fascinatin fascinating. and i am a huge michael peeka fan. he writes all these books on sports and a lot of the types of books i read when i was growing up. and i love them. so, you know, that is sort of the fun reading i am doing right now. >> i noticed on your phone, do you read from your phone? ...

during this career 9/11 and is a

great public servant committed to keeping the city safe so thank you for everything that you do. [applause] and i would like to take a minute if the veterans and those that served in the forces could be stand and be recognized. [applause] i would be remiss at this point if i didn't also think the ambassador to the united nations who honored me with a wonderful foreword for the buck, and i appreciate his support for the buck and this important message. it is a great privilege to be here in this wonderful institution of the union league

club of new york. since its founding in 1863 its members have played an important role in the national discourse on a wide range of issues and as ron mentioned they constructed the statue of liberty and got rid of boss along the way so it is a great privilege to be here and it is fitting that we are in this historic room to talk about fighting the media war in iraq because this book is about history, how we make history and how the history has shaped and perceived not only by ordinary people, but by people who are just to have the great fortune in many respects of being thrust into extraordinary circumstances on behalf of the country and also increasing the business of journalism, technology and

politics. how we perceive the iraq war was shaped by all those things that in the this time in history we are seeing several profound shifts in the way that people view the media, government and the war itself. why did you put it out now? the ships i mentioned and the the governments ability or the inability to counter them has a great work of thousands of americans who went over to iraq and sacrificed great risk to help create a better future for that country. they do not effectively articulate policy and manage the

message they would find themselves unexecuted to sustain the policy. what was lost in the coverage of the worst was the very best of people and what happened during that critical first year after the fall of saddam hussein gives us a glimpse into the imperfection of humanity as well as the very evil that exists in the world in the face of god that can be seen even in our darkest hours. over the last number of years i've watched the coalition authority has been lamented by the media so-called opinion leaders and politicians on both sides of the aisle very unfairly. the civilian story and the story

of the civilian coalition in the first year has largely never been a great focus of attention. what happened behind the scenes has rarely been discussed. as a civilian being thrust into the middle of the fight for peace and to communicate about the war as well as the work of so many hundreds of colleagues on a range of issues i felt we needed to be told at this time. after all our heroes in uniform are not the only folks participating in the iraq mission. civilians played key roles often left unseen. the boot camp was the battlefront, the expertise, uniform and convictions. and it is my hope that by evaluating the successes and failures of the mission, history

would record as a triumph of american spigot and sacrifice. the book is chronological and personal so i told that story from the day i got the phone call sitting in my office on pennsylvania avenue and then ten days later in the 130-degree heat to go into baghdad for some indeterminate amount of time and i made up my mind i would be gone for four months and convinced my family this would be an okay thing to support. but, it is very personal and i thought about writing a policy book about the diplomacy, how you communicate about the war in the social media etc., but it's and impersonal and cold and almost inappropriate given the work that was done. we were also personally and

emotionally vested in what we were doing and the environment was so smart of injecting a healthy dose of what it was like for me personally going through that experience didn't seem authentic. i also want wanted both to be accessible to a broad range of audiences so i wanted to write it in such a way that it told the story and was was chronological. there is plenty of stories about no weapons training trying to craft the message from the media about the work that thousands of americans were doing to rebuild the countries in an increasingly dangerous environment. we talked about the kurdish children running in the dirt, being told by special forces, a

member of special forces to remember to roll down the car window before throwing out the grenade. middle age contractors dancing in the famous disco the children and the victims of the attacks. seeing women draped in black at the mass graves clutching the pictures and photos of their families dealing with death and rocket attacks, feeling fear and of course seeing glimpses of hope those were all part of the experience is. but there's also a running commentary and for the first time a real analysis of not just the news media but the political

questions that hampered the administration's ability to deliver a balanced and realistic view of what was really going on in iraq against the demands of the business of journalism and media bias. the lessons about fighting the media war are more relevant today than they were back then in our time of social media and fake news and of course the president at war with the press and the press at war with the president. the indisputable truth in all of this is that the government still has to make policy. our communications change, the technology changes in the way that we talk to each other and are influencers try to influence policy at all changes. but at the end of the day the government still has to make the policy and that requires public support. what we experience in iraq was

an erosion of that support because of the failure to effectively fight and win the homefront war in the press. policymaking is now more than ever about the willingness to push back and participate on every medium, not just twitter against the business of journalism and an increasing number of information sources of varying degrees of credibility. when we do this analysis, what we've learned is iraq was a war within a war. what we suggested the rise of al qaeda and the decision-making in the aftermath of 9/11 was a sharp departure from the usual paradigm and in fact i believe that in many respects it is as it relates to the way that this country handles both its military and diplomatic strategy to account for this shift.

