that targeted the osage indians. and wrapping up our look at the best nonce fiction books. it recounts a battle that changed the american approach to the war in vietnam. many of these authors have or will be appearing on book tv you can watch them on our website. good afternoon everyone. thanks for coming out on tuesday afternoon. we will just jump right in. and during vietnam and excellent book. without further ado mr. right.

it is an honor for me to participate in this program at this place. committed to protecting and sharing the rich legacy of the units it's maybe and it's a particular pleasure for me to be with you. ..

last year, my wife susan and i, attended a performance of hamilton in new york. many lines from the play struck me and stayed with me but one of them kept running through my head. eliza hamilton, the widow of alexander hamilton, saying with the chorus of the founding fathers who lives, guys, tells your story. this is relevant to my remarks and it's relevant to my book because in any war, any war and in any armed confrontation, i guess, the first questions are the determinative ones, who

lives guys. stripped of all other explanations about the purposes and to the goals of war, this is the fundamental human question that those who go to war must face. indeed, it's the cool purpose of war. it's best never to forget this, who lives, guys. that's why i had so much trouble in recent years as politicians and pundits have talked about boots on the ground as a metaphor for sending in combat troops. i keep pointing out that were not talking about shoe leather, we are talking about flesh and blood. were talking about our young and were asking of them who lives and dies.

the burden after all of the shooting stops in any war is the lingering question tells your story. who tells your story? that shared narrative of battles fought, of the dead forever young and the memories of the survivors. this is critical for framing that story, that narrative of war. it provides an assessment of why lives were lost. it reminds us of they were and it marks forever the lives of survivors who knew them. survivors will carry their memories.

i believe in a most perverse and cool way there may be nothing more human than war. individuals and more testing their courage and testing their values, testing themselves and needing to do so much instinctively that they've been taught all their lives not to do instinctively. they must confront that basic question of who lives and dies. i interviewed a number of people for this book and hanging with me always is one conversation that i had with a man who didn't go to vietnam himself. he was a teenager when his brother was in vietnam, 14 or 15 years old. he lived in small town in pennsylvania.

there was a knock on the door when he was home alone one day and he went to answer the door and there were two soldiers they are and they asked if his parents were home and he said no but they had just called and they were running an errand and should be back 15 minutes or so. he said, please, wait if you'd like to. they'd sit on the porch and he joined them there. he told me he was so enthused to have the soldiers they are that i have a brother who was in the army and my brothers a helicopter pilot. he's in vietnam, i'm so proud of him and what he does and he'll be home in a couple of months. i can't wait to see him. do you know my brother? he was struck by the fact that these two soldiers sitting on his porch really didn't say much of anything to him but didn't

acknowledge his questions. his parents came home and, of course, the soldiers informed them that his brother would not be coming home because his helicopter had been shot down and was dead. he told me he iran up in the woods behind the house and wept and wept and wept thinking about his brother and embarrassed about sitting there asking the soldiers do you know my brother when they had come to inform the family that his brother was dead. we all need to assist in the responsibility of caring and sharing these stories. these stories needed to become embedded more international narrative, the human face of war. it's critical to note that this narrative is not simply our only

about those who died and those who served with them, also have important reflections to share. and they need to have an opportunity to do that rather than to remain burdened with this silent memories that so many war veterans do carry. in this country, the narratives of wartime service have really been subdued since world war ii. many people point to the vietnam war as a factor in a declining interest in veterans and their experiences and there is no doubt the vietnam veterans were seldom celebrated and that clearly related to the fact that by the late 1960s war had become a popular. it didn't necessarily follow

that the unpopularity of their war also made them unpopular. the outright hostility toward the men who served while unfortunately it was president was not widespread. what was widespread was an indifference. maybe even in embarrassed indifference and an unwillingness to engage them, to talk to them. if americans really did not know what was happening on the ground of vietnam it's also the case that most were not eager to learn veterans. so, their stories remained largely unfold. in my book, i quote from a poem that was shared with me by a sailor that he had been serving on a patrol vote, a swiftboat,

down in the mekong delta in april of 1969, he watched a very close friend of his, a buddy, died when their vote was ambushed by enemy troops on a narrow waterway of the delta. it was pretty hostile territory for those in the small votes. this sailor had gone to saigon a month later on a brief r&r and he described in his diary sitting in his room, looking out the window and watching a storm come onto the city and he wrote the sky is black now, illuminated now and then by silence strobes of lightning. people bustling about before the storm and before the curfew.

