Humanities. Where he was awarded 500 in grants to cultural organizations, university and solars for 7 years, he directed the nea Operation Home coming writing wartime program and workshops for u. S. Troops during their employment on domestic basis and in military hospitals. Hes published in humanity inside Higher Education and over the wall street journal. And other outlets coed ditted essay collection. Hello to glad youre here it is my distinct honor to introduce and interview jeff his new book which ill note is signing is at 3 00 and i think youll want to be there after you hear this and jeff is well known to us. Hes signed many of his books here in the state. Hes the author of more than 15 New York Times best sellers certainly would know other books that come to mind the last full measure, of course, his New Historical novel the old line about Teddy Roosevelt. And rather than read this standard bio, i thought i would tell a story so jeff and i have known each other for 20 years. When we were younger lets say. And the project that was just mentioned the u. S. Government project Operation Home coming, where we worked with our troops in afghanistan and iraq as they were rotating in and out of the war helping them share those stories. Helping them in many ways unburden their experiences and then domestically with military families. And some of our war two veterans shall be foot recorded statements, in fact, the last interview with shelby foots life that recorded for that project. Jeff we went to alaska, colorado, at one point we found ourselves in bahrain on Aircraft Carrierok and we took a helo destroyer and he was teaching writing and you know how limited it is what you can take on a vessel in a war zone for half a year employment. And one of these sailors had in his duffel a beat up paperback of one of jeffs book. Now think of all of the possessions you can bring pictures of family and he brought jeffs book and he was shy. It was tattered dog eared cover was a little bit detached and he got courage to say you know mr. Will you sign this for me. And jeff who so warm always to his audience qengt to sign it, now heres unfortunate thing i know about this gentlemen hes left hand sod he went to sign it that cover wentt flying off [laughter] so fair warning, i know were probably selling paperbacks just fair qarng in the vigor of his signing so wepu see the public face of somebody and we dont always know what they gave back and that was that whole experience was pretty complicated. You know, as a tough time of the people he was serving as a writer werea going through some tough things. So i wanted to give you that introduction about just sharing not the writer but the man. And thats a good way to pivot to you now live in gettysburg, pennsylvania, within the footprint your house within the footprint of that national sacred space really tell us about while thats particularly special between you and your family. Well, my father took us on his family to gettysburg i was 12. And we went there as tourists like two Million People a year do, and he went there with no agenda. He was not a historian and not done Much Research but reading, and we got to gettysburg, and my father was for all of his life a story teller. And he was a good story teller and he knewan a good story whene saw one walking the battlefield at gettysburg and he became obsessed with telling that story. And then totally unexpected that that would happen to him. The obsession lasted seven years, it took him seven year to write a man ewe script bassed on battleed of gettysburg, and it s called the care angels, and i love when people nod their heads when i say the title of the book. He tried to sell this in new york, now think about the early 70s which was when he was trying to sell this book what else is going on in this country it is the end of the vietnam war. Absolutely nobody wants to read a book about generals which is a lot what the killer angels is about that is a bitter disappointment to my father he went through 15 publishers until he finally got a small independent Publishing House to David Mckay Company who was going out of business and though agreed to publish killer angels 2500 copies published that was it. And so there are a lot of first additions are very rare today of their collectors items. The book comes out to no great commercial success. And yet a year later 1975 book comes out in 7 4 by the way next year is 64 anniversary of killer angels were doing thing around but the book comes out in 74 it does nothing commercialy and following year we get a real surprise because telegram comes to my Fathers House congratulations, killer angels has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Now, that was a surprise to everybody. Especially people who have no interest in the book. And still, book was not commercially successful. And he led on, in fact, people often asked me what other historical works did your father write and answer is none. He went on to do such a hitchcock syfy story that did nothing and he wrote a baseball story which i can talk about a little later. But he did nothing else historically and in 19 88 he suckered his second heart attack and passed away in his sleep he was only 59 years old. Five years later ted turner puts up the money the movie gettysburg comes out based on the killer and jell and it is a number one best seller. Five years after my fathers death those are the footsteps im walking in and had it not been for his early demise i never would have back writer because it was tedturner who came to me and said wouldnt it be great to take veterans do more stories, like your fathers, go before and after gettysburg and the before became my first book which was gods and generals so my tie to gettysburg is pretty significant and now that i live there and you know my wife is native born and raised in gettysburg, the time, full circle makes plenty of sense. So we dont forget it you, and youre handling events as dating going through his files i dont know if you call it novel or novella, give it a quick my father had given up on it. It. Dnt sell the publishers wouldnt buy it and after his death my sister and i going through his things found the manuscript. He was one manuscript and that was all. A ticket to new york. The book was published and it was called and Universal Pictures jumped all over adding Kevin Costner jumped all over it. Some of you may have seen the movie with Kevin Costner and kelly preston. The movie is on tv all the time and people didnt realize that movie is based on the