Look for these events to air in the near future on booktv, on cspan2. Margie ross the head of regular nory publishing. We have a busy fall planned. Our first big book of the fall will be a become called the big lie. Now, you know danesh is a multiple time number one New York Times best selling author with regular nary publishing and its about how the left call is accusing conservatives, our major, our reads, or being fascist. The new accusation. Were not racist anymore. Were fascist, and he says if you look at the way the left conducts itself, theyre the fascists. Theyre the people who want to shut down free speech, who want to have a bigger government and want the government to have more control over our lives, and who are bullying and rioting and disrupting when they dont like the results of an election. Just like a fascist would do. Who else . We also have second book by Sebastian Gorka why we fight. Last year we did a great book with Sebastian Gorka called defeating jihad and he is now one on the senior advisers in the white house to the president on National Security and terrorism. Issues of fighting terrorism. Very smart guy, very experiencees. This is a book that talks not just about how to win the war on terror but why it is inside us as a country that makes us fight for the rights, fight for freedom, fight for the good side, and why its important to remember not just how to win but why we win and why we fight. ,. And very upset and very concerned about the future of the country, thats it for book sale. I tell you at the beginning, at the end of last year, and leading up to the election, we were worried about what would happen if Hillary Clinton won, not just for the country with you for our book. We were worried that our market would feel so dejected. So disspirited. So defeated that they might not want to read anything for a while. And so, in an odd way, we were actually thinking, in this case, her winning might not be so good for book sales. So, fast forward now, six, nine months and were doing very well. Our books are doing well and i think partly its because the news cycle is moving so fast. Theres always something to talk about and theres something theyve been good at. But also, i think our mshth has gone from being baffled at the reaction to the election and the sort of refusal of people on the left to accept the results of the election. Theyve gone from being baffled to now starting to get angry and they look. Give this president a chance. This is everyones president. This is the direction of the country. Lets let him do the things that the people who elected him sent him to washington to do. And were sort of trying to lean into that, looking at both the direction that trump wants to take the country and also looking at all the forces that seems to be coalescing and plotting to defeat him and block him. Another big book we have is another big best selling author ed klein has a new book coming this fall called villain how the forces on the left are conspiring to defeat trump, even after hes won the election. So, these are the kind of issues that i think our market is worried about, concerned about, and interested in and thats what we like to do. We like to look at whats happening in the country and lean into that and hopefully, sell a lot of books in the process. Margeie margie is a publishe. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. How are you doing there, sir. . You. Lt. Colonel . And. Is that right . Do you talk about the civil war . Yes. Can you come by to the book club. Awesome. There you go. Thank you. Is that right . I want to be there. I flew on a plane with him once. A will you have hes a tough guy. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. I put this on. Okay. How are you . Thank you. Appreciate it. Oh, yeah, yeah. Where are we at . Southern california. Oh, this is radically, radically keep up the good work. Glad youre there. Thank you so much. Thank you. Is that your father . [laughte [laughter]. How are you doing . Thank you, my man. Oh, yeah, yeah. Thank you for your support, m man. Oh, thank you. There you go. God bless you, take care. Appreciate it. How are you . Where are you from . Very good. What do you do . What do you do there . Nice. Thank you for the good work. Thats, t cool, too. Please come around. Thank you. Hi, my turn. How are you . Good. Thank you. And were back now live from Jones CollegePrep High School in chicago and the Chicago Tribunes annual lit fest. Starting now mark bowden talks about his recent book, americas involvement in the vietnam war. Good afternoon. Good afternoon and welcome to the 33rd annual Chicago Tribune printers row lit fest. Id like to give a shout out to our sponsors. This program is being broadcast live on cspan 2s book tv. At this time id like to throw it over to our interview, Chicago Tribune film critic michael phillips. [applaus [applause]. Thank you, thanks for coming out today and its my pleasure to talk with mark bowden about his new book hue 1968. For those of you who dont know his resume, hes a National Correspondent for the atlantic, contributing editor vanity fair, a writer, and author of many books on subjects all over the literally all over the world, from colombia and pablo escobar, an account to dday, to the killing of usama bin laden, many subjects. Probably best known for blackhawk down, an account of the 1993 raid in somalia that led to twou. S. Army blackhawk helicopters being down over downtown mogadishu and the grueling 15hour result. And the new book, which is out this week from Atlantic Monthly press is a very different scope, id say, than blackhawk down. Its also being made into a mini series already. The thing hasnt been out three days, and the producer and director of whats going to be between eight and ten hours in the end, of this mini series is michael mann and he has said this, i like this description. He says, in marks book, there are no background people. People ab tracted into statistics or body counts. Theres a sense that everybody is somebody as each is in the actuality of their own lives. The brilliance of bowdens narrative, achievement of intervowing hundreds of people on all sides and making their human