soon the reins will calm and cool us off and slow the motion in the city will become quiet under the soothing rhythm of the rain. people will move inside and watch the monsoon downpour from a darkened window and some perhaps will reflect on the day the just ended. that closing line and some, perhaps will reflect on the day that just ended. i can assure you that those who were there have never stopped reflecting and it's long past time for the rest of us to understand something of their experience in this for telling their story, hearing it and all of us reflecting on it is a

burden we share. i want to share a few of my reflections on the days of that war, now ended the years of that war now ended to discuss the very human experience of those americans who served in vietnam. in 1965, when the american ground for began president johnson sent marines into march of 1965 and he sent insignificant army units throughout that spring. the dominant public image in the united states that year, of those serving in vietnam, was of young heroes finding communism in the jungles of southeast asia. there was a protest against the war and there was dissent about

president johnson escalating it by sending in ground troops but most americans thought of those kids were over there as being heroic americans on the front lines in the battle against communism. within a few years, as american casualties increased significantly, as the draft picked up andrew more and more young americans into the army and its people read stories about some of the things that were happening to the viennese as a result of this major war being fought near their villages and as people began to have less confidence in a resolution to the war the attitude toward those serving their changed, not

in a negative way but many now consider them to be objects of sympathy with been sent over to fight a very cool and very ill-advised war but after the story of me lie became public in late 1969 and in the minds of some of those who protested the war, those who are over there fighting it became the perpetrators of that cruel war, the stereotype of the drug addled psychotics who were in vietnam and the apocalypse now will be image i have described in this book a movie apocalypse now as vietnam woodstock. it may indeed be a very good movie and it's considered a good

movie and it's not a story of the vietnam experience, though. a few weeks ago in burbank, california i made that same statement in the first question from a member of the audience following my comments was i was a screenwriter on that movie and it was accurate. we worked very hard to make it accurate. i did not defeat that point with him. i would say that excepting for some remarkable books written by the veterans particularly the fiction of people like tim o'brien and jim webb, few of the popular accounts of the vietnam war recognize those who served for what they were, scared kids. scared kids with signed up for a

difficult and very scary assignment. we knew them as the baby boome boomers, as the 60s generation, as the woodstock celebrants and the antiwar protesters on our campuses in streets. the stereotype hippies challenged the boundaries of american culture but also it's clear to me and said it should be clear to everyone else that this is not the face, the full face of this generation, not at all. for example, about 40% of the 60 generation served in the military and about 10% went to vietnam and more of them died in vietnam then went to canada or went to prison for evading the draft. so, my book tells the story of

and reminds us of some of the members of that generation. it is enriched by over 160 interviews that i completed with men and women who served in combat or medical units in vietnam. i really did focus on the ground action, the combat, the war fighting in vietnam. i describe in some greater detail in the book the spring of 1969 which i think of as a private point in the nature of the war. i talked to my interviewees about why they went, what was on their mind. i talked to them about the experience of serving in vietnam and i talked to many of them about being with friends when they died and i talked to them about coming home and their

experience when they came home. i also interviewed members of families confronted a military delegate at the front door told them that their son or daughter would not be coming home. so, a couple of weeks ago, in late march, i sent out personally inscribed copies each of these 160 people that i interviewed for the book and told them that they were collaborators in my effort to tell the story. in this book i tried to describe what it was like to grow up in that post world war ii baby boomer generation. about the exciting america of those years. about the expansion of possibility and of opportunity

