Events for politicians and authors, members of media, business and military leaders and more. The march 2020 closures of many businesses across our great country Dragon Foundation is bringing events online to ensure we are still delivering worldclass content even if you cant get to our hilltop to watch it in person. In this weeks center for Public AffairsVirtual Event we bring you Chris Wallace, anchor of fox news sunday. 2014 marked his 50th year in the broadcasting industry, hes participated in coverage of nearly every Major Political event and also secured highprofile interviews with dignitaries and u. S. Leaders. For the past three years Chris Wallace has broadcast a sunday morning show live from the Reagan Library air force one pavilion abChris Wallace is with us today to speak about his new book countdown 1945 the extraordinary story of the atomic bomb in the hundred 16 days change the world. An unforgettable account of the lives of the ordinary american and japanese civilians in wartime. As where is the american soldiers fighting in the pacific. The order to launch opossum bowl invasion in japan. The story of how and 116 days harry truman goes from being Vice President to completely cut out of the fdr white house to suddenly becoming the president , not only historian its a story of scientists, flight crew and others. We invite you to enjoy our Virtual Program coming to you from our air force one pavilion Leadership Academy oval office with Chris Wallace and Reagan FoundationInstitute Executive director john hi bush Chris Wallace, congratulations, what a terrific book. As you may know, we have a lot of guests come to the Reagan Library with good books and are not able to read them all. I could not put this one down. This is a terrific book, a thriller really, a historical thriller i just loved it. Congratulations on not just the first step a thats awfully nice. The idea of the historical thriller seems to be out there because my favorite review was one of the Washington Post that said, i know what happened in 1945 but this book is a thriller and a lot of people have said that its a page turner they couldnt put it down and im thrilled because, frankly, thats exactly what i wanted to do. I think so much history is written, in the distant past we know what happened, why did it happen track thats not at all what i wanted to do i wanted to take you into the moment and this case its countdown 1945 115 days that changed the world. The key moment is those goals 116 days from april 12 1945 when truman is summoned to the white house he thinks to talk to president roosevelt and then he finds out that roosevelt is dead and he has sworn in and Henry Stimson secretary of war takes him aside afterwards and says, i need to tell you about an immense project to create the most devastating weapon in history as the first inkling Vice President , now president truman has of the existence of the Manhattan Project and to take you not just truman as he struggling in making the decision but the scientists at los alamos that dont know whether the gadget as they call the atom bomb would work until 21 days before the bombing and the flight crew of the enola gay, who on the mission during their mission to hiroshima the 1500 miles to hiroshima from tinian island dont know if the bomb when they drop it because its never been dropped out of a plane whether the aftershocks will knock them out of the sky. Thats what i was trying to do in the fact that you and some other people have said that it was a page turner and a thriller, im thrilled. My father after he was b29 pilot in the Army Air Force i was riveted as you can imagine but your father doesnt need to have been in the Army Air Corps to like this book. Really well done. You put us in the room where it happens on many occasions and thats just a masterful job. Well done. Thank you. Thats exactly what i was trying to do. And there are so many dramatic moments. Truman has a meeting with his war cabinet on june 18 and Henry Stimson, secretary of war is there, George Marshall german general of the army is there, all the top brass and they are discussing now that the nazis have surrendered on may 8 how theyre going to finish and win the war against the japanese and for about 45 minutes there is a long discussion of the invasion of japan how many troops it will take, how long it will prolong the war. Hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides. The is assistant secretary of war named john mccoy who ended up being a major figure in the century fifth Century America high commissioner of germany, the head of the world bank. He was a junior guy there and truman says nobody gets out of the room without telling what they think. Mccoy asks Henry Stinson his boss and says, go ahead he says i think we ought to have her head examined if we dont at least discuss the bomb. That was literally in this war cabinet the first time in this meeting they had been talking about casualties and length of invasion and how bloody it would be and nobody ever said yeah but we might have a bomb until he said basically it was dismissed at that point largely because it has never been tested. It was a test of july 18 21 days before the bomb was used against hiroshima. For factly back in june truman viewed it as a science project. So many historical moments you wrote