the decision made at that moment were not the ones she would've made. they with they were the choicesa changed person, a new celtic you could call the self many things, transformation, metamorphosis, falsity, betrayal. i call it an education. >> host: thank you so much try to my pleasure. >> host: thank you for writing this exceptional book. .. from the american revolution

to the korean war. >> welcome to book tv on c-span2, this hour is our fiction additional in-depth. all year long we've invited fiction authors on to talk about their books and work. david ignatius was our first guest in january, a washington post columnist and thriller writer. colson whitehead the past month and this month we are pleased to be joined by jeff shaara, from military historical fiction author. jeff shaara is the author of books that range from the american revolution to the korean war and we're going to talk about all those in just a minute but we're going to start mister shaara with a facebook comment that a viewer has and this is jason the who has posted on our facebook page, what exactly is historical fiction? >> guest: i've had this

conversation with other authors. typically historical fiction is you go to a real place with fictional characters. all quiet on the western front, the red badge of courage. it's an accurate historical section but the people are made up. that's a little different form what i do because i take you tothese places with a lot of the real people . significant historical figures, names you know. george washington, blackjack purging, dwight eisenhower but it's fiction by definition because i'm putting words in their mouth. my job is to tell you a story and a way to do that is not just do it like a textbook would, names, places, facts and figures that put you into the heads of the characters and tell you the story the way they would tell it. by definition that has to be called fiction. your hearing dialogue, your hearing words in their mouths and part of that is drawn

from historical record but then you have to fill in the blanks and that's my job is to fill in the blanks by definition that has to be called fiction. if i've done my research , the history is absolutely accurate and that's my job, to tell you the story accurately. don't play games with history. lots of writers who write historical fiction do exactly that, they can do whatever they want. there are a number of writers who write alternative history where the south winds, the germans wind in world war i, there are all kinds of books like this. it's fun to do that. i don't do that. my job is to make it as accurate and at the same time make it a good story. >> would you consider yourself a historian? >> no. i don't have any academic historian would look at me and say you're not a historian, you don't have the credentials. you might agree from florida state is in criminology, it had nothing to do with

history and to me that's an advantage because i'm not coming to you for example, i didn't have a professor at florida state kelly who robert e lee is or who benjamin franklin is so i'm not carrying those lessons with me while i'm writing the stories. i have to start from scratch and starting from scratch, you back back to the words and characters and to me that's much more interesting, a much more fresh than reciting something i might have learned in school years ago. now, but not an insult to academic historians. they serve a huge purpose in our culture but what i do is verydifferent . >> do you use a lot of original sources? >> sources are the key to the research. it's my job to go back and modern biography, modern history books don't do me any good and biographers object to this but a modern biography, you are getting the biographers take on whose character it is and they argue with that with you but if you take 50 different

biographies of abraham lincoln are going to get the different versions of abraham lincoln. i'd rather go back and hear the words. >> so all my research, whenever possible , original course material. diaries, memoirs, letters. if i'm going to get into the head of the character, ineed to get to know the character . and that's a personal thing. so very definitely the resorts is as personal as i can makeit . >> you do use a lot of well-known figures. toward washington, etc. but what about lucy stenson from vicksburg or the private riley from frozen hours, the korean war.are those people or are they made up? >> they are composites generally. it's very rare to find a single example of a g.i. . to find a g.i. was everywhere i need him to be to tell the story. that's not saying that i make it all off but typically i will start with a real figure

and then as i'm doing the research, i find out more information, more events and i felt pomposity the events into this one character so that the character can still tell you the whole story. everything happened, it's all accurate, just maybe not to this one guy or lucy spence is an excellent example. i love the character. this is in the siege of vicksburg with the union army. >> host: chain of thunder when the union army is seeking vicksburg. >> guest: the people in vicksburg, they are trapped along with the confederate army . that's really the first time i had a significant civilian character you are seeing a point of view that's very different from the typical soldier or thegeneral . he's 19 years old and she learns a lot about war and about the gruesome this about what happens to people as well as sacrifices that civilians make. that is a very different take

so i have four diaries from four different women at vicksburg who were there, would love it. to me, that's a treasure and that's how thecharacter of lucy spence comes about . >> before we get into your book, i want to talk about some of the themes that i picked up reading through your material and number one, there's this recurring character and it might be robert e lee in this war and that war or winfield scott. >> i love winfield scott. most people have never heard of winfield scott which is a tragedy. this is the man in first of all winfield scott was born in 1788, he's been around a while. in the war of 1812 he's a brigadier general and he almost starts the war of 1812 and 1807. the arrest a couple british people who are not where they

are supposed to be and it causes a big diplomatic state and they have to quiet down but the british are really upset but there's a panic about scott. but by the 1840s, he's commanding general of the united states army. he'sthe grand old man of the army and when the mexican war begins, is the leader of our troops in the field . what that means for history isthat who those troops in the field are. all these young lieutenants out of west point are all the names you know. ulysses grant , thomas jonathan jackson long before he was stonewalled. winfield hancock, lewis armistead, george pickett, james longstreet, on and on and then one in particular is robert e lee , casting robert e lee of engineers in a blue uniform and its winfield scott who teaches lee how to be a soldier. that is a fun story to write because it's a story nobody knows. >> host: another theme that i picked up, lots of politics in there. >> i really don't like politics. i am not political in the

sense that, i've had people say to me it bothers me. people say it's sort of a nudge nudge, wink wink, are you really talking about today when you talk about whoever? dwight eisenhower or somebody. no, not at all. yes, in every war there is politics. who makes the war?the politicians. who fights the war? the people fighting it have little to say about it but the mexican war is a perfect example. winfield scott perfectly cut himself off with any communication with washington. he and the president pulled can't stand each other so scott wants nothing to do with it. he's not going to take his orders from washington so he cuts off all communication, march is in and could care less what anybody in washington is saying. it's a little harder to get away from that now that's as a little bit of a third dimension to the story you don't usually get from a history book.

>> host: from the american revolution to the korean war, the role of washington dc. >> guest: first of all, of whose it named after? george washington and every school child learns george washington is the father of his country. okay, that sounds good but what does that really mean? i know what it means and i have more respect for george washington as a leader, a commander of troops and then as president than probably any character i don't with and all the clichcs apply. there's a reason he's on the dollar bill and i have enormous respect for this man and of course the washingtons but beyond that, you could go through the mexican war and washington, all i just had about president pulled is trying to run the showfrom washington but that doesn't work . by the time of the civil war, obviously it's washington, is congress that divides the senators representatives.

they leave, they go to montgomery and richmond to create the confederacy. and washington is actually because it's on the border in the civil war. the first battle of the civil war, manassas, it's right across the potomac river and also right across the potomac river isarlington . today, this big sort of pillared house at arlington cemetery, that was robert e lee's home.he knows that, he can see itwhen he's in the capital . washington is right smack in the middle of how when the civil war begins and all the way down the line. when you get world war i, world war ii, you've got people like george marshall here in world war ii and eisenhower in europe . you've got that break and of course the communication is a lot better. you get to the 20thcentury, washington can play a librarian role in what's going on and they could in

the 19th century . >>another theme, behind military success are a lot of failures . >>. >> failure, it's interesting though. there are different reasons for failure. there's incompetence and that's certainly one of them. ego, narcissism. all of these terrible counter traits and it's not just confined to the military. that's everywhere in our culture. when you're looking at some of these characters, some of the generals and i'll go back to the civil war. when you have people like ulysses grant and william sherman and their confederates certainly and we would be among those, but then you got the braxton bragg's and the phil sheridan's, men whose ego and whose personality gets in the way of them doing their job and it creates bad things. unfortunately a war, there are bad things, men died and often men dieduselessly . and that's a reality, that's an unpleasant part of the story but it is a part of the

story. >> doesn't wear on you writing about death and war and a tragedy? >> there indefinitely and i will say we have again we're talking about specifics but my last book, the frozen hours about the reservoir and the marines, it's not a happy story. and i thought a number of veterans because the advantage of that story is there are living veterans for me to and i cansee it in their faces, and their words, the way they talk to me . tragedy, what they went through the five years later is still a part of who they are. and whether it's frostbite on their fingers or simply the memories of the guy next to them, what happened to him, that as i was writing the frozen hours, got to the point where the emotion of it was very, very difficult. it is tough. i'm not a blood and guts guy. i don't want those kind of

movies and so forth but it's a part of the story and i try not make the story blood and guts because nobody really wants to read page after page of and there has to be. there has to be drama of a different kind. the laughter is such an important part of it. but still, by the end of the day, by the time i finish that book i was worn out. emotionally.i had to get away from it. i took a break or six months where i get you anything. i had to separate myself from it and obviously we can talk about this later, but i'm working on now is much less of a war story and i'm working on the cuban missile crisis. i justneeded something different . and i think it took more of a toll on me than i ever would have expected . >>. >> host: jeff shaara, is there a link between the winter at valley forge and frozen hours? >> yes. and interestingly, one of the unfortunate links between the two is that the men in the

field, these four guys who were suffering, in the 1770s one would think it all gets logically that they're not equipped very well. they don't have the right clothes, good shoes and certainly don't have electricity to keepthemselves warm . their warming their hands by a fire . and in korea in 1950, it's the same situation. these men are giving woefully, their woefully underequipped with winter clothing. there are given boots that make their feet sweat so what happens when your feet sweat? you stop marching and it's 30 below zero? they freeze. the ice forms inside your shoes. all the things that happen, the gloves they are given are these thin wall things and the problem was gloves when you're fighting, they cut the fingertips off the gloves. all of that, it's just adds up to, they are just woefully

underprepared for the kind of conditions they run into just like valley forge. >> and you find that the so-called gentlemen's rules of war change? >> definitely. that probably happened more in the civil war first and then world war i and then the first for a separate reason but in the civil war, a lot of people don't realize all the people who graduate west point, all the officers and of course there are officers on both sides, north and south, all the textbooks up to that point west point were teaching tactics on the pulley on. they were in french. one of the books at west point is you learn french so you're learning napoleon which by the 1860s are 6070 years old.and yet that's all they know. so the officers are telling their men this is, you line up in a straight my mind shoulder to shoulder and you walk into the guns of the enemy cause in napoleon's

day, theguns were very good . by the 1860s, the guns were a lot better. the artillery is a lot better. you have a rifle musket instead of this ball that can go in any direction so the slaughter increases exponentially. that also happens in world war i. when world war i breaks out, the french off into battle on horseback where the horses were adorned with all these ribbons and flags and they're going off because it's the old way. it's glory way. they go off in 1914, the germans have, with machine guns. machine guns and horses don't go together. and it very quickly, the french and everyone else learns that you have to do this a very different way. so there's a lot of tragedy unfortunately, men die when you're dealing with changes, when the technology gets better than the tactics.>> host: it's one fact about the

war that there are rights about the american revolution, 1775 or 1783. us deaths, 4435 a cost in today's dollars of about 2.4 billion.the mexican war, 1846 to 1848, 13,000 deaths. 2.4 million again. the civil war, four years of that, about 500,000 deaths were roughly 80 billion in cost area world war i, us was in it for one year, lost 116,000+ soldiers at a cost of 334 billion. world war ii, for years that the us was involved, 400,000+ americans, 4.1 trillion with ap. the korean war,three years of that, 64,000 americans lost , $341 billion.

starting with the american revolution. you've written a couple books about that. rise to rebellion and the glorious cause. say a little bit about general cornwallis, that he became one of your primary . >> what we learn in school is that the one lesson you get on the american revolution is washington defeats cornwallis and yorktown. that's not the way it happened. yes, washington in the french defeat cornwallis at yorktown but that they relinquished command of the british army. he's got two people above him, lord howell and henry clinton who were at new york's city at that time and cornwallis is on his own down there in virginia. and he's an interesting character because he's a very good man and he's a very good military commander. and history doesn't treat

him, he treats them like is a loser. i'm sorry, he's a great deal more than that and had he been in command of the british when washington was facing off against the british in manhattan, brooklyn, manhattan and of course the famous crossing of the delaware river at trenton, had cornwallis been in charge, i suspect it would have been a very different outcome . again, he was a very competentgeneral . the problem for him just like the problem with the other people i've written about, the people above him. the people telling them what to do and they were not as good . another part of this and this touches on what i said before about what it is that i do that's different than writing a history book, cornwallis is a man of enormous personal tragedy. his wife diesduring the war. he goes back to england .