and about the emphasis on education. it was a heavy time for those of us that remember growing up then but i also detail the scary world in which this generation grew up. about worries of impending nuclear tax, certainly, for the first half of the 1950s we were warned regularly that it could happen at any time. we needed to be ready. i talked about the duck and cover drills that we had in the schools where literally kids in schools and small midwestern town like mine were trained to get under the desk, duck and cover if the nuclear bombs started hitting their. and about the conviction, shared

fear that the world would be at war and the reminder that this nation, this time, had to be prepared to fight this inevitable war that this nation and its citizens would need to step up and all of us would have to assume that responsibility that came with citizenship in this republic. it was an era of peacetime draft and my high school graduating class in 1957, there were 25 boys in about 13 of us enlisted immediately after graduation, five of us in the marines, i was still 17. it was part of going into the service was a part of life and part of the culture that.

now, i am not in this book or anyplace else sympathetic to those political leaders took us to vietnam but my interest here is less in assessing the foreign policies and the commitments of presidents from truman to nixon, other historians have done this and more will provide this history. my interest is in relating what it was like to grow up in the world that was described by political and cultural leaders and educational and religious leaders is a place where we all needed to be prepared to stand up for freedom. the world war ii veterans, the children of the munich generation and this indelible lesson of world war ii that failing to stand up to aggression or dictators only encourages more of it.

these are the parents of the baby boomers and they warned what would happen if this country did not respond to challenges and threats. john kennedy, at his inauguration, in january of 1961 said, ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country. now, if this summons to a sense of shared and common responsibility for the well-being of the republics seems quaint in 2017, it was not quaint in 1961. there was a sense of a global responsibility and we had to be prepared to meet it. ironically, this global responsibility would play out in vietnam, of all places.

the vietnam war was never truly about vietnam. it was about this much larger complex and we just had a sense of this is where were being tested and we have to stand up in this place. so, we found ourselves in this war there, that kept escalating. young americans, the baby boomers, found themselves in impossible places. one of the most succinct descriptions of the tactical combat decisions in vietnam was provided by colin powell. he had first gone out there in january of 1963, as a young army officer. president kennedy was sending him more advisers in uniform and they were posted with south vietnamese troops.

colin powell was sent up to the valley and it is still a desolate place up in the northwestern part of the old south vietnam and just a few miles from laos. he was with an unit and an outpost unit and after his orientation he asked the south vietnamese commander of that unit and said tell me, why are we here why is this outpost in this place the south vietnamese commander said, well, this outpost is here to provide protection to guard this airstrip down below us and there was a small grass airfield down there and colin powell said that make sense but tell me why is the airstrip there. the south vietnamese officer said to him the airstrip is

there to supply this outpost. colin powell, who would go over again during heavy american combat in the later 1960s, said he wasn't sure he ever heard a better explanation as circular as it was for what we were doing some of these places where they were posted. in working on this book, in addition to my research and reading in interviews and intellectual framing of the story, i certainly knew i needed to visit vietnam, not just the current rest spas and thriving cities but i wanted to get out to the delta, to the high country, the central highlands and i wanted to get out to the jungles, the far reaches of those places where the baby boomer generation fought.

and for the stories of some of the men i was describing had died. i visited the delta and visiting there even today you can understand what the young kids patrolled along the waterways and canals found them hostile and scary places. traveling up to, i went to the pilings of the only remains of liberty bridge with so many americans who serve their new. i visited the old area that the marines called god city, north of liberty bridge. i left behind some mementos there for dartmouth who were killed in different images with the third battalion seventh marines, one with kilo company

in 1968 and a second classmate of the first with another company less than 2 miles away in november of that year. i looked across at charlie ridge, still dark and foreboding 45 years later and i went away and walked around the ancient citadel that have been the site of intense fighting during tet in 1968. i went up along the old demilitarized zone in highway nine and out to the rock pile, razorback and mutters ridge. names that i can assure you most americans never knew but those names rock pile in razorback and mutters ridge are seared into the memory of those served at these outposts. i walked around the field a