stories his foundation is why hue 1968 raises to the emotion emotional of for whom the bell tolls and on the western front. High praise. Bless him. [laughter] from partisan character, but thank you for sitting with us. My pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. Host can we talk a little first, just to kind of orient folks who may not be as familiar as they should be with the bloodiest of the vietnam war battles. I think thats controvertible. Right. Host i wonder if there were key misconception of the tet offensive that kind of helped focus your book five years in the making. Guest i was frankly the more i learned about this battle, the more surprised i was that it wasnt widely known and remembered. It is remembered within the military. People who are part of the military, the army or the marine corps are very familiar with what a terrible fight this was, but the general public, i think, in part never really understood exactly what happened in large measure because the commander, the military commanders in vietnam, general westmoreland and his staff so aggressively downplayed the tet offensive. They claimed that it amounted only to small scale attacks, which was true in most of the cities in South Vietnam, that were rapidly put down. Hue was definitely not that. It was an enormous battle that lasted 24 to 30 days involving u. S. Cavalry units and the United States marine corps, took a terrible toll on the citizens in the middle of the city, kind of trapped in the crossfire. So, its a battle, its kind of a rip in the fabric and civilization and terribly dramatic and ultimately, i think changes the world. This was an episode on that scale. Host 15 hours was the core sort of timeline in blackhawk down, this was as you say, up po to 30, 40 days. And things happen out of those margins, battles dont come out of nowhere and they dont end when they end. And tell me how that necessitated more of a different structure, more of a mosaic, if you go with that characterization. I think there is a similarity in the structure as i went about reporting blackhawk down and this in the same way. This was, as you mentioned, a much bigger scale and a much bigger challenge and i ended up speaking to a lot more people. But i try to build these stories from the ground up. Me, im far more interested as a writer in the experience of the individuals who were caught up in that struggle, either both american soldiers and vietnamese soldiers and civilians. One of the soldiers who was in this battle, by the way, was andy westin who is in the front row here, andy. If you want to stand up. Host stand up. [applaus [applause] and andy is one of Many Americans veterans who i interviewed. The great they think about andy was he was writing letters home almost every day so my narrative is full of these wonderful letters that andy wrote during the battle. Host lets read that first segment we talked about here. Hue is the Third Largest city, i believe. Sure, kind of like the chica chicago. Host not that weve ever been equated to a battlefield before, but lets this is an early part of the book and we should say the book actually begins, the narrative proper begins with one of many people we meet in hue 1968, which is the story of a north vietnamese villager. Ktmung. A 18yearold girl whose father has fought against the french, grandfather fought against the french. Her older sister was skilled fighting against the south Vietnamese Army and americans and she herself had been taken and interrogated and waterboarded when she was like 16 years old. So she was someone who had a very deep hatred of the south Vietnamese Army and the americans, who was completely committed to fight. I thought it would be an interesting way to introduce to american readers the story of the battle that we think of as an american. Host were so use today demonizing the enemy, especially in fiction, but not even nonfiction accounts of this war. So, this is a description of hue, and the tet offensive that took place around the Lunar New Year . Right, tet is the annual new years celebration. Its the biggest holiday in vietnam. In january, 1968, there were fewer than a thousand arvn troops stationed in the city and surrounding area and a smaller number of americans. As the holidays approached, a large portion of the former were looking forward to a long holiday furlough. In this peaceful city during tet, it was traditional to send cups and papers with lit candles floating down the river like flickering, prayers for health, for success, for the memory of loved ones, an i way or departed, for success in business or in love and perhaps for an end to the war and killing. It made a moving collective display of vast flotilla of hope, many thousands of tiny flames. They would wind down the wide water without sound, flowing past the bright lights of the modern city to the south, framed to the north by the fortresses high black walls. People would line both banks, to favor the spectacle, and sending their own offerings. It was the gesture of beauty and calm, of harmony between the living and the dead, an expression of vietnams soul placed far from the horrors of war. Not this year. Lets jump ahead to one other thing. Thank you. [applause] thank you. Host we meet many, many characters in marks book and one of them is his name is richard leffler. And i think in any good account of any war, you have the famous actors and the less famous. Your book deals with lbj, with westmoreland, Walter Cronkite among other media, figures who ended up, really kind of redirecting the american perception of the war, as a winnable, you know, exercise. And this is one of many, like the one we meet at the beginning of the book. This is one of many characters we didnt know until now. This now, were in the middle of the battle where its raging in the city. There was a steady roar of gunfire and explosions, but with the eclipse and intervals by the sound of a shell fired from one of the war ships anchored 15 to 20 miles east in the south china sea. The biggest of their guns were 16 inchers, which measured the width of the barrels bore. The gun itself was 50 times that long. It could hurl a projectile as heavy as a small car 25 