about, chris, i wonder, i know you are a student of history, what is it that made you choose this particular moment . Its a funny story. I had the idea of doing exactly what i talked about, take a key moment in history and try to put you in it. At the time they didnt know all this there face with these momentous challenges and they dont know whats gonna happen, like talking about reagan and what ended up happening in terms of gorbachev, i was fortunate enough to cover six years of dragon abbut having covered it in real life, the drama of aand these enormous discussions and the possibility that they might ban all Nuclear Weapons and then it all falls apart. To say that reagan failed is one thing, to say they went there with these hopes and have this meeting and creates tremendous sense of suspense. I wanted to do that but i did have a subject. In february of 2019 it was the day that President Trump was gonna deliver his state of the Union Address and nancy pelosi, the speaker of the house, invited several tv anchors over to her hideaway in the capital and this is the hideaway that a lot of speakers have and tradition in washington that if the speaker had the president are of opposing parties can this is true for republican president , democratic speaker, vice versa, that the speaker will deliver prebull before the president delivers the speech to tell you all the reasons its bad. Were sitting in this room and nancy pelosi says, this is the board of education. I dont think the other folks in the room knew but i knew that the board of education had been sam rayburns hideaway and this was where he would have people come after hours to gossip or plot strategy or have abVice President truman was a regular there. On april 12 after he finished presiding over the senate he went over, pelosi is telling us the story it was in in this room he was told they wanted to speak to him and he calls and speaks to a white house official who says you need to get to the white house as quickly and quietly as possible. He said jesus christ and general jackson. [laughter] which i had never heard before. I thought to myself, thats it. Thats my story. Thats the one im going to delve into and try to create a historical thriller and as it turns out i didnt know then, 116 days from when he is alerted Emma Roosevelt has died and hes president until the bomb has dropped on hiroshima. Your first book, chris, some writers report after their first book they had a fabulous time, they love the experience and some found it miserable. How did you find writing your first book . Yes. [laughter] it is a very odd experience. Its a roller coaster. There are times when you get a delicious fact. That what is so exciting. I didnt know that when truman, i knew the story about jesus christ and general jackson but i didnt know when i started the project that when truman gets the white house and sworn in his alerted for the first time about the existence of the Manhattan Project and there are so many juicy details. One of the details abnow they are at tinian island, the launchpad for the flight to hiroshima about 1500 miles and somebody says, look, if we put this 10,000 pound bomb, which was very inappropriately called little boy come in the front of the plane, then we have to put a bunch of extra gas in the back of the plane so that it wont fall down, it will be carried and the plane might crash on takeoff. And if its an atom bomb then we have an atomic explosion at the u. S. Makes on tinian island that will destroy us and dont do anything to the japanese. They suddenly say, this is only two days before the mission they turned to the chief workmens officer a guy named dee parsons and said can you do that . He said i never have but i guess i will learn. He sits on the plane on the ground in tinian island in sweltering heat working on it trying to do it and when they finally take off with an unarmed bomb to get off safely in their on their way to hiroshima he gets and cradles to the bomb bay next to little boy and has to take off some of the case and do some of the rewiring and and they have to take off the safety plugs and put in the arming plugs and its only then midway through the flight that the bomb is actually armed and ready to go. The detail that is just a joy. To go back to your question, moments like that its a joy. Then there are times and you are just trying to, how do i tell the story . How do i put all these different elements together. You think, this is hard work. My daughter is in publishing and at one point, shes been in publishing for 10 years, not at my publisher. There is no reverse nepotism. I said to her, writing a book is hard work and she rolled her eyes and said, g dad, im glad you discovered that. [laughter] its tough to make a living. Chris, did it surprise you, it did me, truman didnt know the first thing about the building of this bomb. Then i read that youd written abonly had spoken a couple times during this fourth term of the presidency. But it just seems almost feeble as a Vice President to not have been written into something as pertinent as this. I guess that was the case. Lot of people have asked me about that. It does seem incredible. Hes been Vice President for 82 days and he had met privately, hed been in big meetings but he met privately with roosevelt twice in those 82 days. This is roosevelts