place that have been soaked in blood in 1968 and i visited other places and spend some time in the highlands and i walked around there in the old airstrip in 299 combat engineers had stood vicious attacks in 1969. up in the oshawa valley i climbed hamburger hill. in late summer heat and humidity and i met in the morning there with two north vietnamese army veterans with fought the americans on hamburger hill and i met them in the village o. i was surprised he accepted my invitation to climb with me. it was the mountain that the americans called hamburger help because they ground them up like

a hamburger grinding machine. greeted by a brief summer shower, the trail was steep and slippery and i stumbled and slid and i sweated and i wondered how the scared young men of the 101st airborne climb that he'll in may of 1969 knowing that they were over 50 years younger than me is not a sufficient explanation. no one was shooting down at me and i wasn't carrying 50 or more pounds of equipment and ammunition of weapons. it took our small group about two hours to reach the top and took them ten days. i should say it took them ten days to reach the top for those who did. some of those units that come in there by helicopter on may 10th 1969 had 70 and 80%

casualties before that fight was over. while we were on top of the hill i told the north vietnamese soldiers that through our interpreter i wanted to share a story with them. i told them i had grown up in an old mist western mining town called galena. galena is the latin name for it led to sulfite and it was a lead mining town that was first settled in the 1820s. i had worked in the mines there after i got out of the marines. one of my bosses was a world war ii veteran, purple heart, would served in europe. i had tremendous regard for him and i came to have an affection for his son. i picked up a couple of pieces of galena led sulfite in the

mind and kept them on my desk and a few years in the spring of 1969 i knew that michael, my bosses son, this young kid, had been killed on hamburger hill when a rocket propelled grenade had struck him in the chest and killed him immediately. i told these north enemy soldiers about him and i pulled out of my pocket a piece of led sulfite, of galena, that i brought over with me and i said i'll bury this here and i'll bury this on this hill at the top of this hill where my young friends never reached the top but now a piece of his hometown was here and i assured them that this led, this galena led sulfite, would last as long as the red clay of the hill would last.

in many ways, in that brief moment on that isolated hot, humid, triple canopy fight hilltop in vietnam my research, my personal biography and my commitment to work with supporting veterans and to remember those who died, my scholarly focus, my personal interest, they all overlapped. have a chapter on hamburger hill in this book. it's the only battle in the war that i treat in any detail because i think it represents and symbolizes so much about the war. my interest has been to tell the stories of human faces and the human tragedies, sharing their stories is something that is

important. i've always found it troubling that perhaps the name most americans knew of vietnam veteran was lieutenant william kelly, who was the commander of that army unit that massacred the vietnamese civilians and may lie in 1968. i can assure you there were some truly impressive kids who served in vietnam and they did some remarkable things. they demonstrated as much courage as anyone thought in any of our wars. vietnam was a war without heroes but it was not a war without heroism. there were plenty of these stories. they did this on our behalf but

few noticed and few things them because the war was something that we all wanted and preferred not to talk about. i'd share with you my dedication that i wrote for this book. this book is dedicated to that american generation that will honorably served in the vietnam war and this book salutes those who sacrificed. their stories deserve to be known in their lives remember. the difficulty of this american generation for and the controversies it engenders made their willingness to serve and the sacrifices they made, the greater and not the lesser. think of what they did when they were asked to serve, not all for eagle to serve, i can assure you but they were asked to serve and they did.

