much. the last one is religion and with he said above religion stick reasons in her seat and question with boldness even the very existence of god for there to be a god he would rather have questions over blindfolded fear. that changed by life. that coupled for the fact thomas jefferson fought the 1st war against islam in the office.

he had the barbary pirates. he was trying to understand what they want. he owns one of the first copies in enlish of the koran. he was a scholar and read everything in native tongue when he could. he tried to be as fair as he could. and he read the entire koran. this is a good place to start is his example but we should all read the koran. don't take this from me. we have in the book all of our notes and flip notes. don't take it from me. this is what we have found. we have gone to the original sources. it is not my opinion. you further that investigation yourself but ask honest questions not trying to prove and question the existence of god while you are doing it.

>> host: jefferson sighted islam from a why virginia shouldn't have an official religion. >> guest: yes, and at the same time he was projecting a religion like islam. saying the attitude and the difference between islam and islamist and that is important. one who believes i know great reformers of islam that want to believe that their religion is peaceful and want to have a peaceful existence with everyone

else. then other group wants sharia law. >> host: you quote contrary to public misconception islam does not mean peace but rather submission to the commands of allah. >> guest: what we tried to do is show the people who actually do believe -- if i said to you, let's go take on the nazis. and you insisted it wasn't about nationalism or socialism you would just say these people are crazy. well, i don't get to their ideaology and stop them. hitler was crazy but a lot of people based their understanding of socialism. people in denmark are nazis are

they? they were national socialist and it was that combination that brought us the nazi world. doesn't make every socialist a nazi. we have to find the people calling for our death, quoting the koran and say we are about islam. we cannot deny what they say. if you want to defeat them you have to know them. >> host: this is part of your control series. what is that? >> guest: we did a book on the second amendment then we did one on common core. trying to correct some of the information out there. it is not a series that is -- not a lot of my opinion in this. this is the facts. we try to make them in paper

back and small so people can carry it with them. >> well, one of the things you did in this bock, it is about islam, you listed 13 lies about islam in the book. and number five was america is safe from sharia law. >> guest: its not. we have a court case in the book from new jersey where a judge ruled that he could have sex with his wife even though she said no because it was his religious right to do so. and the judge sighted with him. we don't have two standards of law. and where i live down in texas just outside of dallas the city council just voted and it was a 5-4 decision, it almost passed,

and what the resolution was we only respect american laws. and texas laws. that is it. we are respecter of no other laws. that almost didn't pass. and the reason why is there is a muslim community there, some of them are muslim brotherhood, and they are setting up their own little council to be able to work with the people in their religion as the arb arbitration of two sets of laws. >> host: in your new home state of texas you had an event. the mohammed cartoon contest is happening. what is your take on that?

>> guest: should that happen? yeah, it is america, i guess. i am not a fan of it. i am an ultimate freedom guy. i believe we all have the right to do things. should we do it? no, she is trying to prove a point that you could get killed by doing that. i think we all know that. i think the push back on her was obscene but i didn't attend nor would i have attended. but you have the right to do it. should you? probably not. but with that being said i respect the fact there are some things we better wake up to and that is what i think the ultimate goal was here. was wake up america. there are people. ...

>> it was about five years ago that you held a rally down on the national ball in washington and that they planned for the future. any similar events? >> i do. it is kind of on lists and i'm greatly concerned about a couple of things. 1i don't have any answers militarily or anything else for

the middle east. that's a mess. you can't export our freedom and bring it to people who don't want it. but, on the other hand, we have a genocide that is going on. i had one of the rabbis come to my office in texas and asked me, i'm a big supporter and i've been crying out about the anti- semitism. now things like things are starting to happen and people are starting to wake up. he came to my office right after france did he said glenn, we do me a favor? favor? i need you not to focus so much, please, on just what's happening to the jews. i said, excuse me rabbi.