the administration of george w. bush was the first to have to deal with this paradigm shift. the challenges were philosophical, operational and compounded by this battle for the audience mind share at home. but tensions need the tough sell of the iraq policy even tougher. there was the philosophical war and we expect a great deal of time over the last many years debating whether or not we should have gone into iraq but the more relevant conversation for all of us and the country moving forward remains once you make the decision to go to the war, what is the principal purpose of the desired outcome and how do you get there and you have several choices in the case one come you can remove saddam hussein and leave which would have been a false choice, or remove the leadership and grab some ex- patriot and basically

trade one dictator for another or attempt to secure the country and build institutions that could support them off with some people have suggested as an american-style democracy, but a more participatory tolerant governing structure. the coalition was developed to execute the third option and they tackled this with great passion and commitment sacrificing much with their efforts going unnoticed as the situation worsened due to the rise of al qaeda and sectarian violence and unfortunately, a government that as the mission and went on often failed to aggressively defend its own policy created the issue of competing philosophies was apparent the virtually everyday.

secretary rumsfeld had a high-tech smaller fleet military which is fine but that happened to be incompatible with the mission we had at the time dealing with the insurgency and civil affairs of predation that needed to be done at the same time. on my first day in iraq, i got off the plane, put on my helmet because they told me too, got off the bus and then they said by the way, the road between baghdad international airport and the palace is closed because there've been too many attacks on it and i said great, this is exactly what i want to see the first day i get here they are telling me they called it the road of death road of death and it wasn't a particularly original name they got the point across that we have a problem securing the road between the airport and where our headquarters were going to be. one of the ambassadors first conversations i talk about in the book was posing the honest

but the astute question how do we get the u.s. military to start shooting the looters because we needed to demonstrate that we were going to use force to ensure the country would be secure and to restore some sense of behavior. so there were also clearly differences in the military and state department whose service officers while they have their own important had their own important priorities often didn't play well in the sandbox with the folks from the department of defense and also the bush administration appointees from the white house. there was an operational or bureaucratic word as well. operationally, the challenges were immense. the cpa was a unique combination of the department of defense, the department of state, the nfc, the white house, the cia and intelligence agencies all operating under our feet at all

times, and it is a textbook lesson in building and a short amount of time and managing a bureaucracy and by the way, nobody had done this before and by the way this impacted what i did for instance every day because part of being able to craft a coherent and credible communication strategy requires that for planning purposes you have great internal communications as well. let me give you an example. the establishment of the iraqi security forces was one of the most important things we tried to do during that first year and the press were interested in our progress and obsessed over it. so of course they didn't understand, report or seem interested in the complexities of trying to put cops on the street and build an army and build these various security forces but getting the facts from the different parts of the operation was so difficult that in fact at one point the

secretary of defense and the ambassador were all going on tv using different numbers. you have to have a message consistency or you will damage your credibility. the military also didn't have a tight rein on its people. i was shocked one day to learn that it was the military's policy that if a soldier got asked the question of a member of the press, they could answer it which posed a very significant problem when you see a field commander during an interview on tv and they are giving incomplete information. young enlisted soldiers, a victim of the press who love to ask questions about don't you miss home and don't you wish that you were back with your family. it was a disgraceful type of tactic on the media, but they

wanted to get them to say they missed home. of course they did. when a soldier stops missing home and stops complaining about conditions, you may have a problem on your hands. nobody wants to be in the desert. we were all there to put ourselves out of a job. then you would have thought have the reporters themselves who have long decided that the administration and military have no credibility so they crafted the story they wanted often without regards to the fact or the sources. organizations also compete for resources and ownership and i'm sure you see this in your organizations and businesses every day. we don't, but that position in iraq definitely impacted our ability to communicate about the war. having the credibility for instance to say i was there and i saw it with my own eyes was critical to be able to deliver the message back in the states

