professor hamner, what three wars did you choose and why? >> guest: the book looks at the experience of american history soldiers in the war for independence, the civil war and the second world war. and i picked those three because i wanted to survey broadly the experience of soldiers fighting in three different centuries. so what was similar about their experiences of being on the ground and fighting and what the differences in that experience was, were and how and why they evolved over time. >> host: what consistencies did you find from the revolutionary war to world war ii? >> guest: well, for soldiers in battle there are some very profound commonalities, obviously. the presence of danger, the smothering appearance of death, the threat of injury, disfigurement, the confusion, the chaos, the noise. those things change very little. in fact, i think we could go back, you know, thousands of years ago from ancient times and find those exact qualities just as you would find in the 21st century combat zone. >> host: so there's a constant. what a

. >> host: christopher hamner what about training? >> the differences of training your very vivid. in the 18th and 19th century soldiers spend most of their time in gauged in drill and it is vitally important for an infantry formation to keep its integrity physically they have to stay together and march in lockstep to or and reload the weapons and as you can imagine amidst the danger in chaos that was a difficult task. the training regimen emphasize rote memorization and a small member of this coelho manipulations to perform effectively in combat. i just referred to the says the overlearned have been a pretty is familiar with the phenomenon things that are in mcgrady a in your body through physical repetition become easier to perform in stressful situation. 18th and 19th century much training was focused on getting soldiers to perform these manipulations almost robotic three. in fact, a number of the of theorists suggested in order for human beings to be calm and defective he had to first be transformed into the automaton. by the 20th century, of being has automaton and was no long

. >> host: christopher hamner is an associate professor of history at george mason university what do you teach? >> guest: i teach mostly american military history. >> host: "enduring battles: american soldiers in three wars, 1776-1945." published by the university of kansas press. >>> we'd like to hear from you. tweet us your feedback, twitter.com/booktv. and now,. >> and now an interview from george mason university. >> host: depth and redemption is the name of the book, the gulag and the shaping of soviet society is the title. stephen a. barnes is the author. first of all, professor barnes, what is a gulag? >> guest: the gulag is -- in short -- well, it has two meetings. it's an acronym for a bureaucratic institution. but, of course, it's been used much more generally to mean primarily labor camps, but also a system of interimly-exiled people and some prisons as well. in the large part, we're talking about the soviet penal system, but also a system that held political prisoners in the soviet union. >> host: when and how were they developed? >> guest: the first lay wore camps -- lab

let's bring in jim hamner washington. defense attorney bernie grim and ted williams.never wild about a lot of us. >> no. he was kind of a -- barney didn't work hard to make friends. >> greta: concerts fun or work? >> well, ask yourself, at 9:00, every night of the week, do you feel -- >> what they did to me down there, greta, i was in a civil lawsuit. i had no criminal record. i had never been to jail before. they would shackle me in a shower. handcuff and shackle me. make me walk naked around. i was fantasizing about abu ghraib stories. >> what did your father say in the phone call? >> in the phone call, yeah, he called me and said there is people here in front of the house that are looking for their daughter. >> greta: did you know who they meant? who the daughter was. >> at that point when i got that phone call i was like, you know [bleep] girl from last night. girl from the beach. >> greta: you mentioned your faithfulness. nicole brown simpson was unfaithful to you. >> so. she wasn't married to me. i don't recall -- i didn't find out what denise had told me someth

. >> christopher hamner is an associate professor of history at george mason university. what you teach? >> i teach mostly american military history. >> "enduring battle: american soldiers in three wars, 1776-1945", published by the university campus press. >> you're watching the tv on c-span2. 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend. >> next, jeopardy champion ken jennings presents a history of cartography and examines the ways that maps are used today. this is about 40 minutes. >> thank you. very kind. can you guys should be okay? thanks for coming out. this is a lot of people. i have been here many times. very excited, like i got to go through a bathroom and was through a garage, some office, where are we? were in the middle of capitol hill. nice to see guys. i'm ken jennings. i think what we will do is i will talk a little bit, about the book, and then i don't how this will go but i want to do an impromptu geography quiz. it's pretty fun when we turn the signing into a game show. i don't know what c-span will think about that. we're going to do a quiz s