a better time i think. i'm a little prejudiced because i'm a librarian. if any reader anybody who wants to get inspired, the book festival is the perfect place. >> activities live coverage begins saturday at 10:00 a.m. the featured authors including david mccall and thomas friedman. former secretary of state, condoleezza rice, and michael lewis and jd vance. the national book festival, live starting at 10:00 a.m. eastern and on book tv. >> next, black hawk down authors talks about his latest book about the turning point in the american war in vietnam.

[inaudible] >> good afternoon. welcome to the 33rd annual chicago tribune printers road lit fest. my name is thomas and i thank you to our sponsors. today's program is being broadcast live on c-span twos book tv.erview, this time like to go over to our interview chicago tribune film critic, michael. [applause]hank you >> thank you. thank you for coming out today. my leisure to talk to you aboutt his new book, hugh, 1960.

hughes the national correspondent for the atlantic, contributing editor for vanity fair and longtime philadelphia inquirer writers, 24 years. and author of many books on subjects literally all over the world the account of the d-day to the killing of osama bin laden. many subjects.ts probably best known for black hawk down. , an account of the 1993 grade and somali that led to two u.s. army black hawk helicopters being downed over mogadishu. in a grueling 15 hour resolve. the new book out this week from atlantic, it's a very different scope i would say then black hawk down. it's also being made into miniseries already. the thing hasn't only been about

three days. the producer and director of all be between eight and ten hoursth in the end is michael mann. he has said this, in mark's bo book, there are no background people, people abstracted into statistics or body counts.s. there's a sense that everybody somebody as each is in the actuality of their own lives. the brilliance of the narrative, the achievement of interviewing hundreds of people on all sides and making the human story hisdi foundation is how it rises to the emotional power and universal of whom the bell tolls. that is high praise.gh praise. >> up lesson from partisan[l character.

but thank you for sitting with us. >> thank you for inviting me. can we talk a little bit to orient folks who may not be as familiar as they should be with this and bloodiest of the vietnam battles. i think that's an controversial. i wonder if there are any key misconceptions about the offensive in january and february 1960 that help focus your work on this book, five years in the making? >> the more i learned about this battle, the more surprising was that it wasn't widely known and remembered. it's remembered within the military. people who are part of the military, the army or marine corps are familiar with what a terrible fight this was. the general public in part never

understood exactly what happened, in large measure because the military commanders in vietnam so aggressivelyressil downplayed the offensive. they claim that it amounted only to small-scale attack which was true and most of the cities in south vietnam there were rapidly put down. it was most definitely not that. it ended up being an enormous battle that lasted 24 - 30 days that involve cavalry units and the marine corps. took a terrible toll on citizens who are in the middle of the city trapped in the crossfire.be if a battle is a rip in the fabric of civilization and itshi terribly traumatic and ultimately changes the world, this was an episode on that epio tail.

>> 15 hours was the core timeline and black hawk down. this is as you say up to 30 or 40 days. there's a lot that happens outside those margins because battles don't come out of nowhere. they don't and when they in. but, talk to me about how that necessitated a different structure, more of a mosaic if you go that. >> there's a similarity in the structure because i went about reporting black hawk down in the same way. this is he mentioned was muchr bigger scale a much bigger challenge. i spoke to a lot more people. i try to build the stories from the ground up. to me, more interested as a writer and the experience ofe ii individuals who are caught up in

that struggle, either both american soldiers or vietnamesen soldiers. one of the soldiers in the battle, andy weston was in the front row. [applause] andy is one of many american veterans by interview. he was writing letters home almost every day. my narrative is full of wonderful letters that he wrote during the battle. >> let's read the first segment is the third-largest city right? >> sure, kinda like chicago. this is an early part of the book and i should say the book

begins, the narrative begins with one of many people we meeto in 1968 which is a story of a north vietnamese villager. >> shoes in 18-year-old village girl whose family had been fighting for independence for several generations. her father fought against the french, her grandfather fought against the french. her older sister was killedd fighting against the south vietnamese army. she had been arrested and taken interrogated for and water boarded when she was 16 yearse i old. she someone had a very deep hatred of the south vietnamesevi army and the americans who is completely committed to the fight. i thought it would be an interesting way to introduce too american readers the story of aa battle we think of as american.