they knew the war was unpopular and within a few years they knew it was likely to be a war that would be one in any traditional sense but they went. i try to pass along the stories that eliza hamilton occurs us to do and as a sailor in saigon reminded us to do. a few of the stories of my book, i talked to a young marine officer, well, he was a young marine officer when he was posted to vietnam. he was a platoon leader with an infantry unit and his in country orientation he was told that the critical thing for an officer was not to cry, never to cry, never to show that emotion. within several weeks, one of the top men in his unit was killed

in an ambush and he remembered 45 years later when we talked how he struggled so hard not to cry when he learned that this young man was dead. the screen just died in the last month and he encouraged me before he died to be sure to tell the stories and his wife shared with me some things that he had written including something ten-dozen years ago when he wrote in a diary and sharp detail about this young marine that had been killed in an ambush on the day. he didn't get. i tell the story of a young massachusetts man who joined the army. he was drafted coming out of boston college and he talked to somebody down at the army recruiting offices to ask what his options were and they said you're a college graduate and you can probably apply to ocs

and go there and be an officer. he said why would i want to do that might have to serve for two more years and the recruiting sergeant said i'll tell you why you can be inside the officers club drinking a cold martini or you can be outside the officers club walking on guard duty for those who are inside drinking a cold martini. what would you rather do? he decided he'd be in officer. i don't know if he ever had a cold martini in vietnam, i don't think so but i know he had warm beer that was served to the men there. he told the story of a young man in his unit that they all had such regard for the young sergeant from the two cities was on the fourth or fifth day of hamburger hill and they went up another assault in the north

vietnamese hit them with some rockets and one young man in the unit was badly wounded so they stopped to try to organize a litter to get him down because helicopters put it medevac them on that steep hill with all the fire. they had to go down to find the clearing at the bottom. so they organized a litter group and the young sergeant from minnesota was going to lead it and just as they started they got hit by another rocket. the kid in the litter was killed and two men carrying it were killed and the young sergeant from minnesota was badly injured. lieutenant sullivan said don't worry we'll get you down, we'll get you to the hospital and you'll be okay. he organized another litter party. this young sergeant said no, i'm looking over jordan right now and what do i see, i see a band

of angels coming after me. they said don't you worry, we'll get you to the helicopter and they got him on a litter and they started caring him down and three different men who were there that day told me they still remembered all these years later's this powerful voice singing swing low, sweet chari chariot, coming for to carry me home. he was dead by the time he got to the bottom of the hill. i remember interviewing this woman was a young iowa wife. she and her husband had both oppose the war but when he got his draft notice rather than go to canada she suggested he said no, if i don't go, someone else will have to. don't worry, i'll look out for myself and i'll never kill

anyone. he went to vietnam and he died shortly after he got there in the night ambush. the army organized the funeral back in the small iowa town and she said to the army contingent that came, no firing squad, please, at my husband's gravesite. there's been enough gunfire around him, no more. i don't want any firing squad. i interviewed some family members of a young marine from the, massachusetts, jimmy hickey. jimmy was part of a strong irish marine culture there and he was going to join some of with his buddies after high school junior only 17 years old. he delayed going in with them because his girlfriend persuaded

him to stay but the following winter in february of 1968, one of his dear friends was in that original group that went in was killed during the tet offensive. jimmy hickey in four of his friends dropped out of school a month for the graduated from the high school and joined the marines. he was in vietnam by early 1969 and he was killed in may of 1969 on hill 55 north east of liberty bridge. dodge city. there is a square in the, massachusetts today named after jimmy hickey and at last count there were 19 others prayers in that city remembering young men who died in vietnam. jimmy hickey's uncle, phil burns, was remembered by family members as a very sentimental

irish man who was in love with jimmy hickey. he wrote a poem that they read at his funeral called the magic force. the family shared the poem with me and i reprinted it in this book. the poem tells the story of when jimmy was growing up he insisted that he had a magic force that no one else can see and that he kept tight by his bed at night. this magic course protected him and it took them to some wonderful places. mr. burns told the story in this poem that the last line was, dear jim, i'll lead you home upon your magic course. the poem written in 1969 was peter paul and mary's puff the magic dragon and dragons live forever. but not so little boys.