and the very rarely happened. in 2003, 2004 i worked on developing a national search operation in a hometown media project that both soldiers and civilians both here and those overseas on local television and radio stations around the country and smaller markets to try to get the message out about what they experienced about their commitment to the mission and what was actually going on. we even used a military production attachment in the country to shoot footage of these folks doing their jobs, building a school, working together with the district advisory council, working on governance issues or just out fighting the terrorists. they package them up and send them off for distribution to television stations. the white house and the department of defense couldn't figure out who would take ownership of the mechanics. would it be the office of global

communications, somebody at the defense department or somebody in the office of public affairs that should be should be doing this. nobody could figure it out and so the program failed. it didn't last very long so the operational war was impacting our ability to articulate a better, fairer and more aggressive message during the first year that the operational war was also impacting the quality of the journalism. by the end of 2003, the press corps had pretty much been stripped. we had a saying in the office that the one thing that all of the bad that reporters had in common is for the first part you never heard of any of them. they were leaving only a token presence and then they were told they were not permitted to travel around the country. that meant they sat in hotels

and waited for a daily car bombs go bomb to go off, sent out the crew, got their footage, looked at on the we did on the evening news or 24 hour cable news and that became a story that we started seeing and we started seeing that as early as the summer of 2003. then it was a larger perception. of course the white house has an over reliance on the wmd issue as a justification for the war and it ultimately hurts our credibility with the press and the public from the start but you have to couple that with newsrooms full of executors that came from the vietnam era and the sad part of human nature, and i don't know if this is developed because the information systems and technology, but the sad part of human nature that is always going to be more interested in what went wrong and what went right and who died as opposed to

lived and achieved and then you see how these battlelines come into specific relief pretty quickly. we were dealing with a media that simply didn't believe anything we said. it was hostile to the president and what report rumors on the street over the government's explanation for virtually anything. to make matters worse there were no senior staff members in the public affairs operations that spend any appreciable amount of time in baghdad while i was there. as the public opinion soured the administration's strategy was to limit the number of people talking about the mission rather than expanding the universe and i think that is a very important lesson for what we can take into the private sector and whatever fight we happen to be fighting for the different causes and organizations today that when the going gets tough, recoiling back is not necessarily the answer to the problem. you want to find ways to push

through the filter. of course lost in this complex set of relationships was with the members of the provisional authority together with our men in uniform did in those first 18 months of the functioning pluralistic government albeit adolescent in its infancy in a written and ratified the transitional administrative law, the framework for free elections and establishment of new political parties, the reopening of the central bank and a stabilized currency, the introduction of the improved healthcare system we could use in washington today. [laughter] framework for the return of a strong judiciary to establish diplomatic relations with countries that used to be

enemies, growing a new economy, the new iraqi security force that began within weeks of the creation of the cba. hundreds of schools and government buildings including hospitals, health care centers and by the time president bush left office, the most liberal constitution in the middle east have been developed with shia, sunni, kurds and turkmen at the table. they'd been able to facilitate and election at an incredibly challenging security environment that saw participation by more than 8 million people. the economy of iraq have increased several times over from its time under saddam hussein and per capita income increased between six and four times. life expectancy had increased and security forces much to the surprise of many people in this country have actually secured much of iraq with ongoing assistance of course from the united states. perhaps most important, al qaeda in iraq by 2008 beginning of

2009 had been decimated. our failure to win the home front communications more to this date still in peril's iraq more than any mistake or missteps that occurred. the erosion of support in the face of almost exclusively to news and a stilted strategy from the white house to communicate about the war became politically unattainable for president bush and inconvenient for president obama and that extended to how they dealt with isis to the detriment of now more than a dozen countries across the greater middle east and africa. information is power and perception is created and become reality those are inextricably linked to the ability to implement policy particularly when it will require significant ties and resources at a cost.

our nation needs a citizen education about policy and that will be critical towards pushing back against editorial filters on the right and on the left. dishonest reporting, fake news and uninformed opinions to make sure that what we do with the rest of the world is contextualized for americans. the lessons learned from our experiences in iraq are critical to ensure as a nation we will maintain the will to engage around the world and not just militarily but diplomatically and economically as well using the great tools this country has at its disposal to exert its influence and its values. when america engages we see greater freedom, human health and advance the tolerance that

is the underpinning of peace. it was an honor to serve alongside so many americans in uniform and to serve alongside so many iraqis who made the ultimate sacrifice as well and of course the civilians who continue to be unsung heroes and of course at its core had the most noble intention of giving people the ability to determine their own destiny. thank you for your support of this book and this important message and i'm happy to take your questions. thank you very much. [applause] members and guests, this is being recorded so if you have a question, please wait for the microphone before you get your question and then we will proceed from there.

