and were led by mary trump's book critical of the president titled too much and never enough and following the lead of other upcoming festivals, the brooklyn book festival announced that it's going to be held virtually from september 28 to october 25. they are very event will feature over hundred 50 offers. booktv will continue to bring new programs as publishing news. ... >> and policymakers debate the future this week we bring you

chris wallace, inker of fox news sunday. 2014 marked his 50th year in the broadcast industry. he has participated in coverage of nearly every major political event and secured high profile interviews of dignitaries and leaders. he has broadcast the sunday morning show every sunday.

chris wallace is with us today to speak about his new book count town in 1945 - - countdown 1945 that recounts the lives of ordinary americans in japanese during the wartime and the americans and the pacific to launch a possible invasion of japan. a story how in 116 days truman goes to the vice president to be completely cut out of the fdr white house to suddenly become the president. the story of the flight crew and others we invite you to join our view on - - virtual program with chris wallace and reagan foundation institute executive director. >> chris wallace, congratulations. what a terrific book. as you may know guess come

through the reagan library this is a terrific book and a historical thriller. i just loved it. congratulations not just the first effort but a great first effort. >> thank you. that's awfully nice. the idea of a history on - - historical thriller is out there because my favorite review of the "washington post" that says i know what happened 1945 but this is a thriller. a lot of people have said they could not put it down. i am thrilled because that's exactly what i wanted to do. this is in the distant past we know why it happened i wanted to take you into the moment and in this case 1845 with

those 160 days from april 12 when he is summoned to the white house and then finds out roosevelt is dead and is sworn in and the secretary of war takes him aside to say i need to tell you about an immense project with the most devastating weapon in history which is the first inkling president truman has of the existence of the manhattan project but also loss elements as they call the adam bomb 21 days before the bombing and you know like a during their mission with those 1500 miles

don't know if the bomb if it ever had been dropped out of a plane if the aftershock would knock them out of the sky. that's what i was trying to do that it was a page turner and a thriller i am thrilled. >> my father was a b-29 pilot in the air force so you put us in the room where it happened in the communications and that was a masterful job. well done. >> thank you. that's exactly what i was trying to do. there are so many dramatic moments. truman has a meeting with his work cabinet june 18 and henry

stimson, the general of the army, all of the top brass discussing how the nazis surrendered may 8 and how they will finish the war against the japanese and there is a long discussion of the invasion of japan how many troops it would take and how long it prolongs the war, hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides and then the assistant secretary of war ended up becoming a major figure as the high commissioner to germany , member of the warren commission and head of the world bank. but he was a junior guy and he says nobody gets out of the room without telling what they think. so he asked his boss and said go ahead. he said we should have our heads examined if we don't at least discuss the bomb.

literally that was the first time in this meeting they were talk about the casualties and the length of the invasion but nobody said anything about the bomb and then basically it was dismissed at that point because it had never been tested. and against at hiroshima because in june it was a science project. >> and then what made you choose this particular moment? >> we had that idea to do the key moment of history at the

time they didn't know facing these tremendous challenges and they don't know what will happen if you talk about reagan and what ended up happening. and then to cover six years of reagan. but having covered them in real life that drama in these enormous discussions and the possibility they could be in all nuclear weapons to say it failed is one thing but they went through and have this meeting creates a tremendous sense of suspense. i wanted to do that but i didn't have the subject. february 2019, the day that president trump would deliver the state of the union address and nancy pelosi invited several tv anchors over to her hideaway in the capital this

is the one that a lot of speakers have and it is a tradition in washington that if the speaker and the president of opposing partie parties, that the speaker will deliver a pre- speech to tell you all the reasons that is bad. so we're sitting in the room and nancy pelosi says this is the board of education. i knew that it had been the hideaway for rayburn and this is where he would have people come after hours to plot strategy or have a bourbon or to gossip and vice president truman was a regular. so on april 12 he went over and pelosi is telling us the story that in this room truman called the white house and

speaks to a white house official in says you need to get to the white house as quickly and quietly as possible. truman put down the phone and says to the room jesus christ and general jackson which i had never heard before. [laughter] but i thought to myself that is it. that's my story and the one i will delve into to create a historical thriller and as it turns out i didn't know 116 days from when they are alerted when the bomb is dropped on hiroshima. and some sounded miserable. it is a very odd experience