are you seeing what's happening? he said they're coming for you first. he said what's happening with isis in the middle east is a genocide. a genocide. this time you guys are getting at first. i'm trying to wake the jewish people up to show what's happening to the christians. i'm gravely concerned about what's happening there and i'm also concerned that we have hardened our hearts and i openly admit that i played a role in the divisiveness of our country and that's not good. i'm currently going through, this is the only interview and i'm giving a speech tonight, and i hope to not be speaking to as much. you can hear my voice, it's a little rocky. i've been having some issues with my voice and other health issues for the last five years and that kind of clarifies things. that puts you into perspective when you think you may not speak again. you may not have long to work or

live. what are you doing with your life? and it's clarifying. we are, any role i have played, i'm trying to make up for. we for. we are in a very dangerous situation where we are not seeing people as people anymore. someone asked me this morning, what's your take on bruce jenner? what's the societal answer for that? do you want to be bruce jenner? how would you feel if you live your whole life that way. i don't know what to say. i don't think society knows what to say and how to deal with it but i think and hope we all have compassion for the man and we all can say i don't necessarily think he is a woman. i think he's a man or i do think he's a woman, but we can all look at him and agree and say we have to

have compassion and heart for one another. what's happening in the middle east, no one is paying attention. these are innocent children, women and in the book we talk about nine-year-old girls being slip sold into into slavery. 9-year-old girls for $170. does anybody care about that? how about the homosexuals were being thrown off holdings are ripped apart or stoned to death in a rand? a war on gays? yes with isis and iran. we are at at and a negotiating table saying they are normal and can coexist with western society. not while your killing may gays. not while your stoning women to death and crucifying children. no, i don't think so. i don't have a political answer or a military answer, but i do have

this, we better have this, we better start connecting with one another. we better start standing up, stop worrying about your rights, let's worry about our responsibilities to protect the rights of other people. let's stop worrying about us. let's start worrying about the person most unlike you. you know, i went to new york and i called a meeting with the head people about four months ago. they were shocked. it was uncomfortable, you know. know. we don't have a lot to talk about. even though, i am for gay marriage, i believe the government doesn't have a right to be in your life and tell you anything about marriage, so in that way i'm for gay marriage. religiously, i'm not. but that's my decision. my world is my world in your world is your world. we sat down and i said, can we

stop talking about weddings. how about about we stand together for what's happening in russia where they are now taking drivers license away from homosexual and saying that is a mental disorder. how about we stand up against that. how about we stand up against isis and those in iran and saudi arabia, those all across the middle east who are killing people. let stand together. so this august down in birmingham alabama, where the last civil right movement started, i'm asking people to come together of all different faith and belief in all different walks of life that can say, you know why, my political interest may differ from you, but my principles are the same. we have to stop talking about interests and start talking about principles.

on saturday the 29th we are going to have a march on the same street that martin luther king did. i believe i have bruce graham, billy graham's daughter joining me on the other arm and we have thousands of pastors coming from all over of all different religions and people coming from all over, and then were going to start putting that into action. i believe it's time for people of all walks of life to stand up and raise their hand and say, you know know what, we have to stop the hatred. we have to stop, we have to stop jamming our points of view down other people's throat and start seeing people for other human beings again. the easiest one we can unite

unite on are those people in the middle east. the the muslim who aren't muslim enough, the gays, the christians and the women who are being crucified. let's start there on an easy one and stand together and say let's stand against that. >> anything significant about august 28 and 29th? >> yes, august 28 is the anniversary of martin luther king's i have a dream speech we didn't pick that intentionally five years ago. i announced it and five minutes after announcing the new york times said, tweeted out glenn back takes martin luther king. i thought geez, how can i not know that. but that. but now we are embracing it. islam is not much different than christianity or judaism. it's radically different. the biggest difference is it

doesn't have a reformation. if you don't have a reformation you are still living in the stone age. there are people who want to reform islam but the law doesn't allow you to take whatever the common consensus is. so if if all the scholars say no, this is who we are, they can kill you for trying to reform. i mean this sounds very barbaric but it sounds like christianity 1000 years ago. we've had our reformation. there are great muslims who want their reparation but it's not happening. by us denying that there is the struggle within islam, were hurting the reformers. we are we are trapping them in stone age. >> glenn back, you have 25 books under your belt.

