coming up on c-span2. >> host: rick atkinson, what is the liberation trilogy? >> guest: began 15 years ago and it is an account of the liberation of europe. particularly from a perspective of americans and other western allies. the first volume begins where europe begins in november of 1942. the invasion of morocco and algeria and the campaign across north africa. the second volume moves north across the mediterranean to the invasion of sicily in july of 1942. southern epperly and september 1943. the third volume begins on the evening of the invasion of normandy. june 4, 1944. the final volume tells the final chapter of this story between europe in may of 1945 onward. >> host: white we began in north africa? >> guest: that is where the story begins. the store you was at the urging of winston churchill to not try to cross the english channel in 1942 and 1943. partly because the american army included the green commanders, partly because we did not have the land and the other materials necessary to undertake that enormous the. so roosevelt, contrary to all of the senior military commanders, i believe to invade north africa in 1942, that took place on november 8. american and british forces fighting not the germans and that is really where the story begins, where we are fighting the french. >> host: why did we begin fighting the french? >> guest: the germans had made a deal in the 1940s and hitler immediately made his way to paris. the gist of the deal was i will keep the northern two thirds of france, including the paris, you french can keep the southern one third and you can keep your overseas possessions, particularly the colonies and north africa. most of the french agreed to this. there were a few that agree to this. so consequently, when we invaded north africa, it is the french who are still there. algeria is essentially at the stake of metropolitan france. >> host: how long did it take to defeat the french? >> guest: three days. the french navy fight ferociously. one of the biggest naval battles of the planet occurred at this time. the first couple days of november 1942. then the french, it so happened that he was in algeria and he finds himself cracked by these invading forces. he negotiated a deal with the british and he agrees that he will surrender and north africa, which happens in the middle of november. reading the fighting and a couple of days of heavy rain going. >> host: rick atkinson, we have a recurring theme through all three of these books. the war in north africa is one of your books in the right that this army ranked 17th in the world in size and combat power just behind romania. from those 136 german division for concord western europe nine months later, the war department reported that it concealed just the homeland that was postponed that had not been tested in 20 years in the army lacked enough aircraft guns to protect even a single city. it is likened to the reconstruction of a dinosaur with three vertebrae. then from your second in the trilogy, the day of battle, from beginning to end, it tended to be improvisational. finally, from the guns at last light, you write that the internal coherence of the allied coalition found a shirt victory. the better alliance had won. certainly it was possible to look at allied warmaking and feel heartfelt about the missed opportunity. you must wonder why they couldn't have been the least clever, sugar, and more intuitive. the allied way of war when all the way through. just to finish that up, an e-mail from jerry back in pennsylvania. at the bottom we have the soldiers who won the war. they are rewarded for their stoic demeanor transfer, dysentery, fuel, food. they are slaughtered by the hundreds, often by the poor planning of their core army group commanders. thousands of these men were wasted for no good purpose. my question, he writes, how did we win the war? >> well, that is a complex question, as you might suspect. to try to simplify it, we won the war for a variety of advantages. we have far more of everything than the germans had, first of all. the material advantages were enormous. we were creating tens of thousands of the art and 10 airplanes. that is important. we are making in an america not only for ourselves and our armed forces but for our friends. we were all sitting almost everything that the french used on our site. it is a substantial portion of what the soviets and others were supplied with. that is important. we learned how to fight. that is part of what the trilogy is about. we learned from the mistakes that were made beginning and north africa and italy, then there were more mistakes in western europe. there is a great sifting out the goes on. it is a sifting out the confident from the incompetent. all the way up to a army commander from the platoon levels. all the way from the physically fit to the physically unfit. the lucky from the unlucky. this is the trade that napoleon price. by the time we get to the summer of 1944, we are pretty good. we have a sizable army. when you put all of those things together and you remember that the soviets are hammering the third reich from the east, they do most of their fighting, they do most of the bleeding, they do most of the killing, and they do most of the dying. 