there are times when you get a delicious fact. i didn't know i knew jesus christ and general jackson but i didn't know when i started the project when truman gets to the white house he is alerted for the first time. with those juicy details. they only tested the bomb once on july 21st. i'm sorry, july 16 and 21 days before they ended up using it so now they are on the launchpad and somebody says look, if we put the 10000-pound bomb that was inappropriately called little boy in front of the plane and

then a bunch of extra at the back it will be more weight than we have ever carried in the plane might crash on takeoff. and the adam bomb will destroy all of us. so they suddenly say it's only two days before the mission we cannot take off with allies bomb we have to arm it on the plane during the mission. and they say can you do that? he says i never have but i will learn. so in sweltering heat and when they finally do take off with the unarmed bomb to get off safely and on their way to hiroshima and then they have

to do the rewiring. and only then that the bond is armed and ready to go. >> so go back to your questions so moments like that it is a joy. how do i tell the story in these disparate elements together? this is hard work. my daughter is in publishing there is no nepotism here but i said to her writing a book is hard work and she rolled her eyes and said i'm glad you discovered that. [laughter] >> chris, did it surprise you

that truman didn't know the first thing about the building of this bomb. that he and roosevelt had only spoken a couple of times during the fourth term of the presidency. but i guess that was the case. >> a lot of people have asked me about that. to be vice president 82 days and that privately with roosevelt twice and is 82 days. you have to remember that was roosevelt's fourth term. even the second vice president. he is gotten very good at ignoring vice presidents they coming go. and those are the people i

count on to make these decisions and push them off to the side. i mentioned the fact he is taken aside on the day he is sworn in and i will tell you about the project. and just become the president. then on april 25, 13 days later he comes into the oval office to brief president truman and meanwhile general leslie groves the commander of the manhattan project snuck in through underground tunnels they thought the two of them coming to the front door together who built the pentagon and what grows and stimson were doing together.

and they gave truman a detailed document to read which really explained the manhattan project in historical and technical detail. truman complained he said it all like reading long documents and said mr. president i cannot say it any more succinctly it is a complicated project that is how out of touch he was but by the end that he had mastered all of it. >> those that are working on this manhattan project and not a word gets out. that is amazing. >> you are exactly right.

people say to me you are covering the ups and downs and ends and outs today of washington. and then searching and writing and then it has nothing to do with donald trump. is not a knock on the president but it took me away from the stuff we are in and it goes precisely to your point in working on this for two plus years 125,000 people at oak ridge tennessee and in washington and flight crews and not one word leaks about the project. if you have 125,000 people today working on a secret

project to bake apple pie by day number two somebody would tweet this is outrageous and immoral and i will blow the whistle. and then to pull together in a common cause against the nazis and the japanese. and we could use that now. >> you are not getting. >> of course you covered the major figures involving the project but then you also chose so tell the listeners about those two. i thought it was a great juxtaposition throughout the book. >> one of the things we wanted to do with this book, i very

much wanted, not just to be on the top level the war wasn't just on the top level but to engage all of american one of the stories i wanted to tell was the home front. there are websites and commentary and amazingly we found two people as a 19 -year-old girl volunteered to work at oak ridge at the uranium enrichment facility. she didn't know what it was. just a big factory. and the giant machines and the women were called the girls and basically had a bunch of knobs and had no idea they

said keep it in the red and you will help to win the war they had no idea what they were doing to enrich uranium with that plutonium to fuel the adam bomb but is not just in the home front but on may 8 for the nazis surrender and a lot of other people that terrified because he will not come home the expectation is into even be shifted to a buddy or conflict in japan and there is a dramatic irony to help create the weapon that is used could save her boyfriends life. that's exactly what happened

that's one of the great things as a student of history often times there are plot lines you would never dream of inventing yourself if you are going to write a novel. a ten -year-old girl and he will shema and like a lot of the families throughout the country they had no expectation of the adam bomb but they expected to be bond so the parents would send their children out to the countryside so there were a bombing they would be safe and they sent to what they thought was a school she hated it but she couldn't send a letter home because the school censored it because allied of

students were telling the parents get me out of here and mailed a letter from the local post office to say get me out of here. she shows up on august 4th and says stand here couple of days and said absolutely night and they go home that means they are in hiroshima when the bond is dropped august 5th. and to see a clip of you going into the smithsonian to see the presence of that massive day right there in front of

