I was nervous because i am the panthers fan and there was an onscreen teeing lombardy in this battle skid they had to do and all of a sudden there was a commercial. I was not really focused but i saw a freeway sign that said detroit and i got my attention and the pocket of backbeat of music and all the symbols of between, joe louis downtown, the diego rivera murals, incredible murals in evoking the manufacturing sculpture, the spirit of deflate downtown and a black sedan driving a couple woodward avenue, the main thoreau fare of detroit, and c. Eminem in the car. I am not an eminem guy. I am now but wasnt then. I love the music that was playing in the background, but he gets out of this restored theater in downtown detroit and walks down the aisle and there was a gospel choir. This is the motor city, and it got to me some way. What detroit meant to me. And my earliest strongest memories of that city, and that commercial, set me on the path to thinking about what do i do . How can i honor the city that means so much to my earliest fox and my family and i started over the course of several months figuring out how to do that. Host why did you focus on 1960 . Guest one of the ways i operate, i use the metaphor, set my oil rig somewhere, so that is part of the way i work but what i wanted to do in the first place was honored the city. What detroit gave america which is an enormous amount so i started thinking about what did each would give america . It was the heart of the Labor Movement and the united autoworkers, very important to civil rights in the 1960s connected in part to those autoworkers that in terms of supporting the 7 Civil Rights Movement and all the activities going on in detroit it created those town, the sound track of my generation and most first and foremost the center of the Automobile Industry so i wanted to write about those four aspects of what detroit gave america. That took me to specific year. Motown only existed in detroit from 1959 to 1970. Early motown took me into the release 60s, first motor town review of detroit in october of 1962. I saw that as possibly a good place to start. It turned out very quickly as i was looking at those that the Detroit Auto Show opened the same week in october of 62, introducing the 1962 cars than ever before. Took one further step about civil rights and saw Martin Luther king came to the city this summer of 63, six months later. And walter loser was central to that united autoworkers. So it was right in that specific period. Host i want you to tell us what this is and what you are talking about. He was the head of the 1970s when she was really instrumental in two important ways, one was bringing united autoworkers into the middle class. He was a progressive leader who believed the chance to get into the middle class rests on the quality. And was strong in terms of supporting and pushing civil rights for everyone. When you think of the people who transformed america in the 20th century, walter is an important underrecognized figure. Host what was the video . Guest it was done by simon and schuster, my publisher to promote the book in different ways. At the end, i consider one of the most important underrecognized figures of the 20th century and did it all in detroit, came from west virginia, came to detroit as a young man with his brothers, all three helped develop the united auto workers, had to negotiate a very difficult situation over many years with attention from the Auto Industry, the leftwing of the auto workers union, the communist aspect of it didnt like him, he found his way through all of that and was a very progressive force in the american Labor Movement for a long time, very close to president john kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, strong on civil rights, united autoworkers role, very important. Host you have been writing books for 20 years now. A way they are promoted is this new that simon and schuster is putting out video trailers . Guest yes it is. The Publishing Industry sort of like my other industry, the newspaper business, sort of only understands the future a little late. There is a 21st century argument using social media and planning different ways to promote books. Guest when it comes to topics this is what you write in your book they marched into sunlight war and peace, connections fascinate me, connections of history and individual lives, incidents and intentions that ripped people lot and sewed them back together. This interests me more than ideological formulations and tend to be certain of the meaning. Guest i try to be honest about the fact that i am not an ideologue. I have Strong Political beliefs, i try to look for the truth first. Of the truth doesnt fit what i think then i move. I am more interested in sociological forces that shaped people and why they are the way they are. I would call myself a humanist in the sense that i look for the best in people. I am not blind to flaws but every human being has flaws. It is just exaggeration of some over others. I am also not trying to preach to the choir. That is a waste of time. In this modern world you get the more provocative you are, my interest always is inside the truth and the complexity of truth. In this modern American Culture complexity is not often what people looking for. But it is what i keep looking for. Host from your book into the story a writers journey through life, politics, sports and loss people assume mild Political Writer who dabbles in sports, running from serious work to play. I never looked at it that way. Cares much about politics that is utterly trivial and boring to me and much about sports that is inherently dramatic or sociologically interesting. Is not the general subject the draws me but the possibilities. Guest i spent most of my journalism career or much of it writing about politics, starting with been covering maryland politics in the late 70s and national came the posts