And were back now live from Jones College Prep 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 dow
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
Please keep the spirit of lit fest going all year long with a subscription. This year we are also introducing a new digital bookstore. Please take one of our promo cards for information about the app and axis the special book deals. Before they can todays program please file ensure cell phones. You return your camera flash off. We will allow you to take pictures. You can post those pictures online using hashtag printers row. Gives me great pleasure to introduce to you guys are moderate todays conversation, eric banks. Mr. Banks. Thank you. Thank you very much. Welcome everybody. Its good to see you here this morning and its my pleasure to welcome today Monique Brinson demery, the author of the amazing book, finding the dragon lady the mystery of vietnams madame nhu, which has recently been published by Public Affairs books. She holds a masters degree from harvard university, and when she made contact with madame nhu who was the unofficial first lady of the south east government in 2005
Host this is a great opportunity for me. Normally, im the person having the questions asked of me, and now i get the opportunity to ask a former journalist questions about the book you wrote. So i look forward to guest ill do my best. It is an unas cos tommed role for me to answer questions. Its good to be here. Host im glad. I wanted to start to just ask you a few issues that are general in nature about the book. The first question is what drove you to this topic . What made you interested in writing a book about the fukushima accident . Guest as a journalist, it was a very compelling story. I had coveringed the three mile island accident when i was a reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer and have followed Nuclear Issues ever since. And the first moments of that accident, when the news accounts began to come out, i watched transfixed. Because it was the first time i think the world has ever watched an accident unfold. And so i got caught up in the story. Not necessarily the technical
In their interest to do it, and they havent demonstrated propensity for doing it. But one of the things i feel is lacking is lately our willingness to promote our stuff. And we are losing, were hemorrhaging platforms. Now, theres a good side and a bad side to this story. You know, actually, i brought a list of the bookstores that have closed not since i started my web site but since i started keeping track of em. And its, the list actually, if you do me a favor and just hold this, this is a list of bookstores that have closed. Now are those brook bookstores . These are all independent bookstores across the nation. Whats the count, do you know . Approximately. Over a hundred. I mean, honestly are, i dont know the count 300 . Oh well, this is, this is how many are left, and this is counting the schomburg, this is counting the studio museums bookstore, this is counting the hub at howard university. So if we were to look at the number of blackowned independent bookstores in this country, t