26 million soviets died in the war. it is very good ally to have in the soviet union. you put all of those things together and what you have is a winning coalition and a winning formula for global warfare. >> host: you write in your book, "the guns at last light: the war in western europe, 1944-1945", the statue weight of 144 pounds. the physical standards have been lowered that once kept many young men out of uniform. a man with 20 to 400 vision could be conscripted to fight. the armed forces would make 2.3 billion pairs of eyeglasses for the troops. where we shored on men? >> guest: terribly short. initially to be drafted you had to have at least 12 of your natural 32 teeth. by 1944 was zero. the army had dropped her the army had drafted dentists. they were drafting 12,000 patients a month by 1944. how could they do that? penicillin. they were making it in huge quantities by 1944. all of this because precisely we were short of men this is an effort to build the ranks. 400,000 americans died, the 291,000 killed in action. the war falls heavy on the infantrymen. we were in bad shape, the british were incurably bad shape. >> host: can you talk about the split between europe and america? how much europe have the resources and etc. >> guest: the american army put 89 divisions into the field. about two thirds are in europe. a little less than a third in the pacific. all six greens, they are in the pacific. most of the navy is in the pacific, including virtually all of the aircraft carriers and the bigger battleships and so on. when you look at it that way, you can see the weight between the pacific and it is pretty evenly this let. when you look in terms of manpower, the weight was given to fighting the germans. this is because the decision had been made in earlier 1942. roosevelt and churchill and a senior commander believed that if you could pursue the strongest of the access powers first, then the others would fall from the tree like rotten fruit. it was the first and most important strategic principle that turned out to be true and that is why you see the weight placed on europe even though it is the japanese who had offended us most previously with pearl harbor. >> host: the year 1942. what was that like for the u.s.? >> guest: there was a better argument over where to attack first. when the decision was made that we were going to do this against the germans, for reasons that we discussed, this is a mission and operation. it was the most great gamble of the war for the americans. it included secretly crossing the atlantic when the german submarine threat was at its latest. it is always one of the most difficult kinds of operations. it involves aligning ourselves with waging war in ways that we are not accustomed to. it involves leaving other men in the dark of night, which is what it is fundamentally about. all of this is a high wire act of the first order and that is what 1942 is about. >> host: what is it like on the homefront? >> guest: after pearl harbor, all of the divisiveness over whether to get involved in the, whether to participate, including providing materials to the british and so on, all of that went away. by 1942 there is an anonymity of feeling about the strategic direction of the country. a feeling that we are in it with allies and there is a recognition that this is an existential war. our very way of life is at stake. and don't forget that in 1942, there were about 130 million people in the united states and 16.1 million of them will be in uniform by 1945 and everyone has someone they love in harms way. everyone has a stake in us. that becomes quite clear to americans, almost all americans through the course of 1942. today we have about 2 million people in uniform, almost no one has someone they love in harms way. almost no one has this in the same sentence. so it is quite different psychologically between that period in world war ii and america today. >> host: from your book, "the guns at last light: the war in western europe, 1944-1945", proud briton soldier on. a bastion of civilization amid wars and dignity. he would not dare insult me, sir, with large crowds who sang along with gusto. london's west end cinema screen for whom the bell told starring gary cooper and ingrid bergman. now in its third year at the duchess theatre. sunday, may 14, 1944, thousands pedal bicycles to the track to watch kingsway, galloped past the navy and then be gone. the royal geographical society sponsored a lecture with lakes and rivers. that is may of 1944. london. >> guest: the british have been at war since 1940. they have been under attack and they were soon to be under attack in a different way from day one it is quite deadly, flying bombs and it was part of the british landscape. all of a sudden there were a couple of american soldiers showing up in a country the size of oregon. by good leadership, by good humor, they managed to show great forbearance in taking on this invasion by other allies and they contributed a lot to well-being. they contributed everything from housing to a little food they had. it is the beginning of the special relationship between the united states and britain. it hasn't developed