profiler, biographer of president ial candidates in the year the 80s, gary hart and Jesse Jackson and bill clinton and clinton again and bob dole and al gore so i have done a lot of that over the years but i have never really been one of those people that lives or dies with the latest polls or the gotcha stories that are really ridiculous that come and go every week. I always tried to work on the theory that i am trying to build something substantive and substantial so that over the course of the year i have eliminated some subjects and that is the way i always approach it. To get to the larger point, one of my mentors once talked about going to the boys department, i completely disagree with that. I liked his sports books that they were much more illuminating than other work. I think sports offers the opportunity to write about several along with the drama which is similar to politics in this since there are winners and losers and a process and certain drama to that but sports is one of the key ways to write about some of the major sociological incidents of the United States including specially rigged. Host Vince Lombardi, you moved for the winter, Robert Oakley and the move to pr. Spent a lot of time there. Barack obama, you traveled to africa, indonesia. Why is it important to getting to the physical space . Guest the first law how id do things, go there. It is only by in nursing yourself in the geography and culture of all places that you conspired to understand the forces that shape some one. So for lombardi, firsttime moved to new york with my wife linda because that is where he was shaped. He grew up in sheeps head bay, went to florida university, taught High School Football across the river, he was assistant coach at west point and for the new york giants, he was 45 years old before he got the green bay. In green bay tells so much about those magical nine years when he went from 45yearold assistant coach to an American Icon winning five championships. One part of it is the football aspect of the book and the focus of more than football, the mythology of competition and success in American Life, leadership, and what it costs, and new years eve 1967, in green bay against the cowboys, final drive in the last second. I had to indoor agreeing they winter to understand what that meant. Not only did it help me understand that but the entire culture of one company. When we moved to green bay a week after week were there we had a terrible earache and in the middle of the night we had to drive from brussels to where we were living in to the city to a hospital to get treated for earaches. Every doctors door has a jersey on it. And reggie white. After a couple weeks linda came home, and went to polls, everyone else is wearing them. Another thing that happened is once we got there, the local barmaid told everybody the postmistress. The local paper ran a story, they published by telephone number in the story. All this time we get bombarded with all these calls and this is the day where we had a regular phone and an oldfashioned answering machine that plays it all back. When i come home from a day of Research Many messages on the machine. I pushed a button and first i said i hear you are writing a book about guy lombardo but then all these other questions, incredibly valuable but i would not have found had i not moved there. A guy who was the caddy for lombardi and told me about his temper and taking irons out of the river when he got a bad shot but also how he was the one golfer is there who always insisted on having not even indian, those caddies, there are a lot of other rich kids, he wanted the indians so it meant more to them to have that job. Another guy played the piano and alisons crown restaurant in apples and that would describe how lombardi would go down there with their cronies friday night and walked in and the piano player would have to play a medley from my fair lady, he didnt like that. And what a generous tipper he was. Would give a generous tip, the piano player, the maitre d, server, chef but he would deduct 1 from anyones it if someone came back and bothered him when he was eating, that is classic lombardi. So many stories, everyone is invaluable to find those types. Host where did you come up with the title . When pride still mattered a life of Vince Lombardi . Guest i stole it but i credited the person i took it from and called and got his blessing, richard ford, the novelist. In one of his books about the exports writer in new jersey, a trilogy he wrote, the middle one was called independence day. Somewhere in that book the main character is driving up the new jersey turnpike and stops at the Vince Lombardi rest stop where i have been many times. Is wonderful with about it. He wrote when pride still mattered. I saw that and said yes. It has a double meaning to it. He has great pride but also i write very much in my book about the fallacy of the innocent past. Everyone looks at the past as something glorious and better and there is always more to it than that. When pride still matted connected. Host lombardi believes in fair play, he told his players not in the concept of good losing, equated a loss with a sinn, quote, i dont want any good losers around here. If you think is good to be losing give the other guy is the opportunity. Losing, he said, was just a way to live with yourself, a way to live with fear. Host with football i should also point out that adage that is most often attributed to a lombardy on that stuff, winning isnt everything, it is the only thing, he did not it or even real a sense, it was first uttered in a john wayne movie, trouble along the way. Talking to a social worker played by donna reed. It that time donna reed is complaining about how john wayne who is the coach of this small catholic Football Team that has been machining and getting pro players from canada and other ways, returns to the little girl and says this is