he has a brief meeting with king george the third and comes away from that feeling like we have a problem here. george iii is not quite right . but his wife dies and this is a romance. this man is in love with his wife and he has to go back to the colonies still and to fight the war carrying that load with him . again, it's the three dimensions. who is this man,why is he interesting? he's interesting because he's a human being and that makes the story . >> host: jeff shaara, another facebook comment by john adams and he says i started reading your book on the american revolution and when i got to the part about george washington from long island, i stopped right there because i was certain that the americans were actually going to lose. >> guest: there was a point

where george washington thought the americans were going to lose. what people don't realize about washington is early on, helost almost every battle he was in . the colonists get chased out of the battle of brooklyn, first of all. it's known today as brooklyn new york. the colonists got chased into manhattan by the british, cornwallis among them and then they get chased and as you know, new york city today you have sort of the southern part of manhattan island in what is today like 33, first avenue. that part of the island in upper washington, he gets chased all the way up to what we know today as harlan and well off to the north, then he gets chased all across the hudson river and then gets chased all the way across new jersey and escapes into pennsylvania across the delaware river. that's not a very good beginning for someone trying to find a war. all he's done is go backwards. then, christmas, things change very definitely when washington re-crosses, it's been crossed, re-crosses the

delaware river. surprises the hessian troops at trenton in an extraordinary victory. after that there's the battle of princeton which washington also wins and the british wake up to the fact that this is not just a bunch of farmers. this is not unraveled that we are going to sweep away. we may have a war on our hands. that's washington, he's the one who did that so it's a more complicated story than what we learned in high school. >> you think the outcome could have been different had washington not re-crossed the delaware? >> the reason is not necessarily washington himself, it's the menfighting underneath him. these are militia. they haven't been paid. there's no money to pay them. they want to go home . they got , when the winner passes the farms are needing to be work and their families are home and his army really says you know, we're not doing too well here. i think i need to go away. washington does a speech that washington gets to his troops

and saves his army. a lot of them say you know what, will stick this out for a while and then in philadelphia, it's robert morris whose out of the banker of the continental army puts together, they put together acts of everything they can find that relates to money. either recordings are in the spanish over coins, pieces of silver, flatware, cups, anything that has value and they send versus lady with this stuff up to washington's army we can distribute this to his village. i'm doing the best i can hear. that saves the army. and i think his passion for the cause and his desperate need for these people to stick with him change his historybecause they do stick with him . >> host: he didn't really have a central authority he was reporting back to. >> guest: he had the continental congress and as such they are not much of a

central authority anyway. after the declaration of independence is signed in 1776, they do unite or behind the cause and it's funny, a lot of people don't realize the colonists do not declare war on king george. king george declares war on the colonists. when we signed the declaration, king george hears about this and says they're in rebellion, therein a state of rebellion . we need to put down this rebellion. the colonists had no idea how to fight a war. washington, the reason they choose washington was a virginian living in the continentalcongress, literally sitting in a corner of the room , he's a shy man. he is does not want to take authority but he's in uniform . in a british uniform, in the virginia militia but under the authority of the british army but he's in uniform.

they say this guys in uniform, maybe you know something about how to fight a war, maybe you know something about organizing an army. he gets to boston , nobody in boston, they go is this guy? washington has one thing going for him besides his personality. he's a big man, physically and big man. he carries the stature of someone in authority people start paying attention to this. he gets to organize officers and people who are local to boston to know their own people. that's the administrative part of washington, that people take for granted.he organizes an army of people who care less about virginia and who he is and it works. and i think you can probably tell by the way i'm talking about this, i get excited tellingme stories because it's fun to get into this stuff. it's not dry history and i don't have to make it up . the real story is fascinating. >> your book gone for

soldiers. where have all the flowers gone? where have all the young men gone, gone for the soldiers. it was popularduring the vietnam war . >> guest: earlier, when i was a child and my father was a big kingston trio fan. people have no idea who the kingston trio is area and that was one of the big hit songs, where have all the flowers gone. that stuckwith me and yes, evidently as we got into vietnam , the sadness of that whole song. i encourage anybody to download it on the line. the essence of that song, where have all the flowers gone. the end, it's big on the graveyards. the graveyard become flowers and all the way through the process, it's a very sad song but the point is in 1846, all these young men right out of west point were clueless about life, about war, and so they go off to the soldiers and they learn that war is

not romance and war is not glory and many died. and that lesson carries 13 years later in the civil war begins and now they are commanders. so those lessons they with them. >> you're still writing about the war of 1812. >> i had with my publisher about that.>> the response i get from him because a lot of people have asked about 1812. it was logical to go from the american revolution to 1812 but my publisher said at the time it's not enough. i don't necessarily agree with that. the war of 1812 was three stories. it's the niagara campaign, winfield scott and we talked about him before. niagara, detroit, that whole area and then you've got washington and baltimore, the burning of washington. francis scott key at fort mchenry and then you've got

the battle of new orleans. and the jackson so there's really three separate stories which would make a wonderful book in three parts area they would go along with that at the end of the day, my contract in new york , they said there's not much towrite . >> host: the mexican-american war, wasn't downplayed because of 13 years later? >>. >> guest: certainly. a lot of people confuse the mexican war with the alamo and people think of the period prior to the civil war and i got questions about that. gee, are you going to write updated project? >> know,next 10 years earlier and it's an entirely different story and also , one parallel was i didn't set out an agenda and i found out it's an enormous parallel between the mexican war and the vietnam war because it was not popular. and these young men come home from there war in 1848 and they are sort of expecting to

be welcomed as heroes with parades and so forth and no, they're coming home to newspaper stories talking about how they are butchers or how we have just abused the government of mexico and what people don't realize about the mexican war, the map of the united states as we know it today, california, the rocky mountain states, arizona and new mexico, texas , they all became part of our territory because of the mexican war. most of that territory was mexico. and we put it in the guilt of thecongress over that and i love this , they wrote them a check. the bill that passed in congress said we've won the war and we took all this land, let's pay them money to we did. the number was something like $15 million, we wrote the check to the government of mexico to s wage all the guilt for taking the land but the unpopularity of that war andthey're talking about politicians . it was a definite divide in washington over pro and anti-what we were doing in mexico. colonialism, conquering of a

downtrodden people, all this stuff and really it's affected the soldiers. they deserved better and they came home and i know people from the vietnam era, my era who were spit on when they got off the planesat lax . it's a lot of the same sentiment. i didn't expect to find it. >> host: manifest destiny. >> guest: manifest destiny has played a role. i'm working on the cuban missile crisis, same with manifestdestiny. cuba said we should be able to dictate what happened in cuba. manifest destiny, the monroe doctrine.this north american , they said we can do anything we want to. and by the time of the mexican war and the civil war broke down completely apart, the notion that well, wait a minute. maybe just because we say so does it mean it's true. >>.

>> host: this is book tv on c-span2, our special fiction addition of in-depth and we are pleased that military historical novelist jeff shaara is our guest for the next 2 and a half hours. if you would like to contact us or have a question for mister shaara, the numbers are 202-748-8200. if you live in the eastern time zone, some for a 201, or you can also make comments by a social media or on facebook or twitter and we are on instagram. at tv is the best place to find us. and finally, you can send an email to book tv at c-span.org. those are the ways to contact us and you will be able to see that all the information on the screen in just a minute. very quickly, i want to give you a taste of mister

shaara's books and what they are about. gods and generals was his first one which was turned into a movie. this is a prequel through his father michael's book killer angels and then the sequel to killer angels came out in 1998 and that's the last measure, again, about the civil war. gone for soldiers, mexican-american war, life through the rebellion, the american revolution and then the glorious cause is also about the american revolution and we move on to world war i with through the last man. then world war ii, there are fourbooks about world war ii. the rising tide . no less than victory and the final storm which came out in 2011 . but blaze of glory came out in 2012, that's about the civil war by jeff shaara,

chain of thunder about the civil war concentrating on vicksburg. the smoke is gone in 2014, chattanooga and tecumseh, william tecumseh sherman. the civil war again and the further hours, his most recent came out last year which is about korea. what is it about the civil war and jeff shaara and your father? >> guest: you answer the question. it's about my father michael shaara. what he did, in 1974, first of all, backup 10years. we went to gettysburg and we were tourists . >> host: you were raised in tallahassee. >> guest: my father was teaching at florida state and my father had been a writer all his young life, sci-fi, short stories and interesting history, not an interesting history at all. we went to gettysburg at 12 years old and i'm dating myself, there was old eight millimeter film of me climbing on cannons because

that's what 12-year-old do. nothing happened my father there. he was a storyteller, he was a master and he knew a good story when he saw one and he started doing research on gettysburg and he became obsessed with telling that story. it took him seven years to get the manuscript together for the killer angels and the reason for that is he had to teach to make a living. he could never make a living from his writing which is a sad statement so he was teaching during the day, riding at night and he put the manuscript together. it was turned down by 15 publishers in new york and finally the date of the k companies, this minuscule publisher picked it up. the advance was $3500 and my father was thrilled. here's his book coming out, the killer angels comes out in 1974 and nobody cares. and of the vietnam war, nobody in this country wanted to read a book about generals.

it was about as out of fashion a subject and then years later, this magnificent thing happens. a telegram comes to my father's house, congratulations, the killer angels has been awarded the pulitzer prize for fiction. no one was more surprised in my father but still, a writer with the pulitzer prize, he has the right to believe his ship has come in.it was never a bestseller, even with the pulitzer it was never a bestseller. it was a crushing disappointment to him area one question, what other historical works that he right? none. there was no audience.he wrote a baseball story, the love of the game and posner made into a film. again, after my father's death but he had no interest at all in going back to the civil war. well, 1988 he died and he was only 15 years old, died in his sleep and five years after that, ted turner took the money and the film gettysburg based on the

killer angels is released. the book becomes a number one bestseller 19 years after it was published. i don't know if that's ever happened before, five years after my father's death. he had no idea what he left behind. the idea for doing a prequel and a sql came from ted turner. the movie gettysburg was enormously successful, especially when it aired on tnt and ted wanted to do more films and came to me and said wouldn't it be great to take the killer angels before and after, the same characters because it wasabout a film . i had never written anything before. that's not false modesty. i was a dealer in rare coins and precious metals in tampa. i thought about it and said something i like to try to do in the film director, we had this conversation . if what i come up with stinks, i'll do the research, put a story together to be

adapted . if it's lousy, we will throw it away. you don't have to worry about it. that's why there was no fear because people ask me how did you know how to write a book? i had no idea but i knew the research by father had done. getting into the heads so i knew i would do that. i'm the businessman in the family and representing my father's estate in new york, killer angels is now a number one bestseller so the people at random house will take my phone call so i'm talking to the publisher and she says what is this that you are doing. i said i'm working on the prequel called gods and generals by the way, was my father's original title to the killer angels. and for some reason he rejected itbut i thought about that, about halfway through it's a perfect title for what i'm trying to create . so the publisher said published the manuscript. okay. i fit in the manuscript, this is 1995. the phone call i got back was

we don't care if it's a movie, we like the book. we think you're a writer, here's the contract. my whole life changed with that. and gods and generals comes out. debuts on the bestseller list . i'm under no illusions that the great american author has arrived. i knew people wanted more of the killer angels so the critics got me slack. readers copy slack, i'm touring everywhere. people are telling me it's a good drive. and it's like it's competition. and while gods and generals stays on the bestseller list for 15 weeks and then the publisher wants the sql. now i'm scared out of my mind. because i'm wondering am i one wonder? that music clichc. now there are expectations now there's pressure. write another book . i'm working on the sql, the last full measure. can years old. i became known in among my

editors started feeling random house started fielding questions from people, he's the civil war died out. so sharing this idea, shorten idea and so forth. and my editor sort of put that aside but no, you're a good storyteller. it's a really nice thing here but then it's like okay, we get the civil war. we finished the trilogy around killer angels, now what? i did the mexican war story because the cherry characters are so similar. and it's almost a prequel. but exactly, a prequel to the people and then the american revolution and the publisher was like, american revolution? who cares. this is what the publisher said and i'm quoting this. this is not me saying this. there are sexy wars and there are unsexy wars. the civil war is sexy. world war ii is sexy. world war i is not, the american revolution is not. my response was is and that my job, to make it sexy?

and i hate that term. but okay, it's a good story, that's my job to tell a good story so i left the civil war and thought i was done with that. >> 2011, the sauce was centennial of the civil war comes around, hundred 50th anniversary and all the letters i had gotten from people in mississippi and tennessee who said you know, we're sort of tired of hearing about robert e lee in virginia and it was like, that's the whole war. talk about everything else, what about what happens with along the mississippi river? i went and started looking at that and realize there's a story here. and i really would like to tell. again, it's the characters, it's the people. i love sherman. these the theme and the connecting bring you all horrible books. and the battle of shiloh, i've never been there and south-central tennessee

really sort of in the middle of nowhere . it was a fascinating place to go because it's 95 percent original. i got excited about that so the story , blaze of glory is about shiloh and then the idea with the sauce was centennial is to have a book come out in the year, the hundred 50th anniversary of the event so2012 , 1862, shiloh. 2013 you have vicksburg, the seas of vicksburg which by the way, is going on at the same time that the battle of gettysburg. so it's sort of, i'm paralleling. exactly. he's in command at vicksburg, is one of his finest hours and again, that story is so overshadowed by what happens in gettysburg. one reason is there getting so big compared to dc, philadelphia, what we would call the media centers of the day.