quite yet on the battlefield, especially in high command area. even though there plenty of aggrieved people and there are millions of gis around. they can be crude and overbearing and noisy. the british show great character throughout all of this. it is a part of this very long relationship. >> host: how did you do your research? >> guest: i am an archive rat. i spend cumulatively weeks and months and years in places like the national archives, college park, maryland, congress, the u.s. army, the history institute, british archives, it imperial war museums. throughout the better part of 15 years, i have gotten to know the archives very well. every gate university has a world war ii archive. i can get an enormous amount of stuff. it can be very interesting and valuable. i do not interview many veterans. that is because my other is world war ii veteran. and yet, what happened 70 years ago is for everyone who is still alive on that time. it may or may not be reliable. it may not be as vivid as we remember. the contemporary is thousands of oral histories that were done almost simultaneously with the events that occurred and may have begun with army historians. it is so abroad that you don't need a recollection 70 years after in my judgment. i mostly use archives and contemporary archives. to say the least, there have been a lot of books written. many hardcover titles, some of them are really good. to be diligent, to see what others have written a dodgier bread at the end of the war, enlisted in 1943, with went to officer candidate school. was a second lieutenant. i remember that their job was basically to keep order at a time when others had been utterly destroyed, 7 million dead germans, no food and power, it is horrible. and so he was there for a year and went to college. went to penn state, then back into the army. and he had a very interesting role of europe right at the end. >> host: where did you grow up? >> guest: i was born in munich like most army brats. it was back when the u.s. army was still in austria. from there he was an infantry officer. georgia, idaho, sentences, hawaii. pennsylvania, we moved around on the bed. >> host: where did you go to college and what do you do prior to that? >> guest: i went to the university of chicago and i wanted to be eight english professor. peter, after a while it just didn't seem like the right thing and i got a job after i finished my masters degree in the newspaper business. in pittsburg, kansas. i loved the newsroom, i loved being a journalist. i went to kansas city and work their for several years and ended up at "the washington post" in 1983, 30 years ago. i was a reporter and war correspondent. i did investigative reporting for the post. in 1956, for example, in the late '80s, i took on this topic. and i left the newsroom very much for bed. i have been back to the post twice since taking this out. >> host: this is booktv. we are airing our "in depth" program, rick atkinson is our guest. here are his books, beginning in 1989, "the long gray line." the american journey of west point classmate story of 1966. then, "crusade: the untold story of the persian gulf war", and the beginning of "liberation trilogy." "an army at dawn: the war in north africa", in 2004 "in the company of soldiers: a chronicle of combat." it came out in 2004. and "the day of battle: the war in sicily and italy" came out in 2007. finally, just last month, "the guns at last light: the war in western europe, 1944-1945". if you would like to participate in a conversation this afternoon, the numbers are up on the screen. we have also set aside or third line this morning for world war ii veterans, giving mr. atkinson focused. we would like to hear from you as well. our number is 585, 2880. if you live in the mountains or pacific, give us a call. if you are a world war ii veteran, dial (202)585-3882. we believe that number out. you can send it e-mailed to us at booktv.com. you will see right there, the top of the facebook page. the numbers are on the screen. at the top of our facebook is a common field for rick atkinson. so why the class of 1966? >> guest: my dad had a very close friend in the army who is in that class. his name was mike fuller. when in 1981, mike started telling me about his class and what they had gone through and how they had arrived at west point in 1962. then he charged off to vietnam in 1966 and 1967. thirty of them were killed in vietnam. then they came home and found that they were pariahs within a generation. they were no longer the leaders, they were the outcasts as the country went through this upheaval over the war and many other things. and i went to the 15th reunion in 1981 at west point. everyone is crying, it was so heartbreaking and clear that this was a powerful story that allows you to tell a social history of america over it order sentry. i went back to their 20th reunion in 1986, that is when i began working on this book. i do feel that there were 579 men in a class, still all-male at that point. an extraordinary bunch, not only for what they went through in vietnam, but the things that happen to them subsequently. the book is built around three central characters. i'm still very close to the men from