Thanks for being here and there president any we are delighted to have you here for the of book talks and i begin by thanking the Ford Motor Company for their intered partnership in including the book talks series. I personally am pleased to welcome back then bill the third time he has cut back in his many years. I asked because whenever i do that he is seen as a true renaissance man he is from an english did Brown University and also Duke University where he was a fellow and worked as an editor and wrote and edited several books including up passionate seller sailor. He is the author of mayflower in 2010 he published a book called the last end that was a New York Times bestseller was a notable book and has been adapted into a tv series as misspeak rose also a consultant on custers last stand. So the good news is in published in 2013 bunker hill where he spoke about several years ago and one the new england book award for nonfiction the rights to the book have been acquired by Warner B
Published by a traditional publisher and that average age is 37 years old. So, i will tell you, bill, you are skewing the numbers very much. Bill walker grew up in knoxville, tennessee and went to the university of virginia for his undergraduate and masters and went off to teach at College Teaching at the university of new orleans and at Lamar University in texas. Then he went into the administration to be a Public Information officer, associate Vice President for Public Information. He was at Gettysberg College and Virginia Tech and finished up his work at william and mary. I first met him in a class on Woodrow Wilson world war one and i know some people in the audience were in that class and other classes like it. As he told the stories of world war i and specifically making thosef o those of us that live in wilsons birthplace understand the meaning of that man and world war i. He talked about the research he was doing for his book in the classes and later on i would see bill around
Youre watching the tv on cspan2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Book tv, television for serious readers. Theres a look at upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country. Saturday august 20 second, book tv is live at the Second Annual mississippi festival held at the state capital in jackson. Featuring former trent lott and john meacham. Coming up on september eighteenth, as the brooklyn book festival held in downtown brooklyn new york. Later in the month the annual baltimore book festival will take place at the citys inner harbor. On saturday september 20. Saturday september 24, for the 16th year in a row, book tv will be live with other talks and callin segments from the National Book festival hosted by the library of congress at the Washington Convention center. For more information on fairs and festivals and to watch previous festival coverage click the book for your staff our website, booktv. Org. Book tv recently visited capitol hill test membe
Mississippi or their hometown in many instances. They were going overseas to fight for a cause. They were really behind it of the most part all of the ones that i found were willing to go and serve and in some cases people wonder why we had not been there before. I had one letter from an individual who fought with the Canadian Expeditionary forces. He went early went early because he thought it was a just cause. We always read about people saying, what if the south had won the civil war . What my question is, what if we had not entered that war . The world would be a vastly different place. As for its relevance today i would not have know this if id not been researching this book, again i was not aware of the consequences. All of this trouble in the middle east that we are having right now, so so many of those countries involved, involved after world war i. Promises were made after world war i and we do not look up to them. Conflict is still resulting today because of that. So if it is
Great depression, other gaps we had, and so i started plunging in the collection and i happened upon this is years ago Works Progress administration papers, the wpa in mississippi compiled county histories, and one of the topics was war. Block. They were. That meant there was a lot more out there. In addition to looking at private collection at world war ii started reading county newspapers from all around the state. I did want to try to cover all areas of the state. I have succeeded to some degree but actually not as much as id like to because some towns where i thought there would be letters to the editor about publication from the boys overseas were not any. There could be just to the addition of the paper to get a microfilm that was not the addition that had the letters. The different additions used to be. I do not know if early on if there are two or three editions of the paper. I did the best i could. I found some wonderful letters. I tried to have men who served, i found a lot o