vicksburg, again it's in the middle of nowhere on the mississippi river and i made the argument, what happens in vicksburg is more important than what happened at gettysburg. i live in gettysburg, i have to be careful when i say that . so the war, the conquest of the mississippi river by the union changes everything. >> is a great story. and from there going to chattanooga, lookout mountain and then sherman's march, finishing that , it's just seemed to me to be important to tell. bob and generals, killer angels, that's an easy but there's more to the story and so i got very excited about that. i'm very happy about that but now, that being said, i think that's all i can do on the civil war and i have people write me an essay there's key rich, there's what happens in the trans-mississippi, there's a bunch of things that happen. i'm kind of on to other things right now.

i've done seven books with those characters and i need to focus on something a little bit different, at least for now. >> host: jeff shaara, how valuable were the newspapers at the time to your research and were you able to get a hold of sherman's diaries or inner thoughts? >> that's a separate question. the newspapers at the time were not all that valuable because we, one of the great book in place we hear every day is bias in the media. no, you have no idea. you have newspapers during the presidential election of 1860, when lincoln is running you have papers taking sides not just taking sides, suddenly and discreetly but blatantly taking sides and so when you're reading a newspaper, you can tell where this paper is whether it's in charleston or richmond compared to whether it's in philadelphia or new york just

by the tone of the writing. so actually, research wise, it's not that useful. it's much better and you mentioned sherman's diary, his old memoir. i have his letters, it's a book about all sherman's letters writing from his wife to his friends. he's telling you what he really thinks. he doesn't know hundred 50 years later somebody like me is going to be reading his letters and that has helped all the way through every book i've done is those collections of letters and diaries. he was writing a diary, who were you writing to? your writing to yourself and again, you don't think somebody like me is ever going to read that so you are honest and that honesty is what cuts through a lot of the myth, a lot of the sort of pr, the public relations part of it and to get what these people really thought and sherman is not the most attractive guy personally. some of his thoughts are pretty objectionable.

but he won the war and that's an interesting combination for me to deal with. >> here's what i got about one thing i got about william sherman. >> is a bowl of insecurity. is that a fair assessment? >> definitely. and i think my today's definition, sherman is a manic-depressive. on the one hand he's a bowl in a china shop. on the other hand he collapses into self-doubt and handwringing. one newspaper in cincinnati labeled him as insane. they used the word. no, i don't think he's insane but he has a problem and he definitely , the insecurity. he is first great battle, his first combat experience in the civil war is world war i. it's a disaster to him. histroops collapsed, he collapses, mad scramble retreat . and that, he carries that

around with him so after that, anybody who runs into the enemy, he blows up their numbers. it's a familiar theme if you know george and carolyn. and he's inflating the numbers of those guys over there, there's a lot more than you think and sherman areas that in almost a neurotic kind of way. and he's afraid. when he gets into battle, even after shiloh and the things go well for him, every now and then there's that moment when the old ghost combat. and anyone who has mental issues, that would relate to this, my father had similar issues to this and emotion but all of a sudden it's the fear comes in and it can paralyze you. that happens to him a couple times and again, he's human. he's not a marble statue and that's my job, to tell you that story but what he accomplishes historically is magnificent for what he goes through along the way is why it's his story.

>> host: the phone numbers are back up on the screen. through our social media addresses as well and we're going to begin with a call from donald. new york city. donald, you're on with author jeff shaara. >> donald, you with us? >> good afternoon. >> i should like to know if war and peace or kenneth roberts and also if you might know the march 1970 about the wheel that was published in november, that tells the story of the russian revolution and in many ways, the cliffs did that and were ambitious at that fact, and again, i should like to know if kenneth roberts or the

author of war and peace could share any incidents and if you are familiar with the red wheel and what you mightsay to them , on these attempts. >> host: we appreciate that call. >> guest: i'm not familiar with the latest on the red wheel, however that's fascinating. i have not read it but i'm familiar with the theories. war and peace, when you start talking about other people who write storable fiction, it surprises people to hear because i get asked a lot of questions about different, there's a wpd griffin and a bunch of people who do what i do and did it first. i don't read them. there's a reason why. i am scared to death of being accused of plagiarism. and if i, i don't read novels. if i pick up your novel and a

line of dialogue for some phrase sticks in my head, and later on comes out entirely by accident in my own book, that if your definition of plagiarism and an accusation like that could cost me my career. >> so to read how someone else calls a story, whether it's a story i want to tell or just something entirely different, a military story on war and peace, that doesn't do me any good. i don't want to know how somebody else tells the same story. because i don't want to copy. i don't ever want to be accused of copying somebody . so i know that sounds strange that i don't read other people's works of fiction. but that's why, because i don't want to ever be accused of rippingsomebody off . or even more importantly legally, of supporting someone or using a line of dialogue because that literally could cost me my career.

>> host: we've got this beautiful graphics up on the wall . >> guest: i work with my editor and theidea is to, we started early on in this goes back to the killer angels even , going at the style that my father uses. he uses painting. because things are novels, they use a photograph on the cover for the face of there is george washington or dwight eisenhower or whoever it might be, if you use an actual photograph, it makes them look like it's atextbook or nonfiction so theidea to use a painting gives it the whole field of the book a little more lyrical sense . i love this , the wave which is the second of my world war ii books on normandy, you look at the image on the cover of that book, it's a famous photograph in the library of congress that, i

can't tell you how many books have used that as cover art. well, the art department at random house is wonderful. they took that photograph and made it into a painting so it looks like a painting. and no, i was never allowing any of my books you use somebody else's cover design without me having approval on that, very definitely. >> host: it's fun to see how your name has grown in size over the years . >> i appreciate it, that's a very nice thing. it was wise and my first book on theamerican revolution because up until that point, the title of the book is at the top and my name is down near the bottom . suddenly my name is at the top and the cover of the book is down below. that was ashock . oh, i guess the way that's the way it works when random house has decided to do

things differently. i get a kick out of that. >> host: james in india atlantic florida, you are on the with author jeff shaara. >> caller: two things, number one, we won the revolutionary war, the british troops supposedly lay down their arms and the second thing is, what happened to all those thousands of british troops? were they prisoners of war or did they go back to england or whatever became of them? >> guest: second question first because the first question is a little more dramatic and i'd like to talk about that. the british, you have to different kinds of troops the british basically went back to england, they did have a lot of say-so in what they really do, they are often telling them it off and do what you want to do and the hessians on the other hand, those people stayed here. a lot of the german troops, they went out actually west.

they set, settled eventually in what is wisconsin, an enormous german population, some of that came from the hessians who like to hear. the weather was better maybe. and the conditions werebetter so a lot of them stayed here but by and large the british went back to england . now, when the british troops laid down their arms to, this is cornwallis in yorktown and again, it's not the end of the war but it's an enormous victory for washington. i love the scene in which he calls the french, general rochambeau is beside washington. the french are in these perfect white uniforms which seems odd but they are white with various accoutrements. rochambeau is magnificent with his stuff on him. when cornwallis is man and not cornwallis himself, wallace feigns illness which,

he would not surrender. he sends his portal out with his sword to surrender his troops and the music playing turns upside down, that's pretty well documented that that's accurate but the scene when this man comes out and marches out and here's the french troops on one side and this drive a bunch of continentals on the other side, this guy comes out and he's looking forward to get the sword too.he sees rochambeau with the grandeur and he walks up with the sword and rochambeau says no, that guy over there. and he sends it to washington and the colonel of course does his job. that moment, i get emotional talkingabout it which may sound silly but that's one of the great moments in the history of this country , when the french and the british at the same moment recognize who's in charge. i love that. i wrote that scene in the

glorious fog and i love that moment. >> host: next call comes from john in lowell new york. >> caller: thank you for taking the call. i'd like to put my question in context, i'd like to start with a statement. and by definition, when we read history we always read in retrospect. we have the assumption that what happened wasinevitable . when you really know that there's so many twists and turns that had, for instance, lincoln had he gone in one direction we had a completely different result so i'm asking you as one who writes about factual mattersbut as a novelist , why does lincoln when this southern states wanted to secede, why did he permit them to secede?over

the next four years,given what we know about the industrial power of the north , what we know about the south that was so dependent upon slavery, it was a one crop culture, basically. what based upon your knowledge of history and your imagination would bring you to think what might have happened rather than four years of war and almost 600,000 deaths, what could have happened? the south have sustain itself against this great power, industrial power of the north? >> i think it's possible the south could have sustain itself but not on its own. the south would have had to rely on basically a state of serious hostility between north and south. the south was relying on england, france, the rest of europe . that was the marketplace. and eventually tobacco as well. so the south might have

survived but then also there were people in england who saw the south as here's our opportunity to get our colonies back. whether it's virginia, the carolinas, georgia,, home. we will embrace you again. we are in actual trading partner. we have this bald based on economy and the question is an interesting one because we know what would have happened. the motion of four years, let's throw out the window because there was no war and would lincoln have been assassinated? number would lincoln have won reelection? probably not so that changes everything. that changes the history of the world and of course you're probably right that the northeast would have survived on some level because they have the money. they had the industrial capability, but it raises an interesting question about what would have happened in the south. i've done this a few times, the south had they not become reddish colonies again, very likely they would have become

what we know as europe because you had all the southern states that wanted their own independence. you might have had the republic of south carolina or the grand duchy of mississippi or, they may again, what happens then? you get confidence between mississippi and alabama or conflicts between north and south carolina. the whole world would be an entirely different place today but i want to mention something about the first part of your question. because you thought about foregone conclusions. i love, my job is to avoid that at all costs and the best example i can give you of that is normandie. the d-day invasion. i write the chapter from dwight eisenhower's point of view. eisenhower doesn't hear anything. there's nothing for hours after the invasion has taken place.

you think he's not going mad with that? in his pocket is a letter that he has written prepared to give to read to the newspapers accepting full responsibility for the disastrous defeat at normandy. ike has no idea. now, we know what happened. it started the end of the war for the germans. >> .. he comes back and -- >> i was nervous. it is something i learned from my father. he gives you both sides. north and south. there are no bad guys. not john wayne and the guys in

the black hats. going back to the revolution, you had the first book it is wallace and in the second buffed -- and that is okay. world war i, the red baron. when you get to world war ii, it changes everything. because the bad guys are the bad guys. and when i found out to my beloved is not -- is not a bad guy, not a nazi. he never drank enough -- he never joined the nazi party. he hates politics. he comes and he meets with hitler and realizes this, we cannot win doing what he is doing. and he makes him human. he is an outstanding officer. an outstanding soldier.

i would rather have given the material he wanted in manpower he wanted first in north africa where he is up against the british and then us, even more. it changed everything. but hitler treated him like a stepchild. and -- hitler has all of this research and focus on defeating the russians. and while in north africa tempo then he make such account of himself they take him whence all of the campaigns are finished they put in a minute -- they put him in a place called normandy. so the german in command of the german forces at normandy, he was a natural fit to come back

in the next book. i love the character because again, i nervous about the political indication the same respect he was a good man. i has not and nancy. and he is not, yes, he fights in the german army. yes, he answers to hitler. but he is not that shay and he is not like one of those minions around hitler. he is a good soldier. it makes for a really good character. and by the way, his wife's 50th birthday is june 6, 1944. he was home. he is not there when the allies invaded. how might history have changed? >> seems to be one of the themes in your book. relationships. you have all of these.