fourth term. This wasnt his first or even his second Vice President and he had gotten pretty good at ignoring Vice President s and i think he thought, Vice President s come and go i got my work cabinet and those of the people i count on to make these decisions and he had just short of shunted off to the side. I mentioned the fact that stimson takes him aside on the day he is sworn in and says, im gonna tell you about this project but he knows truman is overwhelmed. He just become the president. He said im going to give you some time to settle in and then i will come back. On april 25 13 days later he comes into the oval office to brief president truman now that he has settled in, not even quite two weeks. Meanwhile general Leslie Groves who is the real military commander of the Manhattan Project is snuck in through underground tunnels and one of the reasons was theyd given this a lot of thought at the pentagon they thought of the two come in through the front door together that people are gonna wonder what if groves, who built the pentagon, he was the big mission man, what they were doing together so he snuck in and they gave truman a detailed document to read which really explained the Manhattan Project in historical detail and technical detail and truman complained he said i dont like reading long documents like this and groves said, mr. President , we cant say it any more briefly or simply its a complicated project. Thats how out of touch he was with it. Of course by the end at the time that it counted when he made the decision he knew he had mastered all of it. Another remarkable afrom reading your book is 125 thousand people, americans, working on this Manhattan Project and not a word gets out. It just amazes me. You are exactly right. Its one of the things that astonished me too. People say to me, what was it that youre covering from ups and downs and ins and outs in washington today . What was it like writing this book . I said one of the things i enjoyed most about writing, researching and writing and talking about the book is it has absolutely nothing to do with donald trump. [laughter] its not a knock on the president is just to say that it took me away from all the stuff we are in and goes precisely to your point because you are exactly right, they been working on this project for almost 3 years, 2 years. 125,000 people at oak ridge tennessee uranium enrichment los alamos working on the bottom, Warren Richmond and hanford washington flight crews in wendover utah and not one word licks about the project. I thought to myself, if you have 125,000 people today working on a secret project to bake apple pie, by day two somebody would tweet this is outrageous, its immoral, im gonna blow the whistle. It was a simpler time it was a time when the country was more unified, everybody pulled together at common cause to win the war against the nazis and the japanese. Boy, could we use that now. You are not kidding. Its fascinating about how you wrote the book, of course you cover major ainvolved in the project from truman to groves and evan heimer but you also chose to focus in on deco tell the listeners about those two. If it was a great juxtaposition throughout the book. One of the things we wanted to do with this book as i very much wanted, not just to be on the top level because of course the war wasnt just on the top level of this sides. He would engage all of america. One of the stories i wanted to tell was homefront. We found abthere are websites and where there is commentary about various people. Amazingly we found two people who are still alive. Obviously all the big players are long gone. Ruth was a 19yearold girl she had volunteered to work at oak ridge at the uranium enrichment facility. She didnt know what it was she just knew it was a big factory end there were these giant machines called peloton machines. The women, it was a different time, they would call it the a athey basically had a bunch of knobs they had to keep the meter in the right place, not go into the red. He had no idea, they were just told him to keep the meter in the red annual help win the war. He had no idea what they were doing enriching uranium you 235 and plutonium to fuel the atom bomb. What made her story especially interesting was not just that she was in the homefront but she had a boyfriend, later her husband, lawrence huddleston, who was in europe, had been an army medic and survived all the fighting. May 8 the war in europe ends, the nazi surrender and like a lot of other people shes delighted because her boyfriend has gotten through this but shes terrified because hes not, come home, the expectation is hes now would be shipped to an even bloodier conflict in japan. So what she didnt realize and what was this dramatic irony of this is she is creating, helping create the weapon that could save her boyfriends life. Thats exactly what happened. Thats one of the great things as a student of history, often times history, there are plot lines he would never dream of inventing yourself if you are going to write a novel or do a movie. I deco tomorrowablike a lot of families throughout the country did not have expectation of an atom bomb but they certainly expected they hadnt been bombed at all. They sent her to what they thought was a school. She hated it. She couldnt send a letter home because the