>> i noticed on the front cover of your book because i just received it and i am very much looking forward to reading it. it's a very important topic right now in so many different ways, so thank you for being here. on the front cover of your book i think you have donald rumsfeld. this might be a simple aspect of it but i remember when the war first began, donald rumsfeld said this war is going to take a very long time and it's going to cost a lot of money. what the media said from that

because he was admitting it is an unknown and we need to go ahead and invest the time and the money that what the media constantly repeated was the administration doesn't know how much it's going to cost. the administration doesn't know how long it is going to take and it was such a distortion. is this a simple version of some of the difficulty that we experience? >> thank you for your question. i always used the president's speech on the aircraft carrier at the end of major combat operations. you all know now what was the famous part of that speech. mission accomplished. actually, it wasn't in the speech. it was a banner and it was in the photographs. if you read the speech, remember he understood this and said if

you are were going to struggle against radical is honest extremists, in order for you to do that that is a generational long type of struggle. it's not clean, it does not not happen right away and it's something he believed was worth investing. did they know how much it would cost? know what everyone was clear from the beginning that this was going to be a long fight. and the media loves to ignore that and suggest to people that bush and rumsfeld duped everyone into thinking we were going to go in, it would be like 91 and it was going to be over in a few month's. one of the things after the mission accomplished speech we started getting is a lot of reporters to call and say why is it taking so long to build up the military.

mind you this is august of 2003. we didn't take any prisoners. the military collapsed and the iraqis had a poorly trained and poorly funded army that had no officer corps because it completely dissipated. but by august they were saying what is taking so long to get the judiciary up and running. why is it taking so long to get the sewage systems fixed in iraq, why is it taking so long to get the lights back on? there is a sense of impatience that was generated. you are laughing i assume because of how ridiculous it was and what i would say to the reporter is look, take us out of baghdad and put us in columbus ohio. how long would it take you to build a power plant in columbus

ohio under the best circumstances imaginable what, five years on the low end? we are in new york city tonight. there are projects that you have developers that started in the ten years ago and they are still not done but according to the mainstream press, we were supposed to have everything fit us and that is what they wanted to try and drive and they did it very successfully. the white house for its part after what happened with the mission accomplished banner really needed to redouble its efforts to explain to people in every way that it could but this was going to be messy. did they effectively anticipate the rise of the insurgency?

perhaps not. did they know how decrepit the country was when we got there? perhaps not. we used to joke next time let's invade a country that looks like they'll jump. beautiful, they've got everything, we don't have to worry about half this stuff. but that level of unknowns was significant and of course i do believe we made a mistake by not having as many troops as we needed to. the civilian leadership during the first year was very adamant that we needed more troops and this was the war within the war. it's the civilian leadership and military leadership at cross purposes on the strategy. another question?

>> i have a question relative to whether it was something discussed or whether you have an opinion. earlier in the more they seem to be keeping the army in place and working with the tribal leaders with the good old yankee dollar. we haven't seen the looting or the breakup. but then it seemed everything went to hell and the situation worsened relative to the decisions made in state and not defense. do you have a comment on that? >> i do have a comment and i think this is one of those things we are going to debate for a long time. the fact of the matter is the first gulf war and i don't have the numbers in front of me but we took an enormous number

rolling through and we were taking whole battalions of soldiers and that did not happen this time around. after the looting was allowed to happen, you didn't have a mechanism you couldn't find people, you had no officer corps. the entire top echelon of the army, there were 300 generals and they were all basically like political patriot's. all those folks went away. you cannot run an army with just infantrymen so what happened was you had no resources in order to

train and equip them. it was all gone. what we did within the first two months that he was there was graduate the first battalion of the new iraqi army. so the process of rebuilding the military and most of the people that were part of were subject to detoxification under the rank of the kernel were able to come back and folks that were part of the civil service because you have to had to be a baptist member in order to have a job, most of those people were ultimately be hired and i'm not talking about a year or two later. the process moved quickly to evaluate these folks and put them back in jobs. we had functioning agencies and departments of the government.