>> it is the story. again, it is not about facts and figures.the characters are the first part, for me. that is the story i'm going to tell.i'm not going to tell you this is really interesting because this regimen lost so many men. okay, that is a piece of history but that is not what draws me to the story. what draws me to the story is the people. i mean we mentioned a couple tandems that we can talk about at length. but that's what is fun for me. it has to be fun for me. if it is not fun for me and i don't get passionate about the story, you will not want to read it. it starts with the personalities. >> let's hear from vic in california. >> yes, hello. i am curious. i want to have you ever thought about writing a book about -- i just think that it is such an

incredible story of an american defeat and wondered why you have not taken that on as a topic. >> thank you, sir. >> that is a very good question. hopefully i have a good answer. when i was doing world war ii i started doing the trilogy of it could easily have been set in the pacific. i chose europe, i like the characters and i like eisenhower. i did the trilogy, i began to hear the marines. the marines were not happy with my trilogy in europe. i started getting emails, what is this europe stuff? we are not in europe. yes, there is this other world halfway around the world. so i call this my book about the final storm which deals with okinawa and it is the end of the war in the pacific.

now, talking to my publisher we had talked about the idea of going back and taking another look at the pacific and the second world war. talked about stories. iwo jima has been done, there are a lot of films and i mean john wayne all the way up to clint eastwood. but then there is midway and pearl harbor and you have on and on. a lot of stories. i'm actually having a conversation with my publisher right now about going back and doing perhaps another trilogy. and i mean pearl harbor is a good place to start, obviously. that is where it starts for us. but immediately thereafter, you are talking about -- by chance, i was in a hotel in kansas city where they had the annual gathering of survivors of --. this was years ago and i knew

nothing about the status of the stuff in the posters and these are some guys, no one really pays much attention to what happened to them. and they are not especially fans of douglas macarthur. macarthur leaves them. i shall return. well, that is what he talks about when he leaves and goes to australia. he is leaving them behind. that is a tough story. and i don't know that i would do the entire book just on that. but that definitely could be a piece of another story starting probably with pearl harbor. >> i'll just point out the map that we just showed to the viewers. that is general macarthur map. what about world war ii and paris were they more valuable? >> probably so because the

public was kept informed much more so than ever before. you did not have two sides in the same country. so you have a newspaper fighting over each other over whose general is the good guy. we were very much united in this country in the effort against the enemy. and whether it was the japanese or the germans. the newspapers, i mean while they are not as useful in the research point of view because they're not detailed enough, certainly, what they did was they kept the homefront informed. it surprised me in a big way that they were telling the truth. they were setbacks and there were problems. they were being honest about it. and there was an all of this glossing everything over lake vietnam. my generation, the evening

news. when it seemed like every day, why is the war still going on? it wasn't like that in world war ii. they were reporting the good, the bad and the ugly. it was actually a nice thing to see. the american public will get an accurate idea. >> this is an email from everett jones. ken mr. shaara please talk about the hostility between the us journeys and -- president polk. >> principal at the beginning of the war, the whole war, maybe you can look at this as the excuse for starting the war. as whether the board of texas and mexico, -- settlers in texas, 10 years earlier defeated santa ana and the texas revolution and they wanted that 100 mile gap.

that was the spark that started the mexican war. they moved into the area, texas and the militia got together. and then they take command of these people and fight three fairly significant battles. and it can go either way. he wins some of them. american young men are dying the first time in decades. and so in washington, above command of the army, -- goes down to the gulf and takes command from taylor. and taylor is left up in south texas to sort of do things there.so taylor is kind of a hero and comes back.

i do not know that i will call them enemies really. scott had every right to do what he did and he leaves taylor where he was going down south. and the gulf of mexico eventually goes to mexico city and he wins the war. now polk is a whole different story. it's different politician. he is in washington and he is looking out for his own agenda and he cannot stand scott. so when he invasive coast of mexico he cannot stand polk and they cut off communication. polk is telling him what to do. it takes a while for it to get from washington to the gulf of mexico. scott uses that as an excuse that i cannot wait for you to tell me. i am cutting off all communication. he goes on his own and becomes quite a hero for doing that. and polk is left out in the

cold. and lately there is interest in polk. there have been some books written about him. that's good it is fine. but taylor is the real hero to the public. and then taylor dies in poor health. scott runs for president later and he loses. he never get the effects of the american people. >> two years of war, 13,000 deaths. pretty substantial. >> yes and again, the weaponry was not very good, the artillery was not very good. and one thing, i do not know how much of that, what percentage is due to disease. because again, you're talking about part of the world where

medicine involves enormously in the civil war. prior to the civil war battlefield conditions are just horrible! a wounded man stands very little chance. there is scarlet fever and you know, they are going through the countryside where there are no sanitary conditions. it is a difficult place to fight a war. i have no doubt that number is accurate but i'm wondering how much of that is based on disease or what did soldiers who died from infection. >> next call from jerry in illinois. >> hello mr. shaara. i'm fascinated with the mexican war. as an american i feel very guilty with the way we took all that territory and then gave them a token payment. we are still living with the implications of that today.

the mexican /american relations have never been like canadian/american. it is up to date, daca. i have a question, we cannot give california that back how can we deal with the situation? >> you are right. i cannot answer it. the, the way we treat the mexicans during the war and immediately after the war, again, you mentioned early on manifest destiny. the monroe doctrine. and what we know today as arizona and new mexico, california, the rockb& kids in texas, we are entitled. we look at that today and it's an archaic idea. that was our theme in this country. we were from atlanta, the

pacific and everything in between belong to us.so we pretty much justify thinking whatever we wanted. today that sounds pretty awful but that is what it was all about. this is where all the energy was. and it's interesting. i was nervous about what kind of response the soldiers would get in mexico. what were they here mexican historians? i was extremely gratified to hear -- we talked about the alamo earlier.santa ana is the bad guy. 10 years later, he is in command in mexico. he is in charge again. the other characters in the story.there's that point of view. i was really afraid, the same as a part is not fair to the man. i had . all of this was translated and

he paints himself into a car to go he takes the responsibility, everything that goes right and blames everybody else for everything that goes wrong. and that is his personality. so i put a little bit of that into the story and i was nervous. how was the historians going to handle that? i got letters from professors from mexico city he said, you got it right! this is outstanding! unfortunately, -- is often not there. a lot of people as mentioned, was the token payment. guilt, that was a guilt checked. and so you can justify or not how would the world be different if the united states with half the size it is today?

that is an unanswerable question. >> seven books of the civil war. how do you feel about -- >> and his question was can be. this is a hot button topic today. robert e lee, the man, to write him as a character, this is a man with seven children. he gives advice constantly to every one of them. his letters are almost telling them what they should and should not do. because he is never home. his wife is a tragic figure. mary lee is an unhappy woman who hates the fact that her husband is never home. and she lets them know that. which is really interesting. as a general in the field, lee, i would not say is is unparalleled. i think grant is a better general. lee allows the confederacy to survive as long as he does because he knows that he does

not have the manpower. he does not have the arms especially later in the war when he is up against grant. he knows, the last full measure, which is a quote - from the gettysburg address. the title of the book of the trilogy, he understands that his men had to give the last full measure if they're going to survive the war. he knows they're not going to win. and yet, he also knows his men, they love him. they would not let him quit. not if he wanted to. there is all of that. as a man of dignity, a man of integrity, the fact that after the war he will not write his own memoir. if you write a memoir you will pass judgment other people he won't do it. it is up to other people to talk history says. they wanted to be the governor of virginia.

he says no. he goes to washington college, reestablishes what is now washington lee university. and educating young men to get back into society. get them in education, a good job and an opportunity to assimilate back into the country. that is good. now, there is the other side. the other side is lee take up arms against his country. in those days, his country and his mind was virginia. today, it is hard to relate to that. he takes up arms against his country and defense right because that clearly, very easily and very argument that is the wrong cause.he is on the wrong side of history. and i will say this because i know that at some point today every time i speak, i have heard i have grown up in the south. i grew up in tallahassee

florida. i grew up surrounded us other than this. in hearing that the civil war was not fought over slavery was fought over state rights. what were the rights they were fighting for? one of them, to keep slaves. you can dance around that if you want. and i know this will get some people mad at me but i'm sorry. the civil war again, you can define this anyway you want to. at the end of the day, one of the principal products of the war ending the way it did, slaves were freed. and had the south won the war, more than likely the slaves would not have been freed. 30 years later, i have this conversation with you but know more about the industrial revolution 90. things like the cotton jim and slaves might have become obsolete as the tool of the

plantation because he had mechanization. i mean maybe. but the slaves were freed when the war ended. and lee is today, as much as i admire the man and how much fun i had writing and getting into his head and seeing the world through his eyes, he was on the wrong side of history. and that is not an insult. i am not slamming anybody. i respect enormously, people who, southerners particularly, to embrace their own history. but i am sorry, you lost the war. you can embrace the romance of some of the characters. jackson is one of my favorite characters. you can embrace that. but the war was being for something that hadn't succeeded. the entire world to be very different place and probably a much worse place.

one man's opinion. >> you are watching booktv on c-span2. this is our "in depth" program for this the special fiction program of "in depth" for this month is military historical novelists. we have jeff shaara as our guest. we have david calling in from alabama. >> take a gentleman. having a great time watching this. i had a different subject. if i can i would like to comment on what mr. shaara just mentioned about robert e lee. it is worth noting that he was on record peanuts and slavery as a moral and political evil. now, he made some other comments to his wife that we would find more problematic in this modern era. but he is also on record in congressional testimony after the war in response to a

congressman accusation that he had fought a war for the preservation of slavery. his response was, sir, so far from fighting a war from the preservation of slavery, i rejoice that slavery is abolished. so, i do not think that we can put robert e lee and the proslavery southern elites. that being said, and it is arguable, i understand. what i really wanted to talk about related to the atlantic campaign. and one of the statements made by confederate commander joseph e johnston. i think one of the catalyzing what-ifs of history. during the campaign, and as a confederate army retreated toward atlanta, orissa, jefferson davis was getting concerned the people of atlanta

were set. and in response, johnston made a comment, i can hold atlanta forever. and obviously, he wasn't given the chance to do that. and you can say about johnston, he never saw an impending battle that he didn't try to avoid. that might be a slight exaggeration. if you look at it in the context of the election, if the confederate army in georgia had been able to do this what lee did to grants in virginia, atlanta will have a hard time getting reelected. grant suffered enormous casualties. lee remained undefeated. richmond remained in confederate hands. lee held richmond well into the following spring. not just the election. >> you seem to have --

>> johnson had been given the opportunity. >> david, before we get an answer. he seemed to have a pretty decent knowledge of the civil war. >> well, i started studying it all my life in an unofficial capacity. [laughter] >> thank you, very much. >> is a good point about johnston. first of all i agree with what you're saying about lee. no, it is not that simple. it is not cut and dry, good guy, bad guy. he is a man of dignity and integrity and it is hard to -- he has ended up on purely the wrong side of history. johnston is a character and particularly fourth book of the series the war in the west. johnston, by the way the end, the real end of the war which is not -- april 9, 1965 2 and a

half weeks later, he offers a surrender to sherman in north carolina. a lot of people don't realize. i'm pulling out pieces of trivia. but johnson understands as he is backing up toward atlanta and of course, he is driving richmond crazy. jefferson davis cannot stand the fact that johnson is not out there -- he is instead the master of the tactical retreat. that end up getting him fired. because davis, the joke in richmond newspapers that johnson is so good at retreating he is eventually going to have his army in bermuda. i'm not making that up. johnson again, he is relieved and the people just cannot read about another retreat. johnson understands. as he backs up what does sherman do? he goes around it. sherman was a better general. and johnson knows has limited resources.

sherman had all kinds of resources. he knows exactly what he's doing.at the end of the day johnston is relieved. and fourthly for the south in atlanta the replacement is john bell hood. and he marches his army out to confront sherman had on three times and is blasted three times. in his army is basically destroyed. and when sherman takes atlanta, he walks in. there is no one left. because the army has escaped west alabama to get out of the way. you can't really blame all of that on johnson. i mean he certainly had his flaws. and what he did was a terrible thing. but i admire johnson. at the end of the war when sherman meets him face-to-face, those are sins i really enjoyed writing. because these two men from very

different cloths dealing with the same problem. they have to end this war. how are we going to do this? it is a great scene. a great piece of american history. >> and general -- >> i assume this is completely accurate. the mammaries a virginian. his wife is from virginia when the war breaks out she tells them that you are going to fight for the south. one can only assume what that meant for their relationship. i will not get into that. but because he is a pennsylvanian and he really doesn't show much confidence throughout his entire command. but he is in command which at the time is sort of a bathwater. they put them out of the way. suddenly is in the middle of things. his own army knows the man is a pennsylvanian. so there's always that little distrust and the rumors fly when he finally surrenders his 30,000 men to grant.

and a lot of people to this day, say that it was the plan all along. that really was a yankee in disguise. he knew -- i do not buy any of that. he just wasn't broken general. it is a shame to those men who surrendered but he tried. it's interesting he was one of those northerners who went south. >> allen, pittsburgh pennsylvania.thank you for holding. you are on with jeff shaara. >> thank you very much. a pleasure to talk to you. i have two questions. i was wondering if you ever considered writing a book on the french and indian wars? and -- also, about a book dealing with the -- wars. thank you.