not right. Why is he doing this . The little girl says dont you know . Winning isnt everything, is the only thing. I sort of trace how that came to the speed player from another coach at ucla and was close to the screenwriter out there, lombardi was tougher on his team when they won but played poorly than if they played well and lost but he understood, particularly as a professional coach did if you dont win you are gone and that is true of the players too. Theres always that tension in sports between winning and other things but in professional sports a little less. Host was been lombardy political . He was surprisingly he wasnt active politically but he liked the kennedyes. Was an irish catholic, identified with john kennedy who incidentally helped him get paul barton out to play and a couple key games in the early 60s and actually supported Bobby Kennedy and 58. His wife was conservative republican but in 1968 according to some sources Richard Nixon loved Vince Lombardi and asked John Mitchell to check in as a possible running mates and mitchell came back and said lombardi is great but a kennedy democrat. Host october 1966 what was going on in the country . Guest the middle of the vietnam war, very the hammock. You ask that question because it is the center of my book they marched into sunlight war and peace which is about protest at the university of wisconsin against dow chemical co. The turned into a police riot basically and a battle in vietnam was going on in the same 24hour period in which a battalion of the First Infantry Division went on a search and destroy mission. Everything is up in the air in october of 1967, right after the summer of love in San Francisco, the countercultures strong, the Antiwar Movement is growing but nobody knows where anything is going to go with war and antiwar. It is a few months before the offensive when the public turns for good against the vietnam war, a period when Lyndon Johnson as president and commanding general in vietnam, general William Westmoreland are pushing for more troops and think they can win a war simply through attrition, finding the vietcong in tomorrow them they will win the war. All of that is happening at this combustible moments in october of 1967 and that is where i try to tell the story of vietnam from. Host where were you . Guest i was at the university of wisconsin, i was a freshman, i grew up, spent much of my childhood in madison with the high school there. I was wearing my first. Team jacket, my hair was growing out of the bet, i did not participate in the protests. It was an act of civil disobedience, people who opposed the war marching into the Commerce Building where dow chemical co. Was interviewing students for prospect of hiring and they sat down in the very narrow dark main hallway of the Commerce Building. When you go in there you almost feel like you are in a submarine. I was on the edge of the crowd outside watching as the Madison Police arrived at the caroline tower across the street in the sociology building and marched into the building and saw the kids come flying out, many of them were bloody. Host who is clark welsh . Guest i count him as one of the two three most amazing people i have met in my life. He was a commander of a company, Delta Company of the black lines in that battle. He had come up through the ranks, he was only a lieutenant. It was rare for a lieutenant to the commander of a company but he was so strong and well regarded that they gave him his own company. He tried very hard to talk the commanders out of marching into the jungle that fateful day. He suspected it was going to be trouble. He was overruled largely because of pressure coming down all the way from washington into westmoreland and the general in the first division. Upon the battalion commander, just go out and find the vietnam and, so much pressure clark walsh wasnt listened to when he tried to talk them out of that. He fought in the battle, he fought hero likely, many of his soldiers were killed in that battle, he was haunted by a vat for a lifetime. When i found him he was the most difficult of the many soldiers high encountered, in colorado at this point, a fearful that some loved one saying you are responsible for the death of my son, and even though he fought heroically, he was the crucial figure in the book in the end and after agreeing to talk with me, shared with me hundreds. Host booktv travel with you to vietnam as well in 2002 i believe and not we want to introduce our viewers to it. I wanted to go to vietnam. My wife supported it. It was not surprising at all, my prayers were answered. I wanted to go to vietnam along special forces. I fell for that. And crooking for the president of the United States to liberate the oppressed people. When we all discovered there were people in vietnam that were being oppressed and there was a chance to liberate the oppressed i fell for that. I believe did. I absolutely believe in it with everything. We did what we were supposed to end the enemy came down the trail and ambushed them, we killed them, not them all down. And and when we see who could take a prisoner. And the bicycle in front. The bicycle had been knocked over. And the little person, when they went to see if they were still alive we take them prisoner, see if they had any identification, it is a girl, a little girl like that. Jesus christ. I didnt think i would do that. He has a huge heart. Carrying arms his whole life and that is what made him so fascinating to me. The complexity of his feelings why he went to vietnam, the way he felt afterward portrayed by his government, that incredible sensibility about people and the ability to kill as well. All of that anybody who has met them, i respected deeply by his humanity. He and i would disagree on almost every political thing except we have a connection because of what is in him and he would understand i am going to tell the truth and that bond