we had one functioning within four months after the fall of the statute so the process moved fairly quickly and that's something people never really realized. and the problem we never had in baghdad of course is you didn't have police officers so when we went into iraq, the police departments collapsed and we had to recruit people and then trained folks in the short period of time so while we were trying to do the military and he if we also had to do the civilian security services as well, and we were putting thousands of cops on the street by september or october and

taking some of the burden off of our soldiers who needed to be going out and hunting and killing triggered this. i think that there is a lot of misinformation but the fatigue of education and what is commonly referred to as the disbanding of the iraqi military and you can't dispense something that didn't exist in the first place by the time we got to it. other questions? >> does the administration attend the tension between the sunnis and shiites in iraq? >> that's one of these things we had to deal with as they were bringing it thank you it's to try to help with the negotiation

process. during the time of the coalition, i can't speak to the decision-making process before hand, i can speak to what happened when i was there and the appointment of the governing council, which was a diverse group of men and women who were brought together to work with the coalition in july comes to the statute fell with statute fell in april and there was a sort of period that jim gardner was there and they were trying to put together some sort of reconstruction effort and then once bremmer got into the country they started working on governance issues and they were able to put together this governing council and there were obvious disagreements, but we had very experienced diplomats working to try to bring these different factions together to help create the transit

transitioning role. the sectarian issues that exist in iraq have existed for centuries and they've only gotten worse after the british came and basically carved up the middle east and i don't think a lot of people realize that the map was drawn by a foreign power that came in so there is to the 1 degree or another a sort of unnatural union to all of this but the one thing that brought everybody together is that there were legal resources and that is something we are dealing with today. there's a there is a discussion about the iraqi kurdistan splitting off and there's the idea of who gets which oilfield and amounts of revenue and what

form the divide of iraq would take. but i think that when it comes to the sectarian issues it's hard for us to understand them here. anybody in the middle east and this is why when we talk about islamist extremism there is a sense of history in the middle east that they have very long memories and look very far into the future about how to take their society. they were in this bombed out building getting ready to reappoint justices to the

that's the way these folks approach their relationships. in some respects that could be a very good thing, because they gave them stamina. the media love to talk about and want to suggest that not only were the americans losing confidence in the a recognition that the iraqis really didn't want us there. it's not different than not understanding the need for having troops and not having a vision for what the country should be. i had a conversation with the

deputy mayor of baghdad. he went to dubai and came back and said how is your trip. is he angry with me and he said i'm not angry with you, i'm angry with us and this idea that we allowed this. i've seen what other countries in the middle east have made of themselves and i'm angry at us for allowing this to go on for so long and that sentiment pervaded the iraqis that i dealt with, sunni, shia and turkmen. one of the things about sectarianism, iraq was not age right country. it was a very liberal country where they have separation

between mosque and state. they had intermarriage of the different sectors in islam. you could be shia and living next door to a sunni. saddam hussein's foreign minister was a christian. so the idea of this overtaking of the sectarianism is always present but has been amplified i think by the influence of outsiders like iran in focus from al qaeda and other activist organizations in the radicals because iraq was not a radical country in that respect. saddam hussein started acting that way and found religion

after the 1991 gulf war because he wanted to be more relevant in the world of islam he wanted to be able to attract more of those folks so that he could use them to increase his sphere of influence. another question. >> understanding the media realities of how reliable would you say the u.s. is as a part are today and how much of a hit in credibility do we get by prematurely walking away from a mission, how much did it know they could wait this out because of the skittishness of the public and the reliability of the news media to paint the

picture? >> that is a good question and it goes to this gentleman's question about the very long view which some people may say that's one of the reasons this wasn't going to work because as a country we were not necessarily going to have to stamina to do this for the long haul but it certainly didn't hurt our credibility. when you tell your enemy when you're leaving, just wait. and then when you're not only tell them when you're leaving but then the generals told the commander in chief, look you want to get out we are going to do what you tell us to do but we need 30,000 troops to stay and the commander in chief says they are going to give you ten and

the national security advisor goes on television and says don't worry about it. over the last eight years we sent every single solitary message that we could have sent to the people that we were fighting or trying to help and who were lighting to exert their influence around the world and we are now seeing we have a soft underbelly of europe. at some point we have an administration that is at least talking tough on to her resume and time will tell how the trump administration ultimately deals with these threats and sells it to the public because that is what you're talking about we are talking about here, not just having an idea of being able to

sell it in such a way that you can sustain the policy. but the minute that when he left, maliki said i have to find a new friend. and where did he go, he went to iran and russia and both the russians and iranians have exhorted an enormous amount of influence in the middle east. and we have virtually no presence. this is the consequence of people believing the war was a fools errand and the consequence of the folks not appreciating what we accomplished their in that litany of things that we did and that we failed to communicate effectively.