>> the french and indian war in particular was another one of those conversations i had with my publisher. we talked about the french and indian war, the war of 1812 in the spanish-american war. and as i said earlier, the publishers decided they were not epic enough. you can make big arguments in the other direction. i think because the john lives in pittsburgh it is probably his cost all that and i understand. never say never. it is a possibility down the road. the idea came up and it was done and he had the pirates. a lot of people have no idea what we are talking about. thomas jefferson during his reign, we had this problem with piracy. and maybe, it is not high on my list because the research there will be interesting. because trying to find some original, and how do you find that? i do get accounts from the

people from the pirates? i don't know how that would work. the french and indian war is little more possible. it just depends on, it is up to me to commit my publisher that there might actually be an audience. >> esquire, bob from california. good afternoon. >> yes, hello. i have a question for mr. shaara. in a comment. hello? >> yes, go ahead. >> one of the criticisms of general lee was his decision to send pickett incident center going to gettysburg rather than going around the right flank of the union army. now, my take on this is, live in the gettysburg area and i think you're familiar with the typography of the land and for station. >> very much so. >> my father worked on the pennsylvania turnpike in 1939, dexter had to send the workers home because they had no

accurate mapping of the area. they had to bring in surveyors and with the decision, was lee just basically he didn't know where he was at and didn't want to take a chance. >> no, it would be nice. in his defense, that would be a nice response. but it was his decision. my take is a little bit different. think about, up until two months before, lee had jackson. and jackson's audacity won a lot of fights. and i think it was a case of wishful thinking on the part of lee that he still had that spirit and energy. as we know if you had read the killer angels and using the film gettysburg, the best advocate for going around the army and run the union army was -- that is probably true.

my father takes that as gospel. and i don't have any reason to dispute that. and i think there are number of commanders under lee, why are we going straight at the middle? we should go around them. and also one reason you go around is that you cut off the union army from washington. which was part of the point. well, i think what happened is that lee is looking what is a freshman. first of all, he trusted his artillery to break up the union position. it did not work. they tried, to put alexander and the command but they unleashed -- anyone logically watching through binoculars, they smashed a pretty good hold there. that is one huge problem right there. also i think, part of lee's weakness at this point is his, he relies on his faith.

god is on our side. and everywhere that i have ever researched, god is on somebody's side. and people from each other, each believe that god is on their side. while there is a problem with that. and i have gone over that a couple of different ways. depending on the war, one man says what happened is pretty obvious. god turned away and just didn't want to see what was happening here. we won't get into that. but i think that lee had faith, tremendous faith that gods will would prevail. there was going to win and it would be gods will. today, there seems to be that that is an archaic way of looking at things. but you cannot separate yourself today from with those people believed and lee had absolute faith that god was looking out for his people. in believed that it would work.

it was a catastrophic mistake. and probably lee's last day. >> bob, use of the atomic as well? >> yeah. i have a personal connection to the battle at gettysburg. they sent my father home in 1939 and then i was born in 1939 so do the math! >> let's try fresno california. this is john. >> hi. jeff, i have a question concerning the civil war that never made any sense to me. after the war was finished, why weren't the southern generals tried for treason? >> there is a very good reason for that. the prime reason, this carryover from abraham lincoln. lincoln believed that we need to bring everyone back together again with the least amount of

punishment that we can have. and as you well know, jefferson davis was the one man singled out for the most punishment. by and large, part of this was grant sending soldiers home, let them go back and work the farm. punish the south or to make criminals out of the people who lead the army. there is going to be no healing. lincoln preached healing. and had lincoln lived, for his mother would be no reconstruction. it would have been very benign compared to how it turned out. because lincoln very much wanted -- benin maybe they would say let's be friends that's overstating it but get the country back together again. let's get the country working. to drag that out with military trials and to place blame and possibly hang people, that it would have created enormous bad blood in the south.

more than already existed. it probably would not have been very constructive. again, i point to what lee is doing after the war. and going back to washington college and turning it into a first-rate educational institution to help seven men find a place in their society of how much more constructive is that and if there was a trial where lee's name was dragged through the mud and possibly would have been hangs, what would that have done to have helped after the war? i'm a member that is oversimplifying it but that is what i feel. >> let's hear from jay in virginia. >> greetings jarman. i have a question. but if i could begin with a homage to your father. when i was at the army advanced course, we were assigned the killer angels and had to write

an essay analysis of that. i wrote about lee and his qualities as a general during gettysburg. i followed you and your rise as an author because of that start with reading the killer angels. and a wonderful historical fiction as you said earlier. my question there was a little tricky. it is about confederate monuments today. i did go to west point. we study on these wars. might be familiar with the old west point atlas of american war. >> yes. >> i figured. all of these battles, some of the generals that you mentioned and now we are going through a reconciliation, i guess. what are your thoughts on how we treat or study the south and

these old warriors, deceased and had to retreat them now? >> what are your thoughts before we hear from jeff shaara? >> there is a political side, a cultural side in the military side. as someone who studied the war and at west point and then as an officer, i've always been attracted to the leadership components. studying these, you talk about washington and said things i never knew earlier in the program. how his personality, he talked about wallace. individuals, if they change history in the moment, and we study and they are flawed and so forth, i do want to remember them because it happened. but many people say that you want to have monuments to nazi

generals and is a very prickly issue. i've always thought of fort hood, fort bragg, we have these roads here would you do? do you go back? i work in alexandria, we have monuments after confederate soldier still. it is a very complicated issue. i don't know that there is a good answer except that it is american history. >> you're right. it is a very complicated issue and they are all complicated answers. the people that try to make simple answers are generally wrong. one thing you did not mention we talked about the culture and the military, the historical period erasing history. that is a bad idea. and i don't care if you're in germany studying the nazis. studying hitler, russia or -- study stalin and learn what

they did. and understand where you came from. it is no different here. you need to study the civil war and study who it was. nobody's people are. do not just erase them from the textbooks. if you do that then you are doing everyone -- you're not making moral high ground by failing to teach the young people who these people were. that being said, if a monument, again, i mentioned this earlier. the south lost the war. no country that i know of, no culture on this earth allows generation of the losers of the war. the way we do.think about this. there is no statue of hitler that i know of. they tore down starches of saddam hussein. and yet, if someone is

offended. not someone but an entire group, if the citizenry is offended by statute, it doesn't mean that it should just be, the statute might be a work of art or something spectacular. move it. if it is offending you know the government having it in a town square in new orleans or richmond or whatever, put in a museum. put it on the battlefield, put in a confederate cemetery. don't tell me going to go plow up all the old confederate cemeteries. learn what happened. learn what, who was on the statute, why is it important? learn that. don't just destroy it. yes, it is one thing to have the government of the town recognize whomever appeared jefferson davis, as a hero. i have a little problem with that.

again, is on the wrong side of history. but to embrace it? we're not even going -- but to erase it? we are not going to get into that. if you want to defund funding for the jefferson memorial in washington, because jefferson owned slaves. i'm sorry, jefferson wrote the declaration of independence. why don't we look at that? one would pay attention to the whole man and not just single out the bad? is education. and that is what matters to me. if i am putting words in the mouth of robert e lee or words in the mouth of the stonewall jackson or any of the confederate is not because i am confederate. it's because i am looking at, i want to know the history. i want to know what happened. i want to know the details and i wanted to be accurate. erasing all of that, that is no different, we react with outrage will be made about isis.

destroying some 500-year-old beautiful religious monument in syria. because they do not agree with what the monument says. well, i'm not equating necessarily people who want to move starches to isis. but the principle is the same thing. you don't like the history, get rid of it. number don't do that. >> me of steve from new port richey, florida. please go ahead. >> i have a quick question for you. how about all of those wanted in the civil war kept -- that would be an interesting character for you. and my question is this, just like a movie with christian bale. i have a question regarding ptsd. these are civil war veterans now fighting the cavalry of the indian wars as they are winding down. they had their guns taken away,

one kills himself. can you talk about the extent of ptsd and the civil war and how it was treated? and also, in the movie they show a frenchman, irishman. if you discuss the extent of foreigners in the united states cavalry during the war and after. >> that is a complicated question. first of all ptsd is a fairly modern, it has been defined in fairly modern times. one of the problems, and this happened i would imagine in just about every war. the war ends, he comes home, he is trained, in 18 or 19-year-old man trained for quite a while to be a soldier with everything that entails. now, he is not. now he has to get a job. and whether it is a vietnam

veteran or the civil war veteran or whomever, that is tough. and a lot of the soldiers had a very difficult time adapting. and to this day. today we have identified a. the elements of treatment after this civil war there was no treatment, no one understood. and go back all the way up. it was just one of those things that the poor soldier, the poor young man had to suffer inside themselves what that meant to no longer have that role. there is no good answer to that. the cavalry, in our world, one of the things about this country, we are a melting pot. much more in the late 19 century when my family came over from italy. but in the civil war you had

irish, you had germans, you had the british, certainly. fewer italians but fewer lessons in fewer spanish but they were part of our army all the way through the war and that didn't just start through the civil war. you have someone that comes from germany and speaks no english and ends up being a commander in the american revolution. i have not, i've not seen it. but i have a feeling that it's basically a pretty accurate portrayal of what it was like the cavalry after the war. suddenly they have nothing to do. in that sense of alertness goes away. where does it go? that's a tough question. >> you have been in the movie

business. what was the process like you? >> after really careful. i learned in hollywood, is the authors job to stay out of the way. people assume and logically so based on my book i must have been right there telling them this that in the other. it really doesn't work that way. i would see things that were being done wrong or mispronunciations and names. and i would be told thanks we are appreciating your input but pretty much i was ignored. they made a major motion picture. how is that a bad thing? i know people that will give up an arm to have a film made out of their book. i do want to sonic a spoiled brat but it was very frustrating process because if you saw the film gettysburg and

read the killer angels, the film is about 90 percent of my father's book. i mean almost word for word. my father would have been thrilled. gods and generals is about 10 percent of my book. that is a surprise. i didn't really understand. you have this film director that has a vision of what they want to do. and it's not up to me. lester jk rowling or stephen king, we have absolute control over what gets put on the screen, is always going to be different. it's always going to change. i wish, and again, another mini fans of gods and generals i appreciate that i've heard from them but i wish it had been a better film. because had it been a better film we would have finished the trilogy. they were ready to make the last full measure. the fact that you watched this at the end, it says stay tuned for the rest of the story. for the sequel.

because gods and generals was not a commercial success they dropped the project. answer the last full measure now likely will never be made. and that is a shame. however, if it was made, if films remained out of any of my books going forward and promise you i will be more involved. >> have you optioned any of your books? >> there's an option right now. i don't have any idea if anything will happen to that. it would be wonderful if it did. the career book i think lends itself fabulously. but it is not up to me. and i get tickled about this. people like my website and they say why have you made a film out of the mexican war story? it would make a great film. it's not up to me. you are talking about 60 -- if

someone was to make a film and they have that money that me know! that's really what it comes down to. it can be very frustrating. i will say this, i am in the book business. i like the book business. it has been very good to me. i've been very fortunate. the movie business is a different animal. >> this is david kimball posting on facebook. publisher was wrong about the war of 1812. it would've been an interesting book. what i understand the revolutionary war won our national independence. the war of 1812 secured -- >> i'm not sure i agree with that. i was in the civil war is what secured our national independence and national security united states as a country. there is an argument. and i am not expert because i haven't done the research. there's an argument that we did not win that war. we have francis scott key and

the star-spangled banner. andrew jackson in the battle of new orleans. when she has won. after the war was over by the way. but you can make an argument that the british actually won that war. again i will get into the debate but i do agree with the fact that is an epic story. and it would be interesting to tell and never say never. >> well, 2007 jeff shaara spoke at the national book festival gala the night before. want to show you little portion. >> mr. president, mrs. bush. thank you so much for this invitation to be here. it has been a journey for me, not 300 years but it has been a

journey. [laughter] my journey starting with my father. a man named michael who changed the way people looked at the civil war in this country. most of you likely learned your history from textbooks, you probably left school hitting history. what michael shaara did in killer angels is to get you the battle of gettysburg and pre-and heads of the principal characters, the main players, robert e lee, john buford, -- and tie the story. not the way you would read it in the high school history textbook but today the story the way they would tell you the story. michael shaara did not live to see his great success. he passed away in 1988. five years later the movie gettysburg comes up with the killer angels becomes a number one bestseller.

he did not live to see that. in lighting the prequel and sequel to his great work, there is a certain terror that comes with that. there is no competition, this is not about the father, the shadow of the father. it is simply about the lesson my father taught me. which is that if you're going to talk about these people, tell the good story. being a child in my father's house sitting at the dinner table, that is my memory. not hearing him give a history lesson. it wouldn't have interest in him any more than interested me. but to tell the story of chamberlain. tell the story of what it was like during for those men to walk, walk across the field into the guns of the enemy. and when the man next to goes down, you keep walking. that is the story. and going back to the american revolution it was a marvelous discovery for me. what i discovered is where we came from. i know george washington and ben franklin and john adams.

but i did not know the story. and there is a story. going forward, the mexican-american war, no one knows about that. i like telling a story no one knows. and most people never heard of -- the man who taught robert e lee how to be a soldier for one thing. going to world war i, persian. the red baron. there is a name you might know. i was appalled when i went around the country for my book on the first world war to the last man. how many people thought the red baron was a cartoon character! [laughter] >> not the way history should be taught. when i started looking at world war ii i was really nervous. because when i say like it's a story that you don't know, what to tell you about world war ii that you don't know? hollywood alone has given us so many stories on world war ii. john wayne alone, has given us so many world war ii stories.

all of the names and all of the famous places, we know all of that. when i began researching the rising tide is the first of a trilogy. the war in europe. the story covers america's first involvement in north africa and sicily. that is a story most people do not know. what most people do not realize, we go to north africa, we do not do too well. we come up against this guy named rommel. he sends us fleeing from the battlefield. it is not quite an auspicious beginning for american soldiers in the second world war. but there is a man, who is one of the key voices of the story. and i feel it is somewhat appropriate to talk about this man tonight because of the setting. the man is dwight david eisenhower. dwight david eisenhower is, long before his president eisenhower, he is the man in charge. he is an administrator.