>> i don't know. >> what is your writing writing process? >> it depends. i put this one to bed the same time i put another one to bed. i have another book that's coming out and it's very different. this is almost like jon stewart, how john stuart rights. i set up a table and i said these are the things i want to focus on. that's why we start really with the if you don't understand that islam, isis and the republic of iran believe that the end times are upon us, if i said that as a christian, hey, jesus is coming back, everyone would say i was crazy. if i said jesus is coming back and to help him come back, even more crazy. jesus is coming

back and i'm in a help him come back by causing chaos around the world and killing people around the world now i'm dangerously psychotic but because it's a protected islam saying it no one pays attention to it. or maybe we have such a low standard for the people in the middle east that we think it doesn't really matter, but they believe they are on the verge of armageddon and it's their job to bring it upon us. so i set the table and i say, i want to find out all the details and get the best quality we can and oversee that and then we put the bet book together. the other style of book is one done entirely by me. and that is the example is the immortals. that that will not be its name when it comes out but it's due at christmas time. >> do at christmas time.

we have an unbelievable community. there is a deeply passionate, underserved and misunderstood group of people in america that will recognize america in a different way than they may have ten or 15 years ago. they will recognize that we as a nation have made mistakes. we we as a nation are currently making mistakes. that may be people like me who saw war in 2002, now and under bush, very antiwar. we have woken up and that's the community that we serve. that is a great, really solid

group of people. >> would you like to see president obama or president whoever, what would you like to see them do about boko haram, isis, al qaeda? >> i don't know. i mean, we are in such a bad state right now. we have fumbled so badly that i'm not sure. i'm certainly not in commander qualified enough. my gut is that at some point we will have to deal with it. i don't, i'm offended that our military is still over there. i'm offended because most americans don't even know where they are, what they're doing or more importantly, why they are doing it. why. why are we killing people today? for what? for what, really? if we really mean were going to

stop isis, unfortunately that means you're going to have to do things like we did in world war ii. you're going to have to raise the flag just like we did in germany. do you have a stomach for that? i don't think the american people have a stomach for that and i don't want to kill another person until we know what it is. why are we killing people? i don't know. i did in 2002. i lost it about 2006. i'm completely baffled now. stop, bring our troops home. were going to have to go back but only when we know and have the balls to say who the enemy really is. that's the enemy and there is no compromise. there is no well they had a hard time. no they are are psychotic

killers. just like the nazis. killers. >> wended the fumbling start? >> oh, early on. they are trying to nation build in afghanistan. right from the start. that is that is not our job. you're never going to take and bring our republic to people in afghanistan who don't necessarily even know what it is or want it. what are we doing? what are we doing? we should have gone in, got the bad guys and got out. i think the best thing america should do is when we fight a war, we know exactly what were doing. we know know exactly who we are after, what a win looks like, make it fast, make people

walk away and say don't ever mess with those guys because they'll take you down and they will not ever rebuild that you. that's not our job. we don't want to go to war and we don't want to rebuild you either. you either. you do your thing will do our thing. >> we talk to an author yesterday and he said in his view, saudi arabia is a powder cake waiting to explode. >> oh my god. saudi arabia, i can't believe there are allies. that's the biggest problem we have as a country in the world. would you want to be friends with us? do you know what we stand for? i don't. i don't. i know know what our constitution stands for, but i don't know what our parties stand for, i don't know what our government stands for.