her. >> we did a documentary for fox news. i assume a lot of you do subscribe to fox nation. you can found it mine - - mind that there. i said why do you consider coming to washington for an interview? she sat on one condition. i want to go see the enola gay. i never would have dreamt of the van asking her to do something like that but she wanted to do it. so we drove out one day and got permission to go before the museum opened we walked up to it they said do you feel

anger? she says no i feel grief stricken and she thought for a while and said i want to say a prayer for peace and said he's an old man he needs to leave the museum and go to sleep. and she said sayonara and on some level brought her closure. >> that was such a great moment. going back to truman for a second, i know it's not eas easy, but summarize for me the dilemma that truman faced with the dropping of the bomb and his rationale.

>> obviously one of the great questions a last 75 years with the 75th anniversary of all of these events and the dropping of the bomb on hiroshima. should we are not? i really haven't studied or thought about a it wasn't a choice between dropping the bomb or doing nothing. it was a choice between dropping the bomb or invading. if we invaded, as i said, the top experts general marshall, marshall, and all the top people at the pentagon said in the summer of 45 you can expect the war to go on at least another year and a half through the end of 1946 and expect 1 million japanese

casualties in half a million american casualties because as they got closer and closer to the japanese homelan homeland, instead of the soldiers losing spirit in fact they thought more fiercely at okinawa they thought they would take it over in two days , it took them three months and ended up having to kill 100,000 japanese and the 20000 left, and none surrendered. some committed suicide, some kept fighting the summer taken prisoner but they did not surrender. they need it would have a terrible battle on their hand if they did invade some people say okay they would have surrendered any way to which my response is we drop the bomb on hiroshima august 6 they do not surrender for three days then they drop a

second bomb on nagasaki and still they do not surrender and only then the emperor he would go decides to go with the japanese government directed to the people and gets on the radio really that's the first time the vast majority - - majority that they heard the voice of their emperor and basically said we have to surrender and that was it but it took bombs and in emperor going over the heads of the government to get the japanese to surrender. one issue for truman and of any president would make that decision but if you had invaded and sent thousands or hundreds of thousands of americans to their death with a grievous injury and then later it would come out and then you had access to a weapon that conceivably could have ended the war in a flash

and use that i will not use it, i don't know if any president could have face that. or would have wanted to. as a realistic practical matter i don't think truman had any choice. >> chris one of the ways on some occasion the material you got was excellent so what were your core sources quick. >> i wonder if you are doing this may be a little bit after i read all of the history and histories out there that are

very good you want more. where did i go? the truman library in independence missouri i spent a few days there with the archivist to go through these and the treasure trove was the diary because i often think to myself covering reagan in the eighties after spending six years in the white house press corps what are they thinking at that moment what is going on in their mind and now we have access we have a much better sense of that. but the truman diaries were terrific. and he said a lot of things in those diaries and those conversations one of the things i found interesting

that most people's perception of truman they could be thought of as a very decisive man the buck stops here and he never looked back. he never look back and said i would do it again. but as he is making the decision with stalin in july in 45 he was really struggling with this decision and having trouble sleeping at night and complained of fierce headaches he had whenever he was under stress in his career, and in his diary he talks about this terrible weapon and describes an apocalyptic terms as the fire distraction and prophecy in the bible. he made the decision and never look back. but this was an enormous

decision to give it all the weight in the inner turmoil and struggling he should have. >> tough job to be a president. >> there has been extensive books written. what a man. you describe a more renaissance figure and a genius. >> absolutely. half a dozen languages learne learned, sanskrit so he can read the buddhist writings , fabulous as a physicist people had no question if he had any executive skills at all. but as a scientific director at los alamos. what he had to juggle general

gross a bulldozer of a military man and then frankly all these pre- madonna scientist to rebuild at the idea of deadlines and military order. he had to keep them going. another great nugget of the book is after the bombing and after the war ends and says i had to make the decision. if i had to make the call i would do it again. if they were military men this is the way to defeat the enemy. they did have second thoughts. albert einstein started the whole manhattan project in 1939 writing a letter to roosevelt. and his concern the refugees

left nazi germany, they were concerned they would get the atomic weapon before the us and god forbid hitler had a monopoly at mass destruction so oppenheimer comes to the white house and september truman and says mr. president. i have these terrible regrets. i have a lot of money hands. truman says don't worry about it i gave the order i have the blood on my hands. oppenheimer leaves and truman says i never went to see that son of a bench in this office ever again.