i mean that is a terrible description for someone who might otherwise see himself as a fighting general. he is not george patton. not a man leading. in fact eisenhower never leaves troops on the battlefield ever. eventually he unites people and he creates an army and defeats the finest fighting army that the world has ever seen up to that time. and that is hitler's germany. and he wins. and how he wins is part of the story. it was an incredible honor to be part of this. i am walking and had my father lived he would be writing these books. the audience he could not find with the killer angels is the audience that has found these books and he deserved that. thank you very much. [applause]

>> jeff shaara, did you have a chance to meet the bushes after that? >> yes when the president denies this invites you to come to an event because a fan of your books, that is pretty good! and actually, i will say in the interest of bipartisanship, three presidents have said that to me which is a pretty neat thing! but that event, it was at the library laura bush had put together the national book festival. that was 1/7 of her eight festivals. what an amazing event! i noticed while i was speaking my time was quick and i heard that afterwards. half of congress was there. after the cabinet was there. and afterwards, dinner, set next to the president. that is not an accident. my name tag was on the table

next to his. out of 400 people. that was pretty cool! we talked for two hours about everything but politics. we talked about the books of mine that he liked. we talked about baseball, we talked about his daughter was just coming out with a book at the time. jenna had written a book and he was cautioning her that you're just going to get blistered because no one will believe you wrote the book. and so, it was an interesting conversation. i had a tiny little -- when he came to the table. he and laura came down she went that way and he came over to the table. and i had already met him down below. as he came up, he held his hand out and i took his hand and i put my on his shoulder. and he is ripped, by the way. i was impressed! and i realized at that moment, a secret service agent somewhere just flinched. don't grab the president! [laughter] i pulled my hand

away. it was an extraordinary evening. >> well, you spent a bit of your talk talking about michael shaara. he said he is the greatest. >> certainly! michael shaara, a four pack a day smoker, died, had his first attack when he was 36. he wrote about it. actually won an award for an article from the saturday evening post about his first heart attack because he was dead, 55 minutes! and he survived that. that was an extraordinary thing. because he was only 36, probably. but age 59 it caught up with him and he died in his sleep. and -- you know, it created a lot of good work. ...

>> he never toured in his day in te '70s, even when the pulitzer prize publishers didn't to that all that much. so he never heard from fans, people -- i have a web site. there was no such thing as a web site when he was writing. i hear from people all the time, direct contact just like the phone calls we're getting here. he never heard that. the gentleman that was required to read killer angels when he was in the service, oh, yeah, it's been required reading in every military academy, if you're an officer, you've read the killer angels. he had no idea. so if he were alive though, he would be 90 years old this year. but, i mean, if he were alive the last 23 years of my life would have been very different, because these would have been his books to write. >> host: very quickly, we want to show our viewers your favorite books as you sent them to us, the passing of the armies. ulysses s. grant, the personal

memoirs. for country and core. henry butcher, my three years with eisenhower, and ernie pyle, here's your war. >> i think there's a theme running through that selection. [laughter] as i mentioned earlier, i don't read novels because i'm scared to death to pick something up that sticks in my head, and then i could be accused of plagiarism. those books, all of those books have played a pivotal role in my research in whatever particular story they would apply to. and i mention one specifically which is gayle shisler's book, it's about her graph, her grandfather's oliver p. smith in korea. he's one of the main voices in that story. she wrote this biography of her grandfather, i read the book, i didn't know her. and i was blown away. i want this man to be a voice in the story. i contacted her, i found out where she lives, and i contacted her by, you know, i wrote her a

letter actually and said, introduced myself. and i said, you know, i'm really interested in more about this man. and what i said i promise you i do not exploit. i'm not looking to some expose junk, i just want to tell the story. she was -- well, she wrote back and said i know who you are, i've read most of your books. it was really a nice thing to hear. [laughter] and apparently her husband is a career marine as well. and she sent me three audio cds of her grandfather who did not write a memoir, but he did an audio memoir. she sent them to me. i have his voice. so if somebody wants to contradict something he does in the book, i'm sorry, i can get him to tell you. i love that. that's the best example of that personal getting into the head of a character in all of these books. >> host: so the frozen hours, you can use direct quotes from general smith. >> guest: yes. and i tried to use direct quotes in all the books i've done when

the quotes were available. i mean, ulysses grant, there are plenty, there's a bunch of robert e. lee. the more modern you go, the more there is. pershing, eisenhower, patton. i've got patton's papers. boy, is that some good stuff, and some not so -- some stuff you can't repeat. [laughter] but, yes, that's crucial to the research. >> host: jeff shaara, is it fair to say that you avoid foul language in your books as much as possible? >> guest: you know, yes, and there are two reasons for that. one, i was -- can when gods and generals came out, i'm on tour, and this young man comes up to me and says is there anything in your book objectionable for my child to read? i hadn't thought of that. and i thought for a minute, and i said, no. actually, there's not. and since that point, i mean, that made -- you know, when i realized, okay, children -- we're talking about 8 years old have come up to me holding my book in their hand, what an extraordinary thing. and then i hear from high school

teachers who are using my books in their classroom. okay, i'm not censoring myself. i don't want to go there. but the point is what i've said is if i can't tell you the story of a young marine -- now, you can't tell me what 20-year-old marines talk like. i get it. but if i can't tell you that story without bombing you with severe profanity, then i'm not a very good writer. if i have to rely on that to get the feelings and the passion across to you, i need to go, you know, find another job. so it's interesting, though, and -- what i've said to people is you will not read any language in my book that you do not hear on network television. not cable television, on network television. i still get grief. i still get people writing me -- [laughter] why do you have to rely on such foul language? what foul language? [laughter] there's really nothing in there. but, i mean, people have different sensitivities, and i get that. but, no, i'm very proud of the

fact that these books are -- teachers are using these books to teach history. that i blows me away. that blows me away. it also adds to my responsibility, get it right, you know? don't play games with the facts just to make my story better. tell an accurate story if a 15-year-old, a 16-year-old is relying on that story to learn something about the civil war, the american revolution, you know, get it right. but, no, the language thing -- and i didn't set out with that as an agenda like i'm going to keep it clean. it's not clean, but at the same time i don't need the shock value. if i do, i'm a lousy writer. >> host: at the same time, going back to your comment about your books being used in schools, you said at the outset of this program that you are not a historian. you don't consider yourself a historian. >> guest: i actually had somebody -- i was at a book festival here in d.c. and i had somebody get in my face and say they're using your books to teach, you can't use a novel to teach history. the person really was upset

about that concept. and my point about that is, okay, first of all -- and what i've heard from the teachers -- if you can give the student a character that they can relate to, somebody they get interested in, they'll learn history, and they won't even realize they've learning the history. and then i hear from the same teacher who says, yeah, we were using this textbook over here, and the whole class fell asleep. i get it. you need names, dates, places, facts and figures for a kid to pass a test. but if you really want the kid to have an interest and pursue it further, give them a story. give them something they can relate to. and it was the teachers who inspired me, again, what i said before, get it right, you know? don't play games with the facts. tell the story accurately. it's a novel because you're there and because you're hearing the dialogue, but everything happened, and it happened the way i tell you. >> host: what's your writing process? your books 4, 5, 600 pages long.

>> guest: all the research first. to do a little research and a little writing, that wouldn't work for me at all. i have to get the whole picture. so research all comes first. and, by the way, part of that is going to the ground. and i've got a funny story about that. in every case -- this started with my father taking us to gettysburg as kids, you know, walk in the footsteps. there's really something to be gaped if i'm going to describe -- gained if i'm going to be describing a hill to you, it's really better if i've been on that hill instead of just see a picture of it in a book. that being said, i really when i started working on korea, i wanted to go to the chosen reservoir. i did not know, i'm embarrassed to admit, that the chosen reservoir's in north korea. the state department, i actually talked to a fellow from the state department who said to me, quote: we can get you in. i waited for the rest of the sentence -- [laughter] there was no sentence, and my wife said to me, no.

[laughter] so that was the end of that. so i've not been to the chosen reservoir, which i really, i wish i had. but, no, that's a big part of the research, walk the ground. go there. see it, feel it. i mean, there's almost a mystical thing about that, feel what these people went through by being there. and then when i feel like the story's ripe -- and that's a word i've told a lot of people who want to be writers -- how do you know when to stop researching? the story's ripe, it's ready to come out. and when you sit there, the hardest thing is looking at the blank computer screen, page 1. chapter one, page 1. you're looking at blank. my father was a piece of paper. for me it's a computer screen. the first word, you know, but what happens amazingly as anybody who's a writer, i think, gets this, you write those first words and then the second words, and the third words, and the next thing you know you've got

four pages. that's cool when that happens. and if it doesn't happen, you're not ready yet. go back and take another look. but that process when it -- and i've often said it feels like the story's writing itself. i'm just a conduit. these people are real. these people exist. what they did, i'm not making it up. i'm just a conduit. the story's out here somewhere, and it's coming through me to the pages. and that sounds, again, kind of mystical. my father said during the writing of the killer angels he was visited by every character in the book. that's not a good thing -- he said that to the newspaper reporter. the problem is it comes out in print, it sounds like michael shaara's a schizophrenic. but i get what he meant, i know exactly what he meant. when i'm writing a scene to you, i'm there. i'm hearing the dialogue, i'm just telling you what i hear. that's, i hate to use the word, the magic of it. when it's ready to go and it comes out like that, there's no

more fun for me than that. >> host: how'd you end up living in gettysburg? [laughter] >> guest: well, first of all, i was going to gettysburg from really 1993 when the movie gettysburg came out. i was going, i was doing book signings and various things promoting the film, and then i -- so i was going back, then gods and generals came out, that was a logical place to do a book signing. and i was doing that twice a year, i was going there. the first of july, and then november 19, the anniversary of the gettysburg address. and i was doing all kinds of events, so twice a year i would go there. and twice a year i would stay in the same little boutique hotel. and the manager of the hotel, the woman i became friends with over 22 years, and we would talk twice a year for ten minutes. and there came a point about five years ago when we were both in a position in our lives where, you know, we could actually talk a little more.

and so i, we started doing that on the phone, and then i went to visit. we had our first date -- [laughter] at the 150th an verse anniversary of the battle of antitunnel, september 17th, 2012, we had our first date. and about a year and a half later, we got married. her daughter was in high school, and it made sense to me that, okay, do not pull a child out of high school, so i moved to gettysburg, and our daughter now is at temple university and doing extremely well. and so, but, you know, it's a family affair. i mean, that's really how it happened. it was because of the woman i love. >> host: back to calls. we've got a little less than an hour left with our guest, jeff shaara, and let's hear from gore on the in taylorsville -- gordon in taylorsville, kentucky. >> caller: good afternoon,

gentlemen. c-span is truly a national treasure. >> guest: i agree. >> caller: enjoy your programs. mr. shaara, i was raised in the same neck of the woods as you. i didn't realize you're from tallahassee. i grew up in albany, georgia. i studied history under bill wiley at emory university. bill wiley was the common soldier of the civil war. and his classes were very popular for that reason. [inaudible] the stem of the civil war and went to work for 40 years, but i'm getting back into the subject now because there's so many parallels with what's going on in america compared to today with a lot of the disagreements in our society. and if you study this history, i believe we could learn some lessons from it, lessons of compromise. but my question to you regards

shiloh. i always heard anecdotally that grant, when he got off the -- [inaudible] at pittsburgh, i forget which he was, he had his hat shot off of him. [laughter] but i've never, i just read the american ulysses, and i've read several other books too, and i've never found that actually in literature. do you know if that's the case or notsome. >> guest: it's not. that's very apocryphal. first of all, when grant lands at pittsburgh landing, without an h on the end, there were no confederates there. there was no fighting right there. what he ran into were hundreds of union soldiers who had run from the front lines and were hiding under the banks of the river. the river was fairly elevated right there, and you had caves and nooks all a along the edge of the river. and the a bun of -- a bunch of union soldiers were quivering in

fear along that shoreline. so it's unlikely anybody would have shot at him. but he was horrified at a what he saw and realized, okay, we've got a problem here. and how he dealt with that problem is a big part of a blaze of glory, and i tell that story. but, no, i love the character of grant, and i would agree with you, i mean, about -- you know, one of the things i hear a lot is, oh, my god, in this country we have never been so divided, and we have never been so polarized as right now. kind of hard to argue when you go back to 1861 and see, you know, when we started a full-scale war against each other. god forbid that will not happen now, but we've been through this before, and i agree with you that, you know, we need to study our history and learn where we came from. >> host: jeff shaara, chain of thunder, vicksburg, if you go there today, can you get in the caves where a lot of the

townspeople pled to? can you -- fellowed to? >> guest: you can definitely get a sense of battlefield. it's an incredible place up on the bluffs overlooking the mississippi's down there. and across from the river is absolute flat9 swamp, because it's the delta. i mean, you're looking into louisiana. and so the battlefield is very well preserved. it's a place any civil war person definitely should make a visit. the actual caves where the people were, because they were just holes in the ground. in 150 years, they've filled in, they've been covered up. what -- one thing they have done, they're cutting the trees. if there were no trees then, there shouldn't be today so you can get a feel for what it really looked like. i was there maybe 12 years ago doing a tour there, and the ranger or would apologize and say, well, you know, the union position's down, there's a big ravine over here.