i know what our people do. our people generally vote republican, democrat, independent. it's all pretty good. but government tends to stand for power and money and control, but that's not america. when we get into bed with saudi arabia or lubar eric, where are our principles there? we are going to send them over there for prison for torture because we don't torture. that's insane. if you're standing there and your loved one has been put into

the prison by the united states, what you think of the united states? are they the freedom loving guys? no. we don't apparently give a flying crap about anything but us. we have to have principles. when have to have principles. when i hear politicians on both sides talk about well, it's in our national interest, our national interest can change. our national interests do change all the time. my interest this morning was to have a big stack of waffles. my interest right now is not so much. they change. what are your principles? nobody talks about our principles anymore and because we don't even know our principles, what you think the rest of the world thinks? of course they want to kill us. what if they do. we are part of the problem. were you believe that homosexuals shouldn't be killed. do do we do anything about it? nope. we believe women have the right to vote and drive cars. are we doing anything about it? nope who are we?

>> i was in texas. what about that? >> texas seems to be america to thousand two. it's asleep. it's asleep and it thinks it can weather the storm. it thinks it can, but it's texas. they have a thousand people from california alone moving into texas every single day. i had a meeting with 200 ceos that have moved their companies to texas and i said now, you, you know why you moved your company to texas, but do your employees know? have you made a point to tell your employees we could no longer do business in new jersey , we could no longer do business in california.

no. you just moved to texas. all the employees come and they say i like texas but i really liked california. they will vote for the same thing and it will fundamentally change texas. >> do you expect another 911? >> yes, i think it's only a matter of time before we are gravely attacked. i don't think be necessarily like 911. my worst fear, that is what america should be worried about. that is something like them. i don't think everyone realizes,

especially with grease and everything else, we just asked them to remember what they felt on september 11. we all felt the same thing. oh same thing. oh my gosh, this is fragile. it has been 15 years of taking a beating. our country has taken a beating over over the past 15 years, financially, morally, politically and spiritually. we can't keep doing this. somebody is going to take advantage and i think there is a lot of people who want to take advantage of this time. if we don't heal ourselves we will fall. lincoln was right. it won't come from the outside, it will have to be national suicide. i think the outside hitting us when we are so divided, national suicide.

the book's soldier girls. it was part of the book festival held earlier this year. she also served as the first lady of colorado.

>> good afternoon everyone, welcome welcome to our third annual book festival. i am katie, executive director of the festival and i'm very happy to be here with you and helen thorpe to discuss her book soldier girls, the battles of three women at home and at war. before we begin, i'd like to remind you that barnes & noble is selling books upstairs in the atrium. you the atrium. you just go up the escalator and helen will be signing in the referenced area next to the sales area at 130 directly after this. i want to thank barnes & noble who very generously donate a portion of the proceeds of these sales to the book festival. also we will take questions from the audience for the last ten minutes of the south session. please please turn off your cell phone. helen thorpe is a seasoned

journalist and author who was born in london and grew up in new jersey and now lives in denver. her journalism has appeared in new york times magazine, the new yorker, and harper's bazaar. her her radio still worries have aired on this american life and sound trend. she was on staffs until the mid-2000 2000 where her stories range from drug cartels to tom delay. her first book, published in 2009, just like us, the true story of us, the true story of four mexican girls coming-of-age in america follows these girls through high school and into college to show the personal side of american immigration law. her current book, soldier girls, is also breakthrough work to look at what american women face when they go to combat. she detailed the lives of the three women over 12 years from enlistment in the indiana national guard through deployment and back home again. so helen, let's talk about how

you chose the subject to write about and how did you find the three women you profiled in soldier girls question that. >> thank you it is wonderful to be back in texas. thank you for having me here. you know, when i was beginning this project, i started with a question and i think in many ways that dictated who i chose to write about. the question on my mind didn't actually have to do with being a female soldier or a woman in the military at all. i was wondering, i knew that many veterans struggled after deployment to settle back into their lives at home, and i was wondering what that struggle was about. i thought i wanted to understand it better and it would be good if many of us who got to stay home the whole time, as deployments were happening, could understand that transition better and what the challenges were. if you have a question like that on your mind, then i think you find people who are struggling