that time. i've always think of them as 18-year-old boys showing up at west point. i feel a great sense of attachment. >> host: who are jack wheeler and can't walk hard reign. >> host: they are the two central characters at west point. both went to war. jack had gone to harvard business school. tom was wounded a couple of times. they went through various specifics. they found themselves on opposite sides of one of the most contentious issues. i was over how to honor the dead with the vietnam veterans memorial. he was the chairman of the committee and tom was the most outspoken and articulate opponent. different camps were formed with respective points of view. they have since reconciled and jack was murdered a couple of years ago in delaware. no one knows what really happened. the two had reconciled. but it was interesting as part of the long gray line. it is part of this long journey this class has went to in 1962. >> host: from your book, "crusade: the untold story of the persian gulf war", first of all, did you in bed reign. >> guest: there was no embedding. i got there right at the end of the war. i have been writing the main stories from washington. we got there in march and april, reporting for the post. trying to tell the story of what had happened from the inside area i spent a lot of time with the schwarzkopf's staff and the other generals and admirals who ran the war. those at home as well. those who have been involved in this way. the british and the israelis. they were aimed at israel. so that was my involvement. >> host: you write no american military decisions and the vietnam war provoked more controversy and debate and more cost of commentary and the choice to offer a rock unmerciful 20. >> guest: the decision was made after 100 hours of ground war. iraqis have been evicted from kuwait. in august of 1991. they had been evicted from kuwait, they had been beat up with strategic air campaign, they had been eviscerated with parts of baghdad, and when they were on the run and being chased back across the euphrates river, the decision was made to end the war. that remains controversial to this day. again, in earnest, all of that came out of the earlier war. >> host: here are the words. with conjunction with the other united nations, aimed at the heart of germany and the discussion of armed forces. what is that? >> that is the order that was given to dwight eisenhower was the supreme commander of the allied force. it comes from the combined chiefs of staff. the top generals and admirals and counterparts in britain. this is what you will do, you will invade the german armed forces and you are just set for german surrender. the decision had been made in january of 1943. the only way the war could end was through complete surrender, unconditional surrender by the axis powers. this had happened and now the determination was it was going to happen with japan and germany. to batter them enough so that they would surrender unconditionally. >> host: what does this stand for? >> guest: it stands for nothing. it could stand for death, it could stand for it today, it is a code. people have tried retrospectively. >> host: about 69 years ago today. >> guest: that is right. that is the david eisenhower picked. it is very tricky to invade the coast. the ties are extraordinary. it has to be right if you're going to go at night to be able to pursue this proficiently. the winds have to be right, or whether has to be right. the weather was wrong, as it turned out. eisenhower never had good luck with weather. it had been stormy for the invasion of morocco, it had been stormy for the invasion of sicily. and it was stormy, indeed. on june 5, 1944. it was awful. so he postponed it for a day. he had a narrow window and all the rest of it was still obtained in a way that was suitable for this kind of invasion. if you delete it much longer, the next appropriate time was going to be several weeks later. it was extraordinary anxiety. there was 24 hours of morning. that was in some other point on the french coast. it could have been -- it probably would've been catastrophic. so the anxiety level is unbelievable. we make the decision to postpone it, he did, and they got away with it. june 6, that is the baby is celebrated the day. >> host: the number of troops? the numbers of deaths? >> guest: there were several. altogether you are talking about a couple hundred thousand troops going in on june 6. most of the deaths, one of the two american beaches was in omaha. several thousand deaths there. there had been concerned that there were tens of thousands. and this was by no means light casualties. but they were left with utah beach. the british and canadians had a tough time of it. by the end of june 6, there were canadian troops as far as 6 miles inland. omaha beach, there were no farther than 1500 yards or there was a disparity between these allied invaders and what they found. and their ability to push inland. that is the trick in an invasion. you want to get as far as you can as quickly as you can. hopefully you want to push the artillery out of range so they can't show the beach. that is when you are most vulnerable coming across the beach. it took several days. nevertheless, it