can't see anything because it's solid woods. and he said, you know, the controversy was, well, the park service should not be in the business of cutting down trees. and the response was this is not a park, it's a historical park. it's not just for trees. this is about the history. so -- and they've been doing this at gettysburg for a number of years. i so applaud that because it makes such a difference when you're trying to see, you know, through the eyeballs of the people who were there. you really get a sense of that now at both of those places. >> host: when you tour a specific location, do you go in anonymously? do you go in as jeff shaara? >> both. i've done both. one of the things about the civil war i would not go in anonymously because i could get all kinds of help. [laughter] if i told somebody and it would be set up in advance, jeff shea rah's coming, he's work on a book, it really opens some doors. you get behind the scenes things that people won't see. and i don't want to make it

sound like i'm, you know, hot stuff because i get that, but it helps. you'll get little tidbits and pieces of information that you might not get otherwise if you're on a bus, you know, and you never get off the bus. i tell people, no, use your feet, walk on the ground, go out there. >> host: next call comes from bob in houston, texas. bob, please go ahead. >> caller: yes, mr. shaara. when i read gone for soldiers, it piqued my interest in the mexican war because it was a subject i knew very little about. one of your callers had remarked about how looking back at history we tend to think that things are inevitable, and they were not that inevitable at the time. one of the things i found in my reading was quite a few european military observers of the time who thought that mexico would at least hold its own or possibly win the war. could you comment any on that? >> guest: sure. there are a number of quotes, actually, i put a couple of them in the back of the book. as you say, military observers,

and they're paying attention to what's happening. it's a major event. and when winfield scott cuts himself off from all communication and begins to march inland from the gulf of mexico, people assume he's dead. publish mean, there's no way -- i mean, there's no way he's going to, and he only has 10,000 men, and they're never going to be heard from again. this is going to be a military disaster, it's a ridiculously stupid thing to do. it flies in the face of what everybody's ever been taught, and then he wins. and when he wins, all these same observers, this was genius, this was wonderful. he did a fabulous job. so, yeah, i mean, it's interesting to realize even then, i mean, 180, 190 years ago how much attention's being paid to these things around the world. >> host: jeff shaara, this is an e-mail from felix in brewster, massachusetts. did you notice that jeff praised both generals cromwell and sherman who were noted for their

attacks on civilians, farms, food stocks and other non-combatant entities? by the end of world war ii, these acts were properly called war crimes. question: what is it about sherman and cromwell that shaara finds so worthy of praise? >> guest: well, cromwell, i don't think we talked about -- >> host: i think he meant cornwallis. >> guest: well, i would disagree with that take. first of all, furman has a reputation that's been embellished in the south, in georgia particularly, as being savage, as being brutal. i'm sorry, that's not accurate. there are brutalities, most definitely. civilian plantations burned, yes, most definitely. were things ransacked? definitely. sherman didn't authorize any of that. and i can get deeply into that. i won't because i'd rather deal with the greater or issue. sherman, i mentioned this earlier, sherman and grant share something. they won the war because they

understand -- you asked me the question before about a gentleman combat, you know, what was gentlemanly war. what sherman understood is -- there's a letter that sherman burns a town in mississippi during the siege of vicksburg. the townspeople are begging him, please don't burn our town, you know? we don't have any soldiers here. this isn't a military target. and sherman says if you, if all you know of the war is the occasional box that comes home with one of your sons and you wail and you cry and you have a funeral and the kid goes in the ground and that's the end of it, you forget about it the next day, if you don't have a contact with the war, you have no reason to make it stop. i'm going to hurt you. and he does. and that principle is, okay, everyone has to hurt. if it's just the soldiers -- world war i, you know, look

at -- world war i is fought on the western front in this no man's land that stretches from belgium to the swiss border. that's where -- there's no bombing of cities, there's no what happened in world war ii, there's no b-17s, there's none of that. the war goes on for four years, you know? because the civilians are not hurting. war, and i'm sorry this is a brutal reality, war affects everyone. not just the kid with the rifle in his hand. and if the civilians back home are not aware of what that kid is going through and they're not feeling that pain, the war will just keep on going. that was an awakening we had in this country in the late 1960s in vietnam, you know, because we had tv cameras. here's what's happening, and it's in your living room every night with walter cronkite. look what happened? people reacted with outrage. if it's quiet and, you know, once in a while you read a newspaper story, it just keeps right on going.

so, you know, first of all, i disagree with the statement that after world war ii all of this was recognized as war crimes. the allies bombed -- the british and americans particularly -- bombed german cities, bombed them to give on. we -- to oblivion. the outrage over japan is hiroshima. we used the atomic bomb. we had destroyed 15 square miles of tokyo and killed a quarter of a million people. where's the outrage for that? it's war. and sherman understood this better than anyone fighting it. it's one reason i admire the man and why i say he ended the war. how much longer would it have gone on had lee been allowed to escape grant in, i'm drawing a blank -- >> host: petersburg. >> guest: how long could it have gone on? sherman understood you want to end the war, you end the war. and i admire him for that. and it's not a war crime, i'm

sorry. >> host: jeff shaara is currently reading the missiles of october: 12 days to world war iii. we mentioned earlier that you're writing, your next book is on the cuban missile crisis. chronologically, the vietnam war comes next. >> chronologically. i'm having a problem -- first of all, yes, cuban missile crisis, and i'm really excited about this. what a story. that's my, you know, i was 10 years old. i remember, and i've said this to so many audiences i've asked how many how you remember duck and cover? i was in the third grade. in the event of nuclear war, get down under the desk, put the book over your head and we'll close the curtains. [laughter] i'm not making that up. and i had a neighbor with a fallout shelter, you know, the big hole in the ground that in the event of nuclear war, you go down in the fallout shelter. nobody ever seemed to be able to answer the question how long do you stay there?

a day, a week, a year? 10,000 years? i have no idea. [laughter] it was, you know, it was the time we were living in. that's sort of the facetious part of it. young people, i've said this to many school groups, you have no idea how close we came to world war iii. and that's serious. because we would not be here today. and that's what cuban missile crisis is all about. so i'm really, i'm having a lot of fun with that. vietnam, i've been getting so much input from vietnam vets about, you know, their story. and it's, you know, a story that needs to be told a certain is way, and what i'm struggling with is what that story would be. you've got a war that basically lasts almost 15 years. i'm not going to do the political story. i don't want to do the nixon/lbj/mcnamara/westmoreland story, i want to get out there with the grunt. but what the story would be.

i'm having a hard time finding the good story. not that they're not great stories, but how do they end? and when they end where nothing happens or where we took that hill and then the next day we give them the hill back so we have to fight for it next week, what's interesting about that story? and this says nothing about -- i'm not talking about the heroism of the individual or the medal of honor recipients or any of that. there's some phenomenal stories. but i'm really struggling with what that story would be. and time will tell. i mean, i'm sort of up to my ears in cuba right now. but vietnam, i'm -- i have to work on that. >> host: this is an e-mail from a gentleman named ray hoefling, but it's actually from ed in plymouth, massachusetts, world war ii marines veteran of okinawa, and ed dente writes: jeff, thanks for your excellent storytelling and accurate

account of my personal experience as an 18-year-old marine in the final storm. i also enjoyed reading no less than victory, and i'm now reading the rising tide. my question is, have you ever eaten a k ration? you write about them a lot. [laughter] >> guest: well, i write about them a lot because they all had 'em. [laughter] yes, i have, actually. and i probably didn't enjoy it any more than mr. dente did. however, if you're, you know, he was on okinawa, if you're in that situation and, you know, you're in a muddy foxhole -- and there are plenty of those on okinawa -- and that's all you've got the eat, so be it. you probably appreciated it a lot more than i did at an army base when there's nobody shooting. no, i have to say when i get letters like that, there is nothing that makes me feel better. it makes me feel more gratifieded for what i co.

and -- for what i do. and mr. dente notwithstanding, and i did my book on normandy. i got a book from a guy who's -- a note from a guy who's in the airborne, three in the morning over the british, you know, the english channel to drop down into what ended up being water and drowned a bunch of guys, and the guy said you put me right back on that plane. and you made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. and you made me remember things i never wanted to remember. you got it right, and i know because i was there. what's better than that? you know? if i ever need any reinforcement that i'm doing my job, there it is. and i'm so honored that anyone who did, who walked the walk, you know, who did the deed would take the time to tell me, to say anything to me. and, you know, it's like that i'm not worthy thing. but to recognize what i'm doing is useful and is accurate and is maybe helping him to cope with

some of the horrific memories he, no doubt, is carrying around with him, then i'm really doing my job. and i am so pleased to hear from people like that. >> host: did you interview ed dente? >> guest: no. i think i've received a couple of e-mails from the elder gentleman in the past on mr. dente's behalf. >> host: he must be mid 90s now, right? >> guest: at least 90, it would have to be. okinawa was 1945 -- >> host: he was 18 then so, do the math. >> guest: exactly. yep. >> host: yep. newt gingrich sent out a tweet when the frozen hours came out. i don't know if you've ever seen this. we're going to show it to you. and it says that jeff shaara's the frozen hours is a remarkable reminder of the dangers of intelligence and strategic errors in korea. >> guest: very nice, thank you. i had not seen that. so, yeah, boy, we could talk a long time about that.

i mean, i was nervous about the character of douglas mac arthur because there are a lot of people in this country absolutely worship the man. and i wonderedded, okay, how many of those people are going to write me and say how dare you, because that take -- the take from general oliver smith who i mentioned earlier, the take of the marines about what macarthur told them to do based on his absolutely dismal intelligence reporting -- i mean, i without getting deeply into the story. here's the book, i could get very deeply into the story. .. what mccarthy does then is probably the greatest thing he

ever did. a stroke of genius. he invades south korean port above where the north koreans are and get behind them to cut them off. it works good north koreans are cut the supply lines of the end of streaming back into north korea. and macarthur could have basically won the war or lease put it back to where it started. send them home. it is not good enough for him. he decides he's going north. he crosses the border. the marines leading the way and one, two prongs of this. and they are doing great. the korean army is pretty much defeated. silver suddenly their price here and there they captured prisoners. and they are not north koreans. they are chinese. why recapturing chinese? macarthur is intelligence comes back and says, no you're not!

or, if they are chinese, there are a few volunteers that is come south. to fight for their friends. that is the intelligence report. for all of the marines which is what this is all about, the 15,000 marines advance knowledge and advance into a trap, the jaws set by 125,000 chinese troops. recommended general -- and others in north korea. macarthur has no idea. macarthur and his intelligence people are in complete denial that the chinese have in fact entered the war. not just in the war but send hundreds of thousands of troops southward into north korea and we work -- the cost of that was catastrophic. there was nervous about telling

the story because i expected nasty letters from people who were supporters of the start there. i got one. i guided my face about three weeks ago in dallas. you have besmirched the reputation of a great american hero. well, okay fine. that is one opinion. the guy was also in st. louis on tour for the book in the front row is an marine that survived and i said this and he spoke up and he said, i can think of 15,000 marines that hate his guts. and i am so happy to hear that. thank you, i appreciate that. you know i will take more credit with that comment. the story of what happened to the americans in korea is an avoidable story but then how much more is avoidable? how often can you say that? and i think that is probably the case. >> was america in any way

prepared? >> absolutely not! world war ii, 1945, we are by far the strongest military the world has ever seen. which made up for anymore? we send them all home. the marines particularly. the marine corps is downsized, president talks about getting of the marine corps for good. and then a lot of them at this time home and they have a life -- a wife and a kid. then suddenly we need you. they're called back appeared and of course their trains. there are budget people going to korea that had no training no even times to do that. and it is not a good thing. and so that is how the war begins. it goes on from there. >> let's hear from john in washington.good afternoon. >> good afternoon. i have two quick questions for

you. one, when lincoln freed the slaves, why didn't he preach general grants free slaves? and secondly in a different war, has he ever considered doing a book about daniel morgan? first of all that is a chapter. i've done that story in my second book on the american revolution. it is a great story! i love him. and that is a huge victory for the colonists. and so, i have done that. i am not sure what you mean by grants, grant did not have slaves. grants father-in-law at the beginning of the war, grants father-in-law, did all slaves

and granted have a problem with that. but grant never owned slaves. and i am not sure exactly what you mean, there were certainly, there were colored troops marching with grant at various times in the war. but they were not indentured. they were not slaves. they were free troops. i'm not really sure what that implies. >> if you cannot get there on the farm as if several social media sites. you can go to @booktv that is the handle for twitter, instagram and facebook as well. plus we have email, booktv@cspan.org.i will run through several emails. this is from ron. when will mr. shaara tackle a novel about --