after a deployment, and that's what happened in this case. i interviewed a couple dozen different veterans from different branches of the service, men and women. it was really the story of debra brooks who is one of the three women in this book and she kind of takes over the book toward the end. it was really her struggle that struck me as the story i wanted to write about. she is a single mother who deployed to times, she has three children and in her second appointment she was transferred into a previously all-male unit in iraq where she became the

driver of a gun truck even though she trained to do supply and logistics. it's really a stretch for her. she's a national guard soldier, she never envisioned overseas deployment when she first enlisted. it's really dangerous work in all kinds of things happen to her in iraq. she did struggle when she came back to resume her role as a parent and all of those things. so, that's how i settled on these three women. i guess i would say there's many different stories that could be written about female soldiers because depending on what question you have in your mind, you would tell a different person story. with military books i think were often used to hero that are in the thick of combat in there typically men. in certain ways i picked unusual people to write about who maybe don't fit this dario type of what a military book, you know who you might find inside those pages. in some ways these women are almost antiheroes in that sense. they are very humble him a they do support they were trained to be support personnel. so in some ways they're different from who you might think of your hero as being, but i thought they were very heroic.

>> there very heroic and very human. i think while the book is about the military it's as experienced through this sharp and strong portrait and i think you've described each of the women. one thing is, how did you get them to be so open with you an honest westmark they share amazing intimate details of their lives. i know you conducted a lot of interviews but they gave you their military records and medical records and diaries and e-mails and open up all their facebook posts, and i'm just curious how that all came about. >> so, it took a while.

one of the things i love about these three women is how different they are from one another. it's a little startling. in fact, maybe they would have never been friends except for the fact that they deployed together. michelle is the youngest of the three women and she is very unusual, i think, as a soldier in that she describes herself as a left-leaning, pot smoking hippie to me. she was 18 when she enlisted. it. it was the spring of 2001, and all she wanted was college tuition and she was certain she never wanted to be a soldier but she thought she would join the national guard and be a part-time soldier just for that college tuition benefit. she was sure she would never go to war because she knew the national guard just did not deploy. she felt quite sure of that. then of course, when when she was in training, 911 happened,

and she did understand right away that maybe the commitment she made was going to be much bigger than what she had been envisioning. when she goes overseas in about afghanistan she becomes very close to two other women, and their political beliefs in some cases are very different from hers. in the fall before she enlisted, back enlisted, back in 2000, she had voted for not al gore and not george bush but ralph nader. she was pretty sure there was no one else in her unit that was a nader supporter like she was. the woman she was sharing the tent with that became her best friend during deployment, desmond brooks had voted for someone else. she was working with the oldest women and their national guard unit, debbie and she didn't vote in that election at all because she doesn't trust politicians and doesn't want anything to do

with politics whatsoever. so, yet another point of view that is very different than michelle's. debbie was not originally chosen to go on the deployment and she was terribly upset. michelle would have done anything not to go, but debbie argued her way onto the deployment because her father had been in the army, she had always wanted to serve her country overseas. to her it was the most fulfilling moment of her life when they said yes you may go on this deployment. she worked as a beautician in a beauty salon back in indiana when she was not in the national guard, and she found the idea of putting on a uniform every day and serving her country far more exciting and fulfilling and

close to her dream than the work she was doing in the beauty salon. so even when it got to the question of how did they feel about going on a deployment or did they support the war or not, these women were on totally different sides in terms of their feelings. your question then, around how did it come about that they would share so much about their experiences, we did almost four years of interviews. we got to know each other over time and at a certain point, i met these women in 2010 when they had come back already from both deployments. one to afghanistan and then two of the women also went to iraq. i did many many interviews and it was amazing and they were telling me so much but i said i just feel like we need details

from the actual moment in time to supplement your memories. your memories are really rich but they're kind of the emotional reality and i can't quite see or taste or hear where we are in time. i think for the book to work, can you help me find more details? we went back and they found things they could share. they found photographs, we pored over for visual descriptions, they found, does my at one point found all of the daily newsletters that are public information the officer had distributed during their deployment. there was all kind of material in there. there was a daily weather apart. anytime something significant had happened i could describe what the weather was like that day. some of the big surprises were the letters that michelle had written because she didn't put them in the mail off to other people. she didn't know if she could recover them.

