give a warm welcome to ben blum. [applause] >> thank you so much for having me here. i've been strolling around savannah all day with my wife and six-year-old daughter, and i have to say i think every city should be tired have a nice little monument every two blocks as you walk around. it's perfect for strollingment more importantly, it's perfect for hunting pokemon and pokÉmon go, which is what our daughter is most excited about. we have been enjoying the spanish moss. a portion of "ranger games" takes place four hours west of here, at fort benning. a very different side of georgia. so, you might be french for thinking that this is a book about war. but it's not actually a book about war. the cover has some soldiers on it and soldiers are mentioned in he subtitle, but ranger games is about a lot of things on the kind of periphery of the experience of war. it's about family, it's about the way that good intentions go wrong, and maybe more importantly than anything, it's about growing up. it's about the beautiful illusions that propel us to follow our dreams, and the w

our author today, ben blum is here courtesy of the generosity of villainy in a while. ben blum holds a phd from the university of california berkeley as well as an msa infection from new york university where he was awarded "the new york times" foundation fellowship. his debut book in subject for today's talk is his 2017 book entitled "ranger games" appeared restraint and give anyone savanna welcome to "ranger ben . [applause] >> thank you so much for having me here. i've been strolling around savanna all day with my wife and six-year-old daughter and i have to say i think every city should be required to have a niceum little monument every two boxes you're walking around. it's perfect for strolling around. more than anything it's perfect for hunting pokÉmon and pokemon go which is what our daughter is most excited about. we've been really enjoying the spanish mosque in regency architecture. it takes place about four hours a of here were pending from a different site of church. so you might be forgiven for thinking that this is a book about war, but it's not actually a

now, in just a few minutes it's the final author of the day, ben blum, and he reports on the life of his cousin, alex blum, who was an army ranger who participated in an armed robbery before he was set to deploy to iraq. and we'll be right back with live coverage. [inaudible conversations] >> here's a look at some upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country. on march 10th and 11th, we'll be live from the university of arizona for the tucson festival of books with author talks and call-ins. this year's festival features msnbc's katie tur and charles sykes, max boot, investigative journalist david cay johnston and many other authors. later in march it's the virginia festival of the book in charlottesville and the national black writers conference in brooklyn, new york. in april we're headed to texas for the san antonio book festival, and we'll be live once again at the los angeles times festival of books. for more information about up coming book -- upcoming book fairs and test values, click -- festivals, click the book fairs tabben our web site, booktv.org. >> let's