>>. >> you tell a story in the book i have not heard before in that part of the pulitzer with the new york times and the opportunity in this project and how that turned out. >> this is the joy. talk about good days and bad days. william leonard lawrence was a distinguished science reporter for the new york times. he won a pulitzer prize with a group of others for writing an article in a scientific project. and also thinks it will be an immense story and i want the story told right.

and the unity of what we have today. so the military general those to see the editor because he knows about lawrence i would like to get william lawrence in like him to disappear off the face of the earth and i want him to go inside the greatest story of all time. i don't think he told the editor was but the editor said can you imagine that today cracks and you say you'll have the greatest story of all time but you cannot tell it and tell be tell you that you can.

so the idea of this great story was then brought inside and hung out at los alamos and was there when they tested the bomb july 16 and he had a genius and we quote at great length one that appeared until after the bomb exploded and truman announced the whole project to the world that he came up with a phrase the atomic age that was written by william lawrence. i wish my writing was as good as william lawrence but you can read some of his in the book. and is not allowed on the

first flight because i just had 12 men and they don't spare the extra seat but he does go on the nagasaki flight as the first person witness to see the detonation of the second atomic bomb in warfare. he's a great character and it is a delight to read. think about it how do you describe the first atomic bomb flash? how do you describe seeing and atomic bomb take out a city? he doesn't masterfully. >> so there is a movement. and for him in the new york times that was made at the time.

it is an interesting story. >> during that period of time behind the scenes he was on the government payroll. and and so at a certain point and said he should give back to the pulitzer. >> but it just leapt off the page as a piece of history. and that was a scientist on the manhattan project and

turned out to be a russian spy. tell that story. >> yes. one of the issues for churchill and truman because the british in the us were involved togethe together. when the bomb explodes truman gets word and so does churchill almost at the same time that they are discussing when do we tell stalin? he doesn't know anything. we don't want to tell him to early or too much but if we don't tell him anything if we are supposedly allies he will reason to and create more problems and they already have major problems between russia on the one side and britain on the other.

they will not give it up. so after one of the sessions, truman goes over to stalin to tell him about it. and he doesn't bring his translator uses the russian translator and and stalin says something basically to put it to good use with the enemy and then turns away. and truman is dumbfounded. churchill comes up and says it's a very short confrontation. he said i now. and even truman's russian

translator is wondering if they translated properly. the truth is stalin was interested, just not surprised because there was a german scientist who was a refugee ending up in the united states as a member of the german communist party to be the only force inside germany resisted to hitler. dot back in the becat

the bomb and we need to get going and the historian would say 7:25 p.m. on that night is when the nuclear arms race between russia and the u.s. officially began. >> host: do you have another book? it seems you must because they really enjoyed this and it's turned out to be a best-selling book, so when is your next one; do you already have one in mind? >> guest: one of the thoughts i had, is to not only create a historical figur thriller but te able to replicate it. when i came up with a compound

idea, instead of telling history but they are going to count down the days i thought we could do countdown 1945, countdown but ever. i have a couple ideas i haven't settled on yet, but as i said, there are ups and downs, highs and flows, and one of them i'm not just blowing off to get the chance to talk to you about this book but there will be others. >> host: i can't wait to read the others. it's wonderful to see the work you've done and thank you so much for joining us. good luck as you do this but for virtually around the world. >> guest: the virus is going to happen, i will be at one of my favorite places in the world, the reagan library. as you know, i've been there

many times including with mrs. reagan when she was still alive. i look forward to coming to talk with all of you folks in person. >> host: you are welcome anytime. thank you for joining for today's virtual program. we hope this has inspired you to share what you've learned with family and friends into that you'll join again for an upcoming event. >> all great change in america begins at the dinner table set tomorrow night i hope the talking begins. and children, if your parents haven't been teaching you what it means to be an american, let them know. that would be a very american thing to do.

maryland governor as a national governors association larry hogan was sworn in as the 67 the governor of maryland by january 1, 2015. in 2018 he was re- elected to a second term receiving the