i tell the story of a swiftboat, patrol vote veteran, who told me that one time they were hit by an ambush in the back with heavy firepower immediately and apparently they hit an ammunition dump for these people were hiding and there was a huge explosion and they saw two bodies by up into the air because of the explosion and how he and the man on his vote did what was 1969 equivalent of a high five around the vote and how for the next several years when he was around telling people about vietnam he told the story and he said we fired at them in the little pastor to find to the air. we got them. then he said about 1979 he was

on a church retreat in the shenandoah valley and part of this retreat was for everyone to go through a maze on the church grounds and contemplate their lives and the meaning of what it was and what they wanted to do. he said he started thinking about this and started thinking about those two bodies flying in the air and he said, i may be if we hadn't killed them they would have killed us and that's what war is but he said you shouldn't celebrate that. these men probably had families at home that were eagerly waiting for them to come back. i killed two men and i should pay for them rather than celebrate them. he started weeping and said he

was crying so hard he had to run up into the woods and sit down, out of the way of everyone else, until he worked his way through this. he came back and he said i can assure you i never again celebrated the death of anyone at war. it's the face of war and this is really the heart of war and these are the types of stories that need to be told. as i point out in my book, these are the type of stories that often have no end. i spoke on veterans day 2009 at the vietnam veterans memorial right here in washington. it was an honor for me to be asked to speak there on that very special day and it was a moving experience to stand in front of that wall, it was a cool rainy day but there were some gold star mothers sitting right in front of me.

we were surrounded by veterans would come to remember and to salute again difference. i concluded my remarks that day with a plea, a reminder, that continues to frame my engagement and my objective in this book and so many other things that i have done in recent years. i said casualties of war cry out to be known as persons, not as abstractions, quote casualties nor as numbers entered into the books and not only is names, chiseled into marble or granite. we need to ensure that here in this place of memory lives, as well as names, are recorded and lives with smiling human bases, remarkable accomplishments, engaging personalities and

dreams to pursue, we do this for them, for history and for those in the future will send the young to war. i guess, in many ways, trying to remind people of this has been an important part of what i've been doing for the last several years. in the play hamilton, george washington, the old soldier, things alongside with eliza hamilton, the line let me tell you what i wish i had no when i was young and dreams of glory, you have no control, who lives and who dies and who tells your story. i hope that through telling the stories that someday someone can

answer affirmatively the question do you know my brother, my regards to the veterans were here, thank you for your service and sacrifice. all of us, veterans and non- veterans, need to join in telling the stories and even more importantly to listen to the stories and most important of all, to learn from the stories. thank you very much for joining me in this lunch hour and i'd prepared to answer any questions you might have. [applause] how did you get involved in telling the stories? >> that's an interesting question. i wrote of that was published in

2012, those were borne the battle, a history of america's wars and those who bought them and that flowed somewhat logically from some of the stuff i'd been doing, working with veterans, particularly, injured veterans since 2005. when i finished this book i thought i was finished then with writing books but vietnam was still hanging there and i wanted to write something about it and i thought about the vietnam generation but this doesn't fit in an op-ed, it doesn't even fit between the covers of this book and so i said, well, maybe i'll chop another book so i did. yes can you talk about the experience of the veterans of vietnam generation and those today when they come back to civilian life and especially in higher education?

>> i think veterans come back today have -- are greeted generally warmly and well. people applaud them when they see them and when they are identified, they thanked them for their service. vietnam veterans do not have that experience. they did not want to talk to them about their service. i'm not sir that americans know too much more about what it is that we are asking these kids were serving today to do in our behalf and i'm not sure we fully appreciate the nature of these complicated missions that we send them on, about the rules of engagement that are necessarily a part of these wars, about the multiple deployments that they have and all the pressure that is on them and their families.