>> were so used to demonizing the enemy in fiction and nonfiction accounts. so this is a description of hue in this took place from the lunar new year. >> this is the biggest holiday in vietnam. in january 1968, there were fewer than 1000 a rv and troops stationed in the city and surrounding area. smaller number of americans. as the holidays approach, large portion of the former looking forward to long holiday. in the peaceful city it was traditional to send cups of paper with lick candles floating down the river like flickering blossoms. first for health, success, the memory of loved ones away or departed, for success inin

business or love and perhaps for an end of the war and killing. it made a moving, collective display, hope and many thousand tiny flames. they would wind down the water without sound. flowing past the bright lights of the modern city to the south, frame to the north by the fortresses high black wall. people would line both banks to savor the spectacle. the ritual was then lemon signature, gesture of beauty and cold, harmony between the living and the dead, and expression of the vietnam soul. a place far from the horrors of war. not this year. >> let's jump ahead to another thing. [applause] we meet many characters in mark's book.

one of them is lefty. this is i think in any good account of any war in the famou actors and the less famous. your book deals with lbj, walter cronkite and other media figures who ended up redirecting thect american perception of the war as a winnable exercise. this is one of many like we meet at the beginning, this is one of many characters we didn't know until now. >> now were in the middle of the battle, it's raging in the city. there is a steady world gunfire and explosions that would be clips at intervals by the sound of a shell fired from one of the warships anchored 15 to make 20 miles east in the south china sea.

the biggest of their guns were 16 inches, that measures the width of the barrels. the gun was 50 times outline. it could hurl a projectile is heavy as a small car 25 miles. it would emerge in the general is a low whistling that grew louder as it approached until it became heard passing above the clouds like an airborne locomotive. the hurtling move with suche hul force that when it hit the ground at a great distance thehe earth shook. walls crumbled. it felt like the end of the world to richard lefty who was deposited into this on friday the 16th, joining harrington's delta company the day after it took the hour.ef he was 18. he had no idea what was going

on. he'd never heard of hue, he knew nothing of ho chi minh, could not have pointed out vietnam on a map and cannot define what were communism met other than something bad. something his country, he was montged to fight. just months earlier he had been a tough guy, small, scrappy and fearless or so he thought. he was so white delinquent from a big catholic family. is from an industrial town in northwest philadelphia where the land prices from the river. mills and factories along the bank to find the character of his hometown. he was too young for union job into ranch punctures for school. his father didn't work, he drank.od of with a root of six, his mother had more than she could cope with.

so lefty ran wild. he discovered a boy didn't have to be big 25. just willing. the key was to fear pain less than the other guy. this gave him, despite his size swagger in his neighborhood.ne l you been shaping up just fine into the local manchester, barber dragged him into the shop in between snip services areni said, you again. you have two choices, they really want to put you in to be. i have to put you somewhere. just like that, lefty was a marine. [applause]arch bec i have to talk about the research. it's a considerable undertaking first of all, how does the experience of black hawk down among others prepare you for this?

whom i really going to talk tond that we haven't heard from before? >> i benefit in having written "black hawk down" with the realization that you don't have to understand the thing you're writing about before you start. in.just need to dive i began talking with one person after another and overtime ubte into form a mental mosaic of the story that you want to write. at a certain point when you have the shape of the story or in this case of the battle in your mind, now you can beginre directing your efforts toward the people you have not yet smoked spoken to. you recognize that most of the battle was fought alongside marines in the city. but there is also a major fight outside the city fought by the seventh calvary, the troopers of whom and it was one.