when she deployed to afghanistan, she was 21. she had just fallen in love for the first time in her life and what was so wrenching was leaving behind the person she was so in love with. she started writing him letters and they were very heartfelt letters and at the same time, she was writing to her parents but when she wrote her parents the letters were really different. she is very cheerful and trying to tell her parents that she was fine and they didn't need to worry. so michelle comes from this unusual family, i don't know that's the right word, she comes from a difficult family background is probably better to say. her parents had split when she was young. her dad was married six times to four different women. he was in and out of jail and moved a lot and her mom moved a lot. the question was did anybody keep the letters?

we went to visit his father where he was living in kentucky, and we were hanging out. he lived in a trailer next to what he called his party trailer. he was in and out of trouble. he had been arrested for letting someone make methamphetamine in the party trailer so i didn't know if he would have the letters, but there they were in a three ring finder, numbered. he would say it's not only the letters she wrote during deployment but the letter she wrote in trainings and all of the letters she wrote to him and his entire life including a valentine from when she was seven. she meant the world to him and he saved everything which meant the world to michelle to learn that. her boyfriend had also saved all the letters in a shoebox and gave those letters

to us even though they had broken up under difficult circumstances in many years had gone by. recovering those letters was really amazing for me as an author but also amazing for michelle as a human being, and i think having their voices come to life is important. i think the reader gets to know them a lot when you can read their own words and how they'll praise something. it was really meaningful. it's a very intimate portrait of these three women. you get the words in all and i'm very impressed they were willing to expose themselves in that way. >> there are diary issues from betty helton who talks about how she clearly has a drinking problem and she reveals that and a lot of medical records later on become very important.

it's interesting to me, why do do you think they were so open to that? did they feel this book was important and they wanted their stories told no matter how they came out looking? >> they did share very revealing things and things that would make them feel very vulnerable. when does my return from her deployment in iraq which was so hard, she then needed therapy for post traumatic stress. she shared those therapy notes. she just handed me her entire military record including the therapy notes at a certain point and said i know you want to verify everything and i think the whole story is right here. then debbie handed over six diaries.

they gave me so much, i really felt at the end of the process they should get a chance to read the manuscript before went to publication, because i wanted them just to see how much they had turned over and make sure they were not going to hate the book. i didn't want to make them feel that way and it was sort of just a reality check. while i was very surprised because i did think they would feel one or two things were too revealing but they didn't hesitate. there wasn't a moment where debbie said you can't write about this in the diary where i'm needing a drink and desma didn't say oh don't use that therapy session or anything like that. they felt very strongly that they were on the other side of the experience of trying to transition back home, but they were watching some fellow veterans they knew not be able to make the transition successful yet. they really wanted to share all

of their difficulties. i was sometimes thinking of the civilian audience wanting civilians to understand better why it's hard to come home and what deployment was like and what the challenges are. they had in mind, a different audience which is their fellow veterans. they were always worrying about the people they knew who were having a much harder time than even they had. so, they wanted to share everything they had struggled with so that another veteran would know they weren't alone. >> now the transition of veterans coming home is obviously a very big theme in the book, and what i found so interesting is that upon their return, each of them, even though they had the equivalent of a desk job, they were not in

actual combat, but but they did suffer posttraumatic stress disorder. i would love for you to talk about that hierarchy of suffering. particularly michelle would feel guilty that she was struggling when she felt she would look at fellow soldiers who she felt had a much, much more difficult experience in combat and she was scared that she was having these issues and feelings. there is a passage i would like you to read about michelle. michelle remember was the youngest one who was the ralph nader fan, because i think these different experiences trigger different reactions for these women when they came back. >> i would love to read that so maybe i'll start by describing the work that they did. the indiana national guard

