book festival. [applause] [applause] thank you very much for that introduction. it s a great pleasure to be a here. this is my second time in savannah so i m not a rookie and i came back because i had a good time last year. and it s a book festival where they treat the authors really well so i want to thank marilyn and scott richards, who are my hosts and i think robin gold and stephanie who are sort of the management of this complex exercise and then all the staff that has put together a really, really wonderful program for all of us to get together and learn a little bit about literature and writing and what we have to say. i m going to tell you a personal story today. it s something that i don t normally do but this story i m going to tell you is in large part what motivated me write the second book, what it is like to go to war. and one of the things i talk about in that second book, our culture has basically got some kind of agreement, like i call it the sort of code o