turns out to be quite successful and the casualties, we are talking 3000 or so altogether, they are lighter than many had feared. >> host: what about the gliders and paratroopers that went in? >> guest: there had been a decision with this that you needed to have an airborne operation. and it is a big one. it includes men come in by parachute and those bike rider. off-line from england. the 181st and 182nd airborne division came in and said we have a british counterpart on the other side. all in all, despite confusion, catastrophe, planes shot down, men shot down, coming down with parachutes, all in all, the airborne operation had to be successful. it did succeed with some of the defenders. it did help to shore up counter attacks in the beachhead and there had been a great debate a few days before the invasion. a british invasion, the germans had reinforced this part of the peninsula to a degree that would make it suicidal for these airborne divisions. he was a senior officer saying that this is suicidal. i think it was a terrible decision to make. it is very hard. he thought about for a long time and ultimately decided that i have to do it. i cannot launch an invasion and have the rest of counterattacks and the troops coming across the beaches without taking a huge risk on these airborne operations. as it turned out, it was the right decision and it worked pretty well all in all. >> host: of more than 6000 jumpers from the 101st airborne, you write nearly 1000 had landed on or near the objectives on this tuesday morning. most enclosed the division drop zones would be killed or captured. with maps torn from local telephone books from french farmers. it lay beyond retrieval at the various areas of water meadows, various losses of radios and a circuit peering into a barn soundman lying in the straw, wrapped in bloody parachutes. >> guest: that gives you a sense of the intensity of it. you had to be able to leap out of an airplane in the dark. from 1000 feet or less. jumping from 500 feet. with people shooting at you. the airborne troops had volunteers. even though you said you wanted to be there, you have to believe that when push came to shove, many of them had second thoughts about that. it is part of the reason that both are active divisions today. they are still revered. they draft these kind of troops and they go through this kind of experience. we go through this elsewhere in britain. they are extraordinary. my admiration for them is unbound. >> host: one more quote and then we will take some calls. the preparatory bombings of the american beaches in operation overlord lasted barely half an hour to get on with the winnings. they fired 140,000 shells were the enemy emplacements were destroyed. almost 1006-inch rounds flown in only one direct hit was recorded. 111 guns, none were completely not out. rick atkinson is our guest. please call the numbers on your screen, we will begin with a call from robert in ohio. where are you calling from, robert remapped. >> caller: in the guards to the general officers, how many general officers were in the military? >> guest: there were about 1300 generals in the army in world war ii. a number of animals i do not recall offhand. you can figure it is proportionate. today there are somewhere in the order of two less than 300. the ratio then and now is somewhat different. you can be that there were more soldiers per general, 8.1 million, 8.13 million in the united states army in world war ii. you have 1300 generals today. we have more generals today per soldier. i do not think it is necessarily excessive. this is a debate that is held chronically in the pentagon among other places. certainly elsewhere in washington where there is too much brass. my feeling is that it is hard to make the case and there are too many generals. >> host: louise is calling from florida. you are on booktv, thank you for calling and. >> caller: thank you for writing about north africa. so few people have done it. i was with the 77th evacuation hospital affiliated with university of the university of kansas and we were overseas for 37 months. we did and what africa included two other hospitals that we work with behind the front lines. they do. >> host: what was your job? >> caller: i was a surgical nurse. >> host: were you a volunteer? >> caller: yes. >> host: what do you recall about your experience? >> caller: it was totally unusual. it was so innocent about war when we went over there. we had to just work from scratch to set up hospital units and take care of the wounded. >> host: how many women were with your unit? >> caller: forty-seven, i believe. >> guest: thank you, louise. that was terrific. my wife is from kansas. my daughter is a surgeon. we are very enthusiastic about what you have done, the university of kansas, my wife is a graduate. i came across this periodically throughout my research. you were there and there were no units that i'm aware of that did more for a longer period of time than the 77th. i am aware of the difficult circumstances, and field field medicine is very important. the ability to innovate, to stay tough and tough times, i am and not. my daughter, i have told her about what you and your colleagues