so when somebody at the white house says we want people thinking about the economy and jobs i said you don't have the choice any more to try to forget that iraq is going on. you have to push back and if you don't, then you don't goound new york and washington and that editorial center to those who are reasonable and might agree or disagree with certain points but who can be reasoned with about the cost and benefits of a particular strategy if you are willing to do that then ultimately you know who is making the policy? cnn or on the other hand maybe fox news or are some websites

that nobody's heard of that suddenly appears in your facebook feeds. so, we do have to educate ourselves and make sure that this is the challenge of our information age. it comes with a responsibility and it's important that we take these lessons and internalize them and talk about what actually happened so that we can learn. thank you very much. [applause]

on behalf of the union league club i would like to present you with the medallion as athanks fg us. [applause] and also on behalf of the military affairs committee i would like to present you with our military affairs challenge claim. [applause] i think everyone of you for defending tonight but it wouldn't be a military event without continued plugs for the next event so here is paying the

bill so to speak. skydiving on august 18. we have a bunch in the audience way to go, i see people looking at if he's not trying to make eye contact right but that's okay. jumping out of a perfectly good airplane that today and earn your wings that will give you bragging rights at the main bar downstairs. [laughter] on september 11, a special day for the world and for our city especially the are going to have a special guest at that as the lieutenant general whose the commanding officer of the special forces and they are the units that are taking it to the enemy at this point that will be september 11. and after that we have another special guest on a different kind of plane we are going to have the united states air force commander of the space command here, four-star general raymond

who will talk about stuff we usually don't talk about which includes plans on how they are getting to mars. we had that conversation in florida when i was there and he looked at me seriously and said this really is rocket science and we are going to get it done so going over the plans for the trip in its infancy. please clear off your calendars and join us and that concludes tonight's program and i thank you for coming to the program on this july night and the main bar is open downstairs. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

congressmen what is on your summer reading list? >> at the beginning of the summer i went on a congressional trip to vietnam so i read a number of books including some books from the vietnam war era that kind of reminded me of things i had to read in college. great book called fire in the lake by patrick fitzgerald that's an interesting history of

the vietnam itself. in the middle part of the summer i'm reading books about the constitution, declaration of independence and the founding fathers different views about religion and then in a few weeks i will be on another trip with the armed services committee to norway, poland and lithuania so i will be getting groups from the library of congress to be prepared for that trip. >> when you get books from the library of congress, do you approach them as i am going on this trip, healthy? >> exactly. i'm going to this place, that these are the things we are going to be doing and they provide materials from the congressional research service they always ask for books about the country or the topic and they have incredible experts over there and usually bring over a whole bunch of books. i can't read all of them they bring so they figure out which two or three on going to read. so i do this reading, go on the

trips and as i'm doing all this i'm taking notes and at the end of the trip i report back to my staff and the reports gets longer and longer. the last one was about 60 pages long because it is a way for me to distill not only what i learned with my own impressions so my staff have that for future use. >> d. find that you shared ideas with your colleagues? >> all the time. if you read something that was good, or he may go into conversation on a particular policy or topic and volunteer i just read this book you should read it so i colleagues are great sources of books to read. >> what is your go to, biographies, histories? >> history. i was taught in undergraduate school you want to understand a place, people, and issue you need to dig back to the beginning. i have a history professor who

said you need to peel back the story of this place where this issue, it's like an onion you peel it back until you get to the truth and rebuild it and it gives you an understanding of how to deal with it. history books are what i read a plot of. thought of. >> is there an author you recommend? >> it's hard not to recommend harper lee who is from my district. many people know forrest gump. but also a lot of good history books. a lot of people know him for the one book, forrest gump but i wish they would read the other stuff he does. i know harper lee, the last book was somewhat controversial but i think people should read that, killers to be followers of to

kill a mockingbird get disappointed because atticus finch is someone later in life than they thought earlier but that is kind of human nature that we are complex people and there were complexities in her herself. >> thanks for spending a few minutes with booktv. >> booktv wants to know what you are reading. send your summer reading list on twitter at booktv or insta graham at booktv or or post to the facebook page, facebook.com/ .tv. book tv on c-span2, television for serious readers. ..