at a certain point i realized i need to find the army guys who fought in this battle. that process proceeds in the new speak to the vietnamese soldiers and you begin to form a much richer idea of what actually happened. you keep working like that, in this case over five years. so you feel that you understand the thing you want to write about. >> how many trips to vietnam did you take? >> i took two to vietnam. each was to - 3 weeks long. but i hired a fellow there and's he was a former military officer much too young to have fought in the military war but was savvyih about finding vitamins, retired generals and how to deal with the government.

so he began working for me plumbing the archives and looking for historical documents and material memoirs. he began interviewing on my behalf so when i came for the first time to hue he had set up two and three interviews a day for solid two weeks. i would interview heavily and then come back with 40 or more interviews which i would have to have translated and transcribed. so it was a laborious process but if i had the opportunity which i did not have so much of black hawk down, did go to somalia and did the best i could to tell the somali side but it was difficult. mogadishu is a extremely violent place. vietnam was welcoming and has become welcoming to american travelers and journalists. i have the opportunity and felt like i needed to take advantage of it.

you keep chipping away at it like a thousand mile journey. >> did you get to a point in the book may be different than the other where you hit a wall and research and get a little frightened? no one. >> sometimes i would set out a story and say i have two or three days to work on this one. and then an editor who call and say we need the story now. i developed a habit early on as a reporter of sketching out for myself the structure of the story that i was going to writea if i had to read right now. . . something more, it would change everything because every time you interview someone new, your

understanding of the story is enriched and very frequently radically changed. so that practice of always having structure in my mind of what i'm going to write has carried out and invaluable to me in doing much longer projects. and i do, and i'm aware of reaching a point where i have to stop reporting if i'm ever going to write the thing. and so, generally, the progress is, in the beginning about 99% of my time is reporting and researching, and that somewhere in midpoint, i'm writing half the time and interviewing and researching half the time and in the end. 99% of the time is spent writing and i'm chasing >> >> with that release they

showed on the notes the north huge miscalculation the people throughout south vietnam would rise up to support the revolution that supports all through historyhatt up to so can you talked all about if there is any perspective to help clarify that? denied that is a good question.

so they were trapped with a violent independence communist movement on one side that would take t retribution against those that would be accepted theke saigon government and people with no education wanted tove be left alone. they would into live their lives. but they would execute or young men would be taken to serve or the south vietnamese troops or it would be equally brutal famously with the torching

of villages one of those big projects was to clean people o lot of those in ancestral villages into the safe villages which essentially was a compound surrounded by barbed wire period anyone who understood of the culture the very people you're trying to help so there were miscalculations by the south vietnamese.d peop but when they did get supported which didn't happen that engendered a great deal of vigor and contributed during the time

the of north vietnamese there was no shortage of ways to be killed. >> so to what extent did you rely on the of military history and how will get the quality?. >> i think they were valuable to provide the over arching framework and i'm thinking in particular the of all the volume of official history of the war of vietnam was very good.as obviously the people writing these are not approaching

the story in the with ibm that our reliable and american accounts. i think devoting to root the most serious battle fought but from the beginningsee this refuse to goosy this battleat pi up until his death he never really acknowledged. >> and they were working off of a good military intelligence. >> on the very first page here 31st cia reports i found in johnson's papers so deftly would have been seenre

by general westmoreland.small gr so oh a small group of americans with those vietnamese soldiers but that very day that there were nors i more than 500 enemy soldiers. and i might add it wasn't just a failure of the public relations problem that these young men were sent an order to attack sorry company of read was ordered to attack the citadel which is the big fortress that had thousandsth

of north vietnamese forces on the walls and so captivee meadows lost half of his company before he realized we are overwhelmed there isay no way we can proceed. also insisted after instanceand the denial at a higher levelal had severe consequences flora the young men thatat were fighting. >> there was a college course the history of the united states and vietnam. that nixon said who had aa