did, and she is in on it as well. she works with surgeons at the university of cincinnati and trauma surgery. and she has some sense of what it is that you went through. >> host: were all women volunteers? >> guest: yes, they were. there was a woman's auxiliary corps. and there was no draft of women. the men were subject to it. the deeper we got, the greater we had chances of being. but there was never a draft of women. so if you were a woman in an aircraft factory or a welder in a ship factory or the driver or something, it is because he volunteered to be here. >> host: from your book, "an army at dawn: the war in north africa", you write that at a price of 70,000 casualties, one thing has been redeemed. for u.s. divisions now had combat experience as expeditionary is. mountains, desert, and urban. combined arms, of mass armor, they now knew what it was like to fight on. xu e-mails you and says, i intend to write about this. it is true, isn't it? that we must write to insist about the campaign in north africa. maybe the war would have been shorted. >> guest: this has been debated for seven years since then. my feeling is, having looked at it in great depth, over a longer period of time, it played out as a check. i do not believe that we have the capability to invade france in 1943. i think it would've been potentially disastrous. there were no good alternatives to north africa if you are trying to liberate europe ultimately. my feeling is that even though there is a bit of improvisation involved, they are making it up as they go along. there is a miscalculation about how easy it will be in north africa. certainly miscalculations about what churchill called the soft underbelly, the second side of europe. there is nothing soft about it. you know, i think that you can argue that the war in italy went on too long and grew too much of our resources. but my feeling is that the decision to invade north africa is quite defensible. >> host: were the americans and british on the same page? >> guest: they were almost never on the same page. it is one of the mysteries of the war have different national perspectives and values and interests can remain more or less in harness. he found, for example, just over the issue of where to invade initially, the british favorite north africa. none of the americans favored north africa. it was franklin roosevelt. so this sets the stage subsequently overlarge issues, strategic issues like this one. and other strategic issues. it is a tribute to men of good will to actually to be able to put aside differences and reach compromises. especially to make it work. certainly many bad feelings at times between these allies. >> host: if you can't get through on the phone lines, you can send an e-mail to booktv on c-span.org, or you can make a comment on her facebook page. please go ahead. >> caller: you may have already addressed this question. it is about what you said about italy. he said that we were attacked with the germans if we nailed them and it was like the rest of them would be like this. why was the decision made to go into italy as opposed go into france? i have heard theories and another question i have, how well did the fbi administration handle the patents, if they were supposedly one of our top commanders. was in a kind of irresponsible and the war might've been finished early before that? supposedly he was one of the better generals and so on. the last question i have is i had heard and i can't remember the book, it was actually on c-span. eisenhower and patton were some historians had argued that after world war i, their superiors train them specifically. so there is going to be another war and it was drafted as -- they were already in the service, as being the ones who are going to lead the invasions and so on. is there any truth to that? >> guest: the invasion was italy. italy has taken on partly because of a certain momentum. once you've committed yourself, there is a kind of logic being in the mediterranean. there was a general agreement is the campaign was unfolding. that ended in may of 1943. the next obvious step was sicily. and you need bases for the air campaign to launch these enemies especially in germany. it makes sense. we invaded in july 10, 1943. it is only 43 miles and so the decision was made. we have gone this far, we will go into southern italy. there is a certain sense of that as well. it becomes a self fulfilling process. you get into southern italy in september of 1943. you want to get to rome, that happens right away. the italians quit in september of 1943. so we end up in italy until the end of the war, until may of 1945. part of it was to try tie up german troops. part of it is because there is a momentum to it. the british are very keen on prosecuting. they have 200 years of experience there. they have imperial interest in the mediterranean. so you find that there is a momentum and logic of its own that occurs but does not necessarily hold up when you look at the second question is in august of 1943 in sicily, cotton really lost control of himself. both were sick and in hospitals and if that were to happen today, he would be captured from the army. i think rightfully so. it did not happen to