they are older than the vietnam generation was, over half of them are married and it's a different military today and more professional military. the vietnam veterans were not greeted warmly as i say here, i'm not sure there was much hostility and some of them did experience that but it wasn't widespread hostility but there was a widespread indifference to them and even an embarrassment. they didn't want to them. i think we worked our way through that and were trying to acknowledge them in some ways but is one vietnam veteran said to me a few years ago, overhearing vietnam, thank you for your service and i look upon it as sort of the same sort of reflect that we have when someone sneezes and we say bless you. we know our blessing someone sneezes that we are being thanked for our service in

vietnam. i think there is some truth to that. it's an embarrassment, distinctive thing that we do. i think the vietnam generation has done remarkably well in providing leadership in so many areas of our country that contribute significantly to our politics, our culture and our economy but they still bear a lot of these memories and i don't think most people want to know what it is they're remembering. yes. >> can you mark on the practic practices, beliefs, customs, prejudices associated with translating a native language while in present complex in a foreign country? i'm not sure that i have much authority to do that. it's a complicated thing in vietnam very few people knew vietnamese, very few americans

who serve their. [inaudible] >> there was a literacy but there's not a full understanding of the vietnamese. most of the veterans i spoke to came to appreciate very early on that the vietnamese really didn't want them to be there. they could set up without knowing the language, that they did not -- [inaudible] >> i'm not sure -- we have trouble understanding north korea and i think it's difficult to understand north korea and its leadership and it is not always rational in the way that we in the west think of as rational and i think the concern many people have is the misunderstanding or miscalculation could be quite devastating there. particularly, considering the vulnerability of south korea to the north korean attack.

>> what do you think, in today's day and age, there such a difficulty getting some concept of national service when in those years that your book is about it was assumed, my brother went into the army, my brother-in-law was in the air force and i went into the navy. no one seems to have -- they could go teach school into anything but we blow it off because there's no draft. >> there is no draft in the draft ended in 1973 and even during the vietnam war the military did not need all of the 18 -year-old men and so there was some selections involved. as i said, about 40% of that generation ended up serving and those that didn't serve did not for a variety of reasons.

a complicated range of reasons but they didn't serve. today -- i'm over 75 in my generation 52% of us are veterans. those who are in men who are in their teens less than 2% are veterans and is actually declining. that won't turn around. the question is can we have a draft today? yes. it would have to be a lottery, i don't thank you do it any other way but by in 2010 the last few years i thought there were something like four and a half million men turned 18 that year and the military right now is needing about 17,080,000 a year to sustain the size of the force. which hundred 70 or 180,000 of those four and half million are going to start? i think the military would prefer to have those who want to

serve come in, the center for new american security had a study that came out this week pointing out that not just representative of our society but there really is increasingly eight military caste system in the country. caste is the word they use but those who serve in the military are often the children of those who serve in the military. it carries on. that means that more and more of us really don't have any idea what they do. could we have a national service for those other four-point to million 18 -year-olds plus the 18 -year-old women? i guess we could. without being cynical, though, we have trouble on this pennsylvania avenue that we are on today agreeing on some pretty basic things and can you imagine as a green what would constitute national service and who would

monitor over 4 million kids a year and what they're doing to make certain they met that objective and if they didn't, what we would do with them. i worry about how you can implement and practice. absolute, there is a sense today that we do not owe something to the common good and i think that's a major loss for the republic. >> if there are no more questions, i'd like to present you with one of our practical desktop. >> i like the net out in front. thank you, philip. >> thank you for coming. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

one of the most will read books in the bible by our forefathers was the book of deuteronomy which they read as

they put together our constitution and as at they were they were found in our nation. the book of deuteronomy is so. where did you find that that was where they drew a lot of the information that framed our nation. if you read about our nations history it is one of the most quoted books at the time they put together that. the founding of the nation of israel and i think they you'd the founding of our country the same as that. does one final question. what did it take for something such as anything on healthcare i like to go to that. i always thought about that in my local bookstore.

thank you so much for your time congressman. we want to know what you're reading. send us your summer reading list via twitter or instagram or post posted to our facebook page television for serious readers. and you're watching tv on c-span two. we are in new york city at the publishers infiltrate so and what we would like to do during the summer is preview some of the fall books that are coming out. next up we want to introduce you 's so we quit. she is the author of this book crash override. how we can win the fight against online hate. what do you do for a living. against online hate. what do you do for a living. ultimately my day job