primarily consists of infantry units. infantry units are all mail at this point in time and were intransigent but still today. so these women were in the support battalion that were supporting infantry soldiers. when they were first enlisting, therefore, they were given job choices but if you can't be in the infantry and you're supporting the infantry your job choices are to do laundry, to cook, to do field sanitation and clean toilets, to drive trucks, to bury the dead or to fix weapons, pretty much. supply and logistics would be another. so both debbie, the oldest of the three, and, and michelle had chosen to become weapons mechanics.

in michelle's case, she thought well that's a safer job than driving a truck and i might not want to do some of the other kinds of work so therefore weapons mechanic. in debbie's case, debbie loves guns. she could out shoot most of the men on the range, she was a perfect shot. she. she really wanted to work on weapons out of a sense of, may be, passion. they ended up working together in afghanistan fixing broken ak 47's. the reason they were not working on american weapons is because the american guns went breaking as often or often enough to keep their team busy, so they are off actually deployed to help the afghan army. they were working on weapons that were turned in from the militia in being repurposed to the afghan army. it's really unusual to work on and weapon like that if you're

an american soldier. tran1, in that first appointment, had a desk job. she was keeping track of all the work that all the maintenance team were doing in ordering parts for vehicles or nightvision goggles, things like that., things like that. really different in the work that train desma did out on the highway in her second appointment. they come back from the first appointment and even though all three have not seen what anybody would call combat, they have a moment where they struggled to transition back home. i will read from this point in the book and part of what happens is that when they come home, in world war ii or previous conflicts you might come home on a ship and there would be a period of transition

were not in the war zone but you're not home yet. whereas with current conflicts you jump on a home playing in your home 24 hours later and it's a very abrupt transition sometimes. in this scene, michelle is getting ready to essentially fulfill her dream. she had enlisted for the college tuition benefits and now she's getting to use those college tuition dollars so she is getting ready to go to the university of indiana where she has always wanted to go to school, indiana university in bloomington, but she have to shop for things to get ready to go to school. her boyfriend pete who she was writing those love letters to was accompanying her, although on the deployment she had an affair and she has confessed

this to him and they have broken up but he is nonetheless, helping her get ready for school, because he is an incredibly nice human being. pete and michelle went to target because they were all kinds of things she needed. cleaning supplies, shampoo, toilet paper. inside the store she grew edgy. she slowed to she slowed to a halt in the toilet paper i'll. there run off a lot of kinds of toilet paper. how did you choose? she thought of the pink print toilet paper they used in afghanistan. she remembered giving a roll of it to one of the afghan workers at the depot and how he had considered it a grand luxury. it made michelle a little queasy to behold and american display of toilet paper with her afghanistan schooled eyes. is is this what the war had been about? protecting this sort of abundance?

questions like these surrounded her. she knew al qaeda had est. training camps in afghanistan and yet she couldn't always fathom how the work they had been doing at camp phoenix was related to all of that. she never understood why it had been necessary to invade iraq, and how exactly had the two wars mushroomed into their current form. what had it signified that she spent a year fixing broken ak-47s? often she had had a hard time staying in the present. she was standing in target, she reminded herself, she reminded herself, she was supposed to buy toilet paper. it was just hard to make up her mind. stay here said pete. i'll be right back. he vanished. she panicked. questions blared across her mind am i safe? is this a good place? she could

not have justified in rational terms but it seemed like there was something wrong, something malignant that a store that sold 25 kinds of toilet paper. how could this level of abundance be morally acceptable given the poverty she had seen on the other side of the globe. now this piece of reality had been peeled back she could look under the surface of things and she could see she was utterly abandoned and surrounded by a nameless person. she became crying uncontrollably. by the time pete found her she could barely function. i'm having a panic panic attack she managed to say. get me out of here. that's one of the big issues that helen addresses in the book. >> the book tackles