patton. he was pushed aside for a while, as he said. but this fact remained secret for several months. the story didn't break until november of 1943. it was not roosevelt intervened, it was roosevelt trying to decide what to do with the problem child. recognizing that he was, as you say, a fine field commander and he decided that it caused him problems as a senior american ground commander in normandy. he used it for deception reasons and he was sheltered aside for several months. he is miserable. miserable and in this time. my feeling is that what happened was deserved. that he had brought it upon himself. i think that he chose a fairly wise course. i'm not sure that i understand the first question. >> were they specifically train after world war i? >> guest: well, no, they were not. eisenhower believed that it was inevitable and, in fact, they called him alarmist ike. but the army had been reduced to a skeleton of itself after world war i, they were not thinking that we will identify him that way, but we will be the senior general. he was a lieutenant colonel in 1939. he has something like 45 months. so there is not a desire to cultivate these men were second world war. it happened in part because they proved themselves to be capable professionals. they stick with it between the wars. and they recognize the merits. but they have not specifically been designated in any way as the future leaders of armed forces in world war ii. >> host: we have a world war ii veteran in palm beach, florida. you're on with author rick atkinson on booktv. >> caller: is great to hear from you. i have been a fan of mr. rick atkinson for 30 years. i was a teenager in the infantry in world war ii. i have read two of your books. "the long gray line" and the one about africa. on the battle of hugh oshima, where i was, there were just three of us and on d-day there h point on the ground, and the afternoon and day, third battalion was wiped out and the second battalion wiped out. we ended up taking it. also we need a writer like you to go after the service academy. that's a couple of things to think about, i love you both, we are wishing you guys are great day. >> guest: thank you, ken. thank you so much for the comment. you sound awfully great for a guy who is on a mission. i agree that the services generally, this is a juries issue and some have been dashed some leadership had been a little cavalier. you can expect to attract very capable women, which is absolutely essential with the armed forces at this point. unless you respect them, airmen, sailors, marines marines, i am hopeful that the secretary chuck hagel has taken us on until the proper thing is done in this appropriate framing is done. it's important to remember that some have only been at the academy since 1976. relative newcomers with a lifespan. they are still trying to get it right, i think. with respect to the first question about iwo jima, it will won't be done by me. i decided some time ago that i'm not going to do the specifics -- i'm going to leave world war ii. fifteen years is long enough. i have agreed with my publisher but i'm going to do a trilogy on the the american revolution. reading, trying to get smarter about a year. my intent is to take on the revolution, somewhat as i did with that. i am fascinated by the british and the germans, operational and strategic view and the characters that are just as fantastic, not only the ones that we know about like george washington and some that we probably don't know about. that is what i'm going to do and we will have to take on this. there have been books written on the word japan, on the pacific, he is well into volume one. so the story on iwo jima is very important and needs to be looked at. >> host: can you discuss your writing process? this is a question from a individual who e-mailed us. >> guest: yes, i can. well, i think having been close to a newspaper for many years has been helpful. it is part of your discipline. you can type fast for one thing. you are accustomed to deadlines. we have to be accustomed to what to throw throw out, what we've been, how to to make judgments on the fly about that. i process is that you research. i go to archives, i do most of it myself. i do not have researchers and i think has to go through my brain in some way for me to really understand it. and then i put a mark on the wall and i say, i'm stopping here. there are things that i don't know, things i never know. there will be more to write 500 years from now. at that point i outline the material that i have, i type it up, with more than a thousand for the book, and then i build a very large outline. i use the software and it is allowing me not only to have a map, but it is an index that tells me where everything is. when i finish the outline i write about a thousand words a day. and i can write pretty quickly. that is about the equivalent for the story. so if you just think 250,000 words, if you can fool yourself into that, you know, you have a book. knowing when to stop the research, knowing that you have a deadline to turn in the manuscript on someone, i think it's pretty important for getting it done. >> host: david

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