school censored it because i think a lot of the students were telling me get me out of here. She snuck into the town and mailed a letter in the local post office saying get me out of here. Her mother shows up on august 4 to rescue her. She was thrilled she runs thank you mom. The mother says, hideko, there is a lot of fear in the cities, lets stay out here in the countryside for a few days, hideko said absolutely not i want to go home. They go home august 5 and of course that means they are in hiroshima when the bomb is dropped on august 6. Amazing. I had the chance to see a clip of you and hideko going into the smithsonian to see the presence of that massive enola gay. What a moment that must have been. This is the kind of thing you would never imagine. We did a documentary for fox news if anybody out there i assume a lot of you do subscribe to fox nation you can find there called countdown 1945 like the book. I said to her, we had just talked on the phone up to that point. I said, would you consider coming to washington for an interview . She said i will under one condition, i want to go see the enola gay, she wanted to do it. We drove out one day we got permission to go there before the Museum Opened and we went to see it and i didnt know what her reaction would be. They are enormous, big planes. Big bright silver, all shiny. We walked up to it and she was just taking it in. I said, do you feel anger . She said, no i just feel grief. Deeply grief stricken. She thought for a while and then she said, i want to say a prayer for peace. Which she did and then she said, i think hes an old man. I think this plane is an old man and needs to leave this museum and go to sleep. Which i thought was interesting. Then she went, sayonara, and that was that. On some level it provided some closure. It was such a great moment. Lets go back to truman for a second, i know its not easy but summarize for me the dilemma that truman faced with the dropping of the bombs. His rationale because as you describe so well in your book it was going to save a lot of lives but take a lot of lives as well. I think there are couple points i would make. Obviously this is been one of the great moral questions for the last 75 years. This of course is the sum of the 75th anniversary of all these events in the dropping of the bomb on hiroshima. Should we have dropped the bomb or not . I guess i hadnt really studied at it and thought about it, it wasnt a choice between dropping the bomb or doing nothing. It was a choice between dropping the bomb or invading. If we invaded, as i said, the top experts, general marshall, all the top people at the pentagon said this was in the summer of 45. You could expect the war to go on at least another year and and a half until the end of 1946. You can expect 1 million japanese casualties and and a half a million american casualties because as they get closer and closer to the japanese homeland, instead of the japanese soldiers beginning to lose spirit, they in fact fought warfare so they went to okinawa they thought they were to take it over in two days. It took them three months and they ended up having to kill 100,000 japanese and the 20,000 that were left, none of them surrendered. Some committed suicide, some of them kept fighting, some taken prisoner. They didnt surrender. They knew they were going to have a terrible battle on their hands if they did invade. Some people say, okay, but they wouldve surrendered anyway to which my response, we dropped the bomb on hiroshima on august 6 and the Japanese Military government does not surrender, has not surrendered for two days. The u. S. Then dropped a second bomb on nagasaki and the Japanese Military government still does not surrender. Its only then that emperor a decide to go over the japanese government and directly to the people and he gets on the radio and literally the first time the vast majority of japanese have ever heard the voice of their emperor and he basically says, we have to surrender and that was it. It took two bombs and an emperor going over the heads of the government to get the japanese to surrender. I think one issue for truman, honestly, i dont know any president wouldve made any other decision, if you had invaded and if you had sent thousands or hundreds of thousands of americans to their death or to grieve the injury. And later it were to come out that you had as a president you had access to a weapon that could conceivably ended the war in a flash and he said eye and use it, i dont know that any president could have faced that were wouldve wanted to face that. I leave it to others to whether the moral thing to do or not but i think a realistic practical matter, i dont think truman had any other choice. I think you are right, i think its a catch 22 at the time. Chris, one of the ways it feels like you take the reader right into the room on some occasions is the material youve got was just excellent and i wonder, what were your course sources particularly as it relates to trump . I wonder if youre doing this as a commercial. [laughter] after i read all the histories, theres a lot of histories out there, theyre very good, you want more. Where did i go . I went to the Truman Library and independence missouri and spent a few days there was an art of this as im sure so many scholars would with dragon going to these