>> this is an gods and generals. different points of view. one of the things i learned early on, i hate to describe what i do as more books but you can have too many battles. you have too many battles it is one of the flaws in the film, gods and generals for they shall battle scene after battle scene. the audience gets two that after a while you can only really have two major battles in any film or any book. clearly, again, you just get two the details. so i treated this a little bit of different way. you see this from chandler's point of view and then you see the aftermath of hancox point of view. to get the effect of what happened there. just not out of bullets whistle by your ears. >> this is john in mississippi. when it comes the first world war book, did you original

contracts multiple books or was it supposed to be a single book mapquest that was probably my best book. i think it was probably my favorite book. maybe the korea book. but originally, yes it should have been two books. in new york random house, notably that there was an audience for two books on world war i. but basis and that i compacted into one book.it is also my longest book. but you have the flying a story, the red baron and a wonderful story. a character almost no one has ever heard of. the finest we ever produced in this country. -- i love that story. the red baron on the other side, he is not a cartoon character. he is the real guy! and a wonderful character. and you have people that got and realize what role the marines played in the first

world war. maybe you have heard of that. the marines win and i really enjoyed that story. i'm glad it was mentioned because i knew nothing. like most people. i knew nothing about world war i. >> you are the civil war guy. >> well, the civil war, it's interesting i went back to the american revolution and my publisher was nervous. first of all they're going to care about the american revolution and the second, what i found out was that possible there are budget people out there that care about the american revolution and don't care about the civil war. and then this other wonderful thing. i say this with humility. a lot of people probably to the american revolution. and then i hear from these people, they went the civil war books but they like world war ii stuff. and they said i didn't know

about that. so, never following my gut, i don't take it for granted. it is a really nice thing. you know i get the letters before you go back and do the next story on the civil war? and it is a good one. there are a bunch of them. all i can say is never say never. >> two civil war questions quickly. bob in north carolina. it is amazing to me that this is a long in-depth discussion of the civil war and grant has hardly been mentioned. >> i will set the record straight. grant is very general. i talked about sherman at length but sherman was under grant. and grant, when he, i love writing!in the last full measure it is grants first meeting with lincoln. and they don't know what to make of each other. they sit down and lincoln explains to him, if you will just bite, i will leave you alone. do what you have to do.

i will send you all of the help i can. i will not table to do. grant so appreciates that and the results of that as they say is history. early in the 64 remnant makes mistake. catastrophic mistake that grant makes. the first day as a perk commander in a thousand casualties in 30 minutes. but yes, he wins the war. grant and sherman between them are responsible for the victory happened and when it happened. >> john thomas civil war reenactor? what is your favorite one minute civil war stories itself the public? >> about reenacting? i have a behind the scenes story on a set of the film gettysburg. every time they set up a scene it is choreographed. in the background you have the wagon and people walking has to be set up very carefully. there is a scene where lee and along street, tom barringer and martin sheen on horseback.

slowly going for the camera and the conversation is going on. then the problem is the horse that martin sheen is on has a mind of its own. it suddenly goes off and is not just cut and go back and do it again. these guys overhear these guys have to go back over there. it is a big involved thing. after about three times the director is really getting frustrated with the stupid horse. and finally, they are running out of daylight, they're shooting the scene and the horse is minding, the members of going, how many seconds it has to be. just as they're about to finish the scene, if one brings in the building. in one of the reenactors yell out, it is jeb stuart is going to be a little late. if you know the story it is funny but if not i just wasted

your time. reenactors do have a sense of humor. i will leave it at that. >> arnold is calling in from north carolina. you are on with jeff shaara. >> hello, good afternoon. good to talk to you mr. shaara. i read your books and your father's book. your father's book is what got me started in being a civil war buff because in my small town in north carolina is a monument inside the courthouse that is dedicated to north carolina resident and i never knew this until i read your father's book. what it was all about. the north carolina, it was a behind -- at the high watermark. at least my question. why was lee such a -- and engineering some battles, when he saw 70 bows especially when he fought gettysburg. he was watching the sort of

getting mowed down. i mean this was like this to the whole war. the market until those kind of situations and nobody learned anything. just one after the other, then you had gettysburg and they all attacked and got mowed down. they made the trilogy, i missed that. have a good day. >> i touched on this a little earlier. up until then that is the only way the generals knew how to fight a war. it is the way they were taught. it was unmanly to hide behind a tree. and after you to the wilderness and spots later in the morning, all of the sudden, they called monastery, the queen of spain in the trenches with their

shovels. after that you cannot get enough shovels. they began to realize that getting up there, that guy pointing a musket in my head might not be the best place to be. i would rather be in a hole. maybe it is not that mailing to hide but up until that time the soldiers were doing what they were told that the generals have learned how to fight by reading books on napoleon. napoleon stood his men out to the british and the american revolution. they had the bayonet. it was not a musket that was good it was that thing on the front that with a guy. we didn't have them. that was one of the reason that the british won. a guy coming out with a bayonet at you. so as things got better the tactics did not change and they slaughter is history. we know what happens as a result. finally, the word was passed a little bit lately tactics

started to change. >> going to your 15 books, i didn't really think about much but the importance of supply line. >> sure. supplies. it is easy to throw numbers around. they however, schmidt, they are marching north, one skinny little road going up and down mountains and so forth their snow and ice. how are they eating? they have a backpack. that was in the backpack? whatever is in the back is gone. what happens then? the doctors, deportment, bandages, plasma. the blood freezes then you cannot use it. they have morphine to put in their mouth so they can give it to a guy in pain. what happens when that is gone? this supply line in every commander of any army

everywhere in history of the world, is not here about that is gloriously fascinating. you never hear about that but every good commander knows what's important is people is what's happening back there. where the pfizer coming from. treat these guys and yes, this is a huge part of every one of these. >> we have john from california. good afternoon. >> hello. >> yes, hello. >> i have a question for mr. shaara. i also am dismayed about the -- mexican-american war. on st. patrick's day holiday, i celebrate with my friends, the honor and bravery of -- who joined the mexican help them.

>> all right will thank you for that.>> and happy to comment. i don't know that i would celebrate that. what you're describing is a very brief history lesson here. all of the americans going into mexico. mexico at the time was a very catholic country. all catholic churches. a lot of americans though are not catholic. but two of them are. some are irish, you the irish catholics that came over. immigrants and submissively catholic, worshipers in general. they're very uncomfortable realizing they're going to a catholic country and doing what they are doing. and so, there are a number of them. the number is disputed probably about 80 perhaps give or take who deserved the american lines for the globes the mexican. here's why i have a problem. it is one thing to say i quit. you're fighting for a cause i do not believe in. i am going home. they don't go home. they go to the other side.

they pick up a rifle and they shoot back. she had americans now killing americans. and they are captured, -- there captured. a number of them are hanged. scott has to make the decision want to do with these people. it is one thing to desert, it is another thing to pick up the rifle and kill your own. so celebrating that, i do not know that i agree with that. you can make the argument that there is immorality there is a jonathan but what is the immorality killing of one of their own or killing anyone for that matter? >> according to the veterans administration and research service, 4400 americans were killed in the american revolutionary war. after that 2.4 billion in current dollars in the mexican war 1846 to 1848. 13,000 americans, 2.4 billion. the civil war -- estimates are

all over the board on that one. 79, $80 billion. world war i. one year of us involvement, 116,000 deaths. and then after world war ii, 407,000 deaths, $4.1 trillion in cost. korean war, 54,000 deaths. 341 billion dollars. in washington d.c. right here in the city, go ahead -- >> mr. shaara, thank you. from the beginning you talked about -- being 95 percent authentic i think. many of the other places, the battlefield and memorials and they are still conserved by the

national park service. i am curious, when you go to these places, many times national park service focuses on the history in terms of the fact and the names of the regiments and who was wearing and when they moved. and so on. yet, they are archived as tremendous treasures. everything from the mantle clock from the uss arizona from the war in the pacific to the bible with many holes through it and even lincolns coat that he wore at ford's theater. i am just curious how all of this has informed you or have you taken advantage of all of that and tried to get into the heads of all of these people that you write so well about. >> thank you. the short answer to your question is yes.

absolutely. the park service, to their credit, they have limited resources. when you go to the visitor center there will be exhibits and museums. gettysburg has a really good one. when you can see a lot of these artifacts. you're talking at the ground, it is hard for them to have the resources to tell the story the way i tell it. i don't mean to sound facetious here. i am going to say something stupid here but if you go to the bookstore maybe they will have my books on sale. that being said, it is extremely, one reason i go this route. i do not tell you, shiloh, where the impacts and things that really got to me, there is a monument at shiloh that -- lost six bugbears. what that means is that every time someone is carrying the flag and gets shot another guy

comes on picks up and carries it.six of them. six were killed. there is a monument. and so, my character, is in the 16th wisconsin. that is why. because i respect just without monument told me about what those men went through. the exhibits, i will pick up tidbits all over the place from things exactly like that. definitely, that is why i tried to go to the ground. >> email from susan. there's been a lot of discussion in the last few years about the blurred line between creative nonfiction and historical fiction. how do you distinguish between these two genres? for example, do you invent secondary characters? or will do so custody playing with the facts in a way that you do not allow yourself? >> i am not sure what the nonfiction, what that term actually means. i still believe i am writing

historical fiction. the facts are there and they are accurate. and i've said before, i begin this to death all over the country. it is a novel by definition because you are there you are hearing the dialogue. occasionally, by then not even a secondary, a tertiary character. someone way down will serve a function. regardless of what the character may be. all the characters, the primary voices you hear, they are all based on real people. as i said earlier, we have an eisenhower or patton or someone like that, it is an easy research, it is the anonymous one that you never heard of that is tougher. those tend to be composites of several people. so the experiences all happen. there are accurate. maybe just not that one person. and that really, in my world, that is what i do. people, if they are in the same

kind of thing they can go all over the place. >> we have taught, retired colonel, us marine corps. who is your favorite character to research? >> annamarie might be surprised. he probably wants to hear -- which actually would, that would be a terrific marine. i had a lot of fun with that character. going back to the beginning, my favorite character is benjamin franklin. yeah, i know. i get that response. i know exactly -- [laughter] i mentioned earlier, when you are writing grim stories, world war i comes to mind. you need humor. i hate the term comic relief. it is not comic relief. but it is the reality of human beings. you need that character who makes you smile and makes you laugh because there's a lot of bad stuff going on. after a while, you don't want to read anymore bad stuff.

we just become non- were immune to it. franklin is that character. he is funny! i love the man. one way that question has been asked, who would you like to have lunch with? benjamin franklin, absolutely. >> -- california, you are on the air. >> yes, jeff, michael tells a story years ago as a young man he was hitchhiking to pennsylvania. and he slipped on the grounds at gettysburg. and he says the ghosts of gettysburg scared the crap out of him. what can you tell us about the ghosts of war? >> first of all, the ghost surgeon business in gettysburg is an industry. i think there's something 13 different ghost touring companies and they do landmark business. i'm not necessarily a subscriber of that. i do know people that have had

very intense experiences. i will not go into details on that. i will tell you a funny story for this qucbec the gentleman before. when we were put in gettysburg, you have an magnificent horseman in full uniform. they had to move them from one side of the battlefield to the other. they were filming something and am about to put the horses in, they were running out of daylight. and they say this just right it is quicker. so rather than go through all the trouble we're just going to write across the battlefield. imagine, you are from iowa and you're out there go on a ghost tour that night walking across the battlefield here comes general john bell hood and his staff running across the battlefield. i've often wonder when people saw that, if they pretended they did not see it. because they were in full uniform and looked just like

them! i often wondered how many people thought that a major ghost experience seeing that. i'm not ridiculing that at all. believe me. it is a very serious thing to a lot of people. there been some interesting experiences that i have heard of around that town get after that there are others in different sites, revolutionary worksites wearing the same thing. i've never had an experience like that. it might be interesting if i did. it might change my perspective. a lot of people do. >> does it at significance that ike's farm is at gettysburg? >> yes. i'm doing an event there in september. in mid-september at the eisenhower farm i will do a book signing. to help my marketing. it is beautiful. absolutely beautiful! he loved the area. and after world war ii, he

retired. even after he died, it was quite a few years later, my wife actually was a ranger at the eisenhower farm. i've taken the tour. ... fifteen books in total. his web site is jeffshaara.com, and he has been our guest on this special fiction edition of "in depth." next month it's novelist walter

mosley. >> c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies, and today we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court and public policy events in washington, d.c. and around the country. c-span is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. >> welcome to the international spy museum, my name is ben houghton, let me know, how many of you are here for the very first time, you've never been to the museum before?