miles. It would emerge in the general din as a low whistle that grew louder as it approached until it became a thing felt as much as heard, passing above the opaque ceiling of clouds like an airborne locomotive. The hurling projectile went with so much force it dressed on the eardrums. And when it hit the ground, even at a great distance, the earthquake shook, the walls crumbled. It felt i can liao like the end of the world for richard leftie leffler. Leffler was 18. He had no idea what was going on. He had never heard of tet or hue, which he pronounced hue instead of hue. He now knew nothing of ho chi minh. He could not kind r find vietnam on the map. And this was just something he was obliged to fight. Months earlier he had been a tough guy, small, scrappy or and tough so he thought. He was from a town by philadelphia the land rises steeply from the schylkill river. He was too young for a union job and too rambunctious and unruly for school. His father didnt work, he drank. With a blood of six his mother had more than she could cope with. Leffler ran wild. He discovered that a boy didnt have to be big to win a fight, just willing. The key was to fear painless than the other guy. This gave him, despite his size, a swagger in his neighborhood. Life had been shaping up just fine until the local magistrate, a barber, eid the is yourly teen dragged into his shop by the police between umpteenth time, with a snip of the scissors, you again, you have two choices, my man, they really want to put you in juvy. I have to put you in somewhere and just like that, lefty was a mari marine. [applause]. Guest inventory. Host thats good, thank you. I have to talk about the research because its a considerable undertaking. How do you map first of all, how did the experience on blackhawk down, among others, prepare you for, kind of hey, how do i map out. Who am i going to talk to about this that we havent heard before . It benefitted, i think, having written blackhawk down, with the realization, you dont have to understand the thing youre writing about before you start. You just need to dive in. And you begin talking to one person after another, after another, and over a period of time, you begin to form a kind of mental mosaic thats the story that you want to write. At a certain point, when you have the shape of the story, or in this case of the battle, in your mind, now you can begin directing your efforts towards the kind of people you have not yet spoken to, you recognize, for instance, most of this battle was fought with by marines in the city, but there was also a major fight outside the city fought by the first of the 7th cavalry, the u. S. Army troopers, of whom andy was one. At a certain point i real leased, i need to find the army guys who fought in this battle. And that process proceeds until and then you speak to vietnamese soldiers and i begin to form a very, i think, much richer idea of what actually happened. And in that you keep working like that, in this case, over five years until you actually feel that you understand something you want to write about. And how many trips to vietnam did you take . I took two trips to vietnam, each was two to three weeks long, but hired a fellow there, his name was denny and hue is a younger military officer, too young to fight in the war, but savvy finding retired generals and how to deal with the department of the. In working for me, plumbing the archives and looking for Historical Documents and memoirs, then he began interviewing on my behalf so when i came for the first time to hue, he had set up two and three interviews a day for a solid two weeks. So i would interview heavily during that time and come back with 40 or more interviews, which i would then have to have translated and transcribed and translated. So it was a laborious process, but i felt if i had the opportunity, which i did not have so much in blackhawk down. I did go to somalia and did i best i could to tell that side of the battle. Its difficult, mogadishu is an extremely violent and dangerous place. Vietnam, has become welcoming to travelers and journalists. I i had the opportunity and i felt i needed to take advantage of it. It was, you know, you keep chipping away at it like the thousand mile journey. Host did you get to the point in this book, maybe different than the other books, where you hit a wall on the research and that youre in a quagmire, maybe a vietnamlike quagmire . I didnt, maybe because ive been writing so long. When i was a newspaper reporter, and starting out. Often the stories would take me a day and i would think, gee, i have two or three days to work on this one. And an editor would call and say we need that story now. I developed a habit early on as a reporter, sketching out for myself the structure of the story that i was going to write, if i had to write it right now. And that often happenedment if i got more, or learned something more, it would change everything because every time you interview someone new, your understanding of the story is enriched and very frequently radically changed. So that practice of always having structure in my mind of what im going to write has carried out and invaluable to me in doing much longer projects. And i do, and im aware of reaching a point where i have to stop reporting if im ever going to write the thing. And so, generally, the progress is, in the beginning about 99 of my time is reporting and researching, and that somewhere in midpoint, im writing half the time and interviewing and researching half the time and in the end. 99 of the time is spent writing and im chasing down the last few things that i feel i really need to know. We dont want to wait until the very last 9. 3 minutes to hear from you. So if you have questions for mark, were going to you can line up behind that mic and well just, well hijack the conversation back, if the questions are uninspired. Okay . But they wont be, they wont be. I have to bring this up to part of the Atlantic Monthly press release on the publication of the book, notes that, you know, one of the norths huge miscalculations was the people of hue, indeed the people throughout South Vietnam would rise up to support the revolution. This, of