and the treasure trove was the diaries. Because i often think to myself as i covered reagan in the 80s, as i covered, not directly because i spent six years in the white house but as i covered trump now, what are they thinking at that moment . Whats really going on in their mind . Not the press release but whats really going on . Now we have access to reagans diaries and we have a much better sense of that. Trumans diaries were terrific. He really was, first of all, a very good diary keeper as was president reagan. Also a very good writer as was reagan. He said a lot of things and those diaries that give you the inner conversation. One of the things i found very interesting is that, and its different than i think most peoples perception of truman because he is famously thought of as this very decisive man, the buck stops here, he made a decision and never look back on it. Never look back on this. He always defended and said i could do it again but as he is making the decision in pakistan germany at a summit conference with churchill and stalin in july of 45. He was really struggling with this decision. He was having trouble sleeping at night, he complained of fierce headaches, which he had whenever he was under stress in his career. In his diary he keeps talking about this terrible weapon and he describes it in apocalyptic terms he describes it as the fire destruction prophecies in the bible. He made the decision, he never looked back. This was an enormous decision and he gave it all of the way and all of the inner turmoil and struggling that i think he should have. He wrestled with it. Tough job to be a president. Robert atalk to us about him. Im not sure theres been extensive books written about him, what a man. I think as you described him, a renaissance figure and genius really. Absolutely. I think and a half dozen languages learned, sand script so we could read it the buddhist writings. Famously brilliant as a physicist but also, and people had no question about whether he would have any executive skills at all but he became a very skilled administrator. He was the scientific director at los alamos. One of the things he had to juggle was yet general groves, who i mentioned before, this bulldozer of a man and military man and that he had all these, frankly, prima donna scientists who rebelled at the idea of deadlines and military order and he kind of had to keep both of those things going. We talk about second thoughts, another one of these great nuggets of the book is after the bombing and after the war ends, truman never look back on it. Hes asked about it for the rest of his life and he keeps saying, i had to make the decision, ended the war and if i had to make that call i would do it again. All the people on the flight crew said the same thing, paul tibbets, all of them, ended the war, military men, this was the way to defeat the enemy. The people who did have second thoughts were the scientists. Albert einstein billy started the whole Manhattan Project in 1939 when he writes a letter to roosevelt and what his concern is, the concern of a lot of the german refugees who left nazi germany and now in the west either england or u. S. They were concerned the nazis were to get the atomic weapon before the u. S. Did. God forbid that adolf hitler had admin monopoly on the first true weapon of mass destruction. In any case, about a month after the explosion, oppenheimer comes to the white house and sits down with truman and by this point hes just wracked with second thoughts. He says, mr. President , i have these terrible regrets, i feel that i have blood on my hands. Truman says, dont worry about it, i gave the order, ive got the blood on my hands. They finish the conversation. Oppenheimer leaves and truman says to his staff, i never want to see that side of the ditch in this office ever again. That is such a moment. You also tell a story in the moment ive never heard before, i want you to tell the whole story, its with respect to this fellow William Lawrence with the New York Times, the opportunity that as we had in this project and how all of that turned out. This is the joy, you talk about good days and bad days writing, this was a very good day. William Leonard Lawrence was a science reporter and a very distinguished science reporter for the New York Times. He had won the Pulitzer Prize with a group of other people for writing an article on a scientific project. Groves this military man but also thinks to himself, this is going to become if it all works out, and admits story and what the story told right. This is another example of the difference between the unity of that time and what we have today. This military general walks into the New York Times and goes to see the editor and he says, i would like, because he knows about lawrence, i would like to get William Lawrence and i would like you to detach him and i would like him to basically disappear off the face of the earth and i want him to go inside. Hes going to get the greatest story of all time. I dont think he told the editor what the story was. Basically, the editor said, okay. Can you imagine that today . Lawrence is told, hes basically told you have the greatest story of all time but youre not can be able to tell it until we tell you you can. Of course any news man worth a cent would rebel at that. The idea of