plan to end the warda never had a plan at all. it negative you mention it in your book that the strategy of attrition we would call -- kills 60 or 80,000 so do you have the idea why that information was not getting back to the white house or the zero leaders in the senate?. >> so they shun opposing points of view the other old theory the way things are supposed to me they try to impose that theory of the world. >> that doesn't happen anymore. anaughter]

not only do you to disregard reports from people on the ground with the company commanders in the though of the fight to say this isok what we are up against. it did not fit that theory that this was not possible. you, so if you read the terrific book the best and brightest ulysses over a period of a decade experts from the state department in that part of the world who spoke the language were systematically shunned andor kicked out those who were given power like robert mcnamara who had a plan to

win the war like the general who could dazzle you withpl the presentation moving from phase three to phase borer and it sounded logical and tell you collide with reality but that is far more complex and anybody that thinks they have a theoryd if ay the you should run away. >> in live in your visit to viet nam were they fear for zero and telling the story?. resees. the land area i of the most disappointed is that i did not find more. the reason is they lost the war after hanoi occupied the

whole country people that fought for the saigon regime were sent to prison and in many cases never came back. in fact, we had many vietnamese who one of the south vietnamese commanders that i did interview was imprisoned for eight yearsars be for the american forces that he worked with during though waller manage to get him released him brought to the united states. he could only point to a tiger for people who serve with him that will be willing to you talk to me because they feared retribution from a the hanoi regime.

>> this is more of a process question, i am curious when you write this with so much how do you finance this? [laughter] it not >> but if not for that book to you build a budget?. >> yes i remember telling mymy publisher talking very early on this will be very extensive if i do this you'll have to give me a lot of money and the publisher would not otherwise but this is a vice for writers reaching a certain point that i dismissed my agent that was routinely taking

15 percent of my contract i said i love you but i don't need you anymore. i need the money more than i need you. sorry to that 15% to finance my a travel. if i wanted to take the time to read a book i had five kids and a mortgage i just couldn't afford to write a book i need a contract thatto would cover my salary and my medical benefits that teradata up to a big chunk of money. in the beginning it was a struggle down after the movie think some of it has become easier. >> since we're on the

subject of adaptation when you sit down was there something you were waiting to hear him say that made you feel relieved?. >> michael saw a very early draft copy id rissole excited and the things that he liked the you were describing person by person not a traditional historical narrative telling you everything that happened the ron the ground and in a moment with the people who were trapped and that isis

what michael man loved about the story i had seen his movies he is an amazing talent with great motion pictures and tv shows and frankly can command a the resources that it takes we're sure he will want to go to vietnam with hundreds of factors as the enormous o undertaking and to pull that off it helps to be bid police got any real as it has a good chance of happening. >> every chronicle of the nonfiction account that they

deserve it is eight or 10 hours. >> when we started to map y out so takeout day yellow legal pad to bake a list of the scenes that actually had to be in the movie going on to the second page we pullback injuries said we have to make harder traces. i equally said by the we make a three hour film? y they recoiled in horror as the neck that is what the writer is shot. [laughter] but he says to me you'll understand why movies are two hours long? i said no. lon

because you have to go to the bathroom? we plan toay spend more than $100 million they can show a four times a day if it is fully in our movie they can show it twice a day so we cut our profits in half abnegate we're not making a three hour movie. >> two hours 20 minutes i knew exactly because as we went to all of the upper we are the list of the moneylookin mueller that a doctor in the garage when we had to get back. [laughter] it was behind the scenes. >> you have a plane to catchi w so adjust want to end with that in 2009 nothing would

ever replace language as the medium of thought. nothing will replace though well researched and say are you any less optimistic?. i >> id as much as a love story telling it could be a wonderful zero work of artance a with that diwans that link which gives you to go inside and somebody's head fur their motivations what you i can show in a film where you to do with a great deal of power and of fake anything will ever replace the written word i am confident

boasts a we as important 100 years from now as they are today. [applause] thank you for your time. [applause]lause]. >> auditor [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [applause]tional p >> good morning welcome to the national press club the columnist once said