Panel, the will make their way to the authors ten next door to that and will be happy to personalize and sign the books for you. Our moderator is timis bell. During his 30plus years as a journalist his has serve as writer, photographer, photo editor, pain designer, and shreddographyer. He researches and writes and photographs books on the civil war, civil rights history, and the gulf coast in 2007 he want inducted be usm communication and journalism hall of fame. Id like to thank all of you for coming. I was going to start the session off with the quote from another mississippi author, shelby foote. Any understand offering this nation has to be based on an noning of the civil war. The civil war deoffendded us as what we are and it opened us to what we game, good and bad. Its necessary if youre going to understand the american character of the 20th century to learn about this enormous catastrophe of the 19th 19th century. The crossroads of our being and a hell of a crossroads. Id like t
Physicians and Health Care Systems issued their own insurance product. They collect the premium and they have and National Natural incentive to limit costs. Of courtship to put injuries protection in place so they dont unnecessarily limit spending. But i think the kaiser model is a very reasonable one. I grew up in Southern California in the 70s and 80s and we went to kaiser and we got perfectly good health care. Some people advocate a singlepayer system but i dont see that happening. In this country. Its, you know, what works abroad doesnt, wont work in the united states, i dont think. I remember one of my professors was teaching economics was talk about the National Health service in england, and then someone asked him why dont we just do that here . He said, america is two different. In england, they live in a rainy climate. They drink warm beer. They learn to tough it out at a young age. Thats not going to work in the united states, and hes probably right. So we have to tweak the s
And introduced me to the other two people in the boat and then we begin an amazing multiyear process of lengthy interviews and they gave me a lot of other kinds of material to rely on. Letters and diaries and photographs and medical records of military records in Therapy Notes, facebook posed and all kinds of things like that. So this book is an attempt to reconstruct the last decade in their lives that they were serving in the National Guard. So the three women are really different in age and really different in political is then that is one of the great joys of spending time with them. They are very Close Friends that they dont agree about the essential enterprise they are involved in together. So they have many conversations about what it all means. Michelle, the youngest of the three went in was 18 years old when she enlisted in the spring of 2001. Im going to read a passage from the previous fall. He had just voted for ralph nader. Shes very leftleaning. Im actually going to switc
She describes herself as a leftleaning, spot smoking hippie to me. So she was 18 when she enlisted. The spring of 2001. All she wanted was College Tuition, and she was certain she never wanted to be a soldier but the south she would join the National Guard and be a part ymca soldier just for that College Tuition benefit economy was sure she would never good to war because she knew the National Guard just did not deploy. She felt quite sure of that. And then of course, when she was in training, 9 11 happened, and she did understand right away that maybe the commitment she had made was going to be much bigger than what she had been envisioning. When she goes overseas in afghanistan, she becomes very close to two other women and their political beliefs are in some cases the opposite of hers. So when in the fall before michelle enlisted, back in 2000 she voted for not al gore, and not george bush, but ralph nader. And so she is pretty sure nobody else in her guard unit who was a nader supp
Fantastic guests. [applause] [inaudible conversations] next on booktv, helen thorpe talks about her book, soldier girls the battles of three women at home and at war. [inaudible conversations] good afternoon everyone. Welcome to thunder third annual san antonio book festival. I am executive director of the the festival in very happy to be here with you and helen thorpe to discuss her terrific book, soldier girls the battles of three women at home and at war. Id like to remind you that barnes noble is selling books upstairs. You just go up the escalator and helen will be signing in the reference area next to the sales area at 1 30 directly after this. I want to thank barnes noble who very generously donate a portion of the proceeds to the san antonio book festival. Well take questions from the audience for the last ten minutes of the session and please turn off your cell phones. Helen thorpe is a seasoned journalist and author who was born in london, grew up in new jersey and now lives