this great story he was then brought inside and he was brought into los alamos so he was part of it all. We quote at great length for some of the dispatchers he wrote, none of which appeared until after the bomb exploded and truman announced the whole project to the world but his writing was fantastic and he came up with the phrase, maybe you heard of it before, the atomic age. It was written by William Lawrence. I wish my whiting was as good as lawrence but you get to read some of is in the book. Then he is brought to tinian island hes there with the cruise. Hes not allowed on the first flight because obviously its the first flight and they just had 12 men and they work in a spare an extra seed but he does end up going on the second flight, the nagasaki flight. Is there a describes as a firstperson witness the detonation of the second atomic bomb in warfare. He is a great character and its a delight to read, think about how you describe the first atomic bomb class . How do you describe seeing atomic bomb take out a city . He does it masterfully. The surprising thing almost like a postscript that you wrote about, chris, was that i guess there was a movement, several years later to pull the Pulitzer Prize from him in the New York Times because of the arrangement that had been made at the time. I thought, i would oppose that. But an interesting story. Yeah because what happened was during that period of time he was behindthescenes he was on the government payroll. And again, there was just a different sort of relationship in terms of people, the media, the country, it was much more of a sense of we are all in this together, that obviously has ended. He went to the times and said, basically he was writing Government Press release, and William Lawrence did not. Rightly so. Theres a big player you mentioned. This fellow clouse aa german that was a scientist on the Manhattan Project actually turned out to be a russian spy. Can you tell that story. One of the big issues for churchill and truman athe british and u. S. Had been involved in this all along together. When the bomb explodes, truman gets word and churchill gets word almost at the same time. One of the things they are discussing when we tell stalin. Of course russia has swept in from the east and taken over most of Eastern Europe and there you give it up. Late in the conference after one of the sessions, truman goes over to stalin to tell him about it. He is already practice what is going to say, he doesnt even bring his translator he uses the russian translator the translators stone and truman by themselves and truman says, i just know that you know that we have an enormous indescribably powerful weapon we have developed and stolen says something basically like i hope you put it to good use with the enemy. Thats it then he turns away. Truman is dumbfounded. He doesnt ask a question . Churchill comes up to him and says, he wasnt there but he can see its a very short conversation. What happened . Our know i told him and he did it seem interested. Even trumans russian translator, not the russian, the american who served as a translator is wondering whether the translator had translated it properly. The truth is that stalin was interested, he just wasnt surprised because exactly as you say, there was this german scientist that had become a refugee and, britain and ended up in the United States but he had been a member of the German Communist Party because he saw the communist party as the only force inside germany that was resistant to hitler. He leaves eddies in the United States because he was a brilliant scientist is working on the Manhattan Project but his loyalty is still to communism so it gives a courier name raymond all kinds of information, which goes back to the russians and the postscript to the entire story is, later that night stone and molotov, the foreign minister, end up back in the russian compound together and somebody overhears them having a conversation in which they are discussing the fact that truman has told him they got the bomb and the bomb works and stolen says, i guess we need to get going. A historian would later say that 7 25 pm on that night is when the Nuclear Arms Race between russia and the u. S. Officially began. What a moment. Chris, do you have another book in you . It seems like you must because it seems like you really enjoyed this and it turned out to be bestselling book. Whats your next one . You already got one in mind . One of the thoughts i have was to not only do all the things i said create historical thriller but to be able to replicate it so when i came with the compound idea instead of just the history but count down the days, if you can do cut down 1945 you can do cut down whatever. I have a couple ideas, i have settled on one yet but as i said, writing a history book there are ups and downs, highs and lows but i think there are enough ups. And one of them, im not just blowing smoke, is getting to talk to you about writing this book. There will be another countdown. I cant wait to read it, chris, really. You have a whole mother career ahead of you. Just wonderful to see the work youve done and thanks so much for joining us today. Best of luck as you do this book tour virtually come around the world. The virus is going to end and i will be at one of my Favorite Places in the world, the Reagan Library, ive been there many times, including with mrs. Ragan when she was still alive. I look forward to coming. Youre welcome anytime. Thank you for joining us for todays Virtual Programming event. We hope this conversation has inspired you to share what you know with your family and friends and we will show you again a all great change in america begins at the dinner table so tomorrow night in the kitchen i hope the talking begins and coming children, if your parents hadnt been teaching you what it means to be an american, let them know and nail them on it. That would be a very american thing to do. Booktv on cspan2 has taught nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Coming up sunday, msnbc political analyst zero lena maxwell with her book the end of white politics on identity politics and how to create a more inclusive democratic party. Shes interviewed by voter latinos ceo and founding president maria kumar. At 10 45 pm maryland republican governor larry hogan on his life and career with his book Still Standing watch booktv on cspan2 this weekend. On our monthly Author Interview program in depth we spoke with retired admiral James Defreitas about his military career and his thoughts on character and leadership. In this portion of the program he response to your question about the recent removal of confederate statues. First of all i do not believe any statue anywhere ever should be torn down by a mob. Thats not appropriate. We ought to have a National Conversation and we are beginning to, about which statues of what individuals from what period of history are being reexamined. And for my money as a look at the spectrum i would say that, for example, the confederate generals and admirals who took up arms against the United States of america, therefore, by definition traders, not only to their post to support and defend the constitution of the United States but also took up arms against their nation in defense of the system that included slavery. I dont think those individual to have statues put up about them. I think where there are such statues and there are many of them around the country, i think its time to have a commission, probably will come to the conclusion as i have, its time to take them down. Put them in a museum. Study the history of the civil war. Its a cautionary tale for our times. I think confederate generals and admirals should not be glorified with statues in our public places. On the other hand, we have our founding fathers. Im well aware of the instances that my fellow veteran points out systems of individuals who gone after a statue, for example, of general and president grant. Im very aware of the movement to take down statues of thomas jefferson. A slave owner for example. I can understand that emotion but i think that is a different set of circumstances than the ones i mentioned a moment ago. The world should make these decisions based on retired admiral james awe have to have a collective conversation, my vote would be take down the statues, take down the monuments of confederate admirals and generals. For my money, washington, jefferson, grants, not perfect, slaveowners, but in the Broad Spectrum of their life and times, their contributions are striking. There statues and monuments need to remain on display, perhaps indicating that in addition to all thats known, making the point that jefferson held slaves, thats a valid historical point, to me it does not rise to the level of tearing down the Jefferson Memorial or tearing down monticello, his president ial home out side charlottesville where my daughter christina went to university. There is room for meaningful conversation there. I do not believe, ever the mosques should be tearing down abmob should be tearing down statues or anything else. Heres a look at some books being published this week. In how glad Susan Eisenhower examines her grandfather, dwight eisenhower. Journalist linda lopez added the collection of essays that look at the politics and congressional tenure of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez in the aoc. Former executive assistant to President Trump, madeleine wester helps explains why she lost her job and what shes learned from that experience in off the record. Also being published this week in making sense best selling author sam harris shares her position on politics and philosophy from his popular podcast investigative journalist Jean Guerrero reports on white house advisor stephen millers political career and his influence in the Trump Administration in the book hatemonger. Los Angeles Times business columnist Michael Hiltz that chronicles the creation of the Transcontinental Railroad and the impact it had on the financial world in iron empires. By these titles this coming week wherever books are sold and watch for many of these authors in the near future on booktv on cspan2. Hello, welcome to the Atlanta History Center virtual author talks featuring Heather Lende in conversation with jessica hamlin. Kate whitman, Vice President of hauser programs and Community Engagement for the Atlanta History Center. Really glad you are here and thanks for being with us. This talk will also be broadcast on cspan so that for that. You can purchase copies of bears and ballots theres a link in the chat so you can view that. We provided a link on our