book by jeff shaara. Twice hes come out based on his book that he didnt live to see. And im in the movie by the way. I got my one second claim to fame. [laughter] on hulu theres a freeze frame. We talk about his work and Teddy Roosevelt which we are going to get to an incredible amount of riding he has done on the american civilil war, world wari the American Revolution and the war. The war and the war were both Remarkable Books and introduces stories we dont necessarily know. I will pare that to where we are as a country in terms of the high school and middle school and junior high. So something called the neat. Report card in shorthand and we just had the results back this year for eighthgraders across the nation. Only 22 of eighthgraders or even proficient in civics. Only 14 are proficient in u. S. History. We are perching 2026, the 2050th Year Anniversary of the; intentional anniversary of americas founding and we are not going to get that level of knowledge from books. We are going to needed our knowledge. We are going toer need everyone but to the young people and what would you say . What would you want them to know about Teddy Roosevelt . First of all right off the bat the easy ones is that he was president of the United States. Allow the people and ive heard this about people in hollywood if it didnt happen in their lifetime, it didnt happen. I think there maybe some of that we talk about young people where really have no reason to think back and no reason to learn who the president to bring Pay Attention to the important ones. There were lot of unimportant ones but the ones that were changed our world and what we are living today and roosevelt is one of those. Hes responsible things like the National Forest service and the National Parks has been off them today and without roosevelt yosemite on and on would have been developed. There was one congressman in particular from the midwest somewhere and is nicknamed with w,not 1 cent persists scenery. Thats a roosevelt was up against and he provided a great deal of and the panama canal. Which is roosevelt himself admitted had to go through congress to do the panama canal would have taken 50 years and roosevelt did it in three. If you keep on listing. I dont want to get involved and bogged down so much in roosevelt because as interesting as it is, and it is interesting that he accomplished in the stored area amount of things fighting for the common worker against the corporate empires and he was responsible for knocking down a lot of that and formed unions to fight against corporate or bruise. He did all of this stuff and that was his presidency and to get to your question people need to know this because of the lot of the good that we have in our Society Today came directly from that period of time in history am the 20th century and its because of Teddy Roosevelt. The other part we think of Teddy Roosevelt and the strong way the man in the arena and those special interest groups. I think people are surprised and i feel wellinformed. His support for suffrage was way about character and the universities i think people know that a lot of us werent told that he had booker t. Washington to dinner at the white house which the president wilson certainly would not have t allowed. There were so many ways that he was ahead at this time. And its easy for me to sit up here and basically read you a synopsis of the book. My wife gets on me, dont do that because then people have no reason to buy the book. [laughter] h but in fact booker t. Washington the first africanamerican to have dinner in the white house ever. Lincoln had effort in the africanamericans visiting the white house and Teddy Roosevelt was the first to have dinner with them in the white house and boy did that cause a. The newspapers attacked him for that and typically newspapers in the south and no respectable southern person would ever step foot in the white house ever again. On and on and on their saliva that. Suffrage, he supported a womans right to vote decades before it came to pass and again that was an unpopular stand. Things were going along just fine the way they had since its one 1780s and he decided no, thats not find that Women Deserve the right to vote and that was a very unpopular stance. Again i could go through all the minutia if you will of his life and his presidency. They are so much more to this. So you dont to repeat in mississippi the teddy bear story that we all know that one but you also remind us of the connection that when the africanamerican in indianola was pressured and forced the people wouldnt accept her being there, he closed the post Office Rather than let that stand in the end it was too dangerous and she did not stay in that role. She was ultimately the first africanamerican bank in the state of mississippi. What i like is that you dont focus on the presidency so much as you tell us about the dakota territory in the badlands. First of all i had to correct you on one thing. I dont tell you about it, teddy tells you about it. Thatss the whole point of for you, for me to take you with me and put you at his bedside and let him tell you the story and thats the way this book is written. But the dakotas in the 1880s he goes on a hunting trip and he goes out and he wants to kill a buffalo. Thats his motivation for goinge out there. What he finds when you get to the dakota territory, first of all there werent many buffalo there which was a disappointment but he finds it and he gets excited about raising cattle. He loves the badlands in what is today north dakota and he meets some people than and some of them not so nice people but he gets excited. One of the things about teddy that he talks about his whole life to live what he does and what he accomplishes is simply he gets excited and he wants to do something for himself even against his wife, to the contrary he does it anyway. He puts a bunch of money and buys a bunch of cattle and he becomes just like that a cattle rancher in the dakotas and then he goes back to new york. But that experience and some the things that happened him out there roosevelt certainly inoo s bookhe because they are fun. Thats the one where do hefty describe of him from the wider view of being able to tell his story, hes fun. Whate. Happens to him is entertaining and itslt entertaining to me and i hope as a result of that its entertaining to you. The other part is we in the wake when he got the badlands hes a harvard educated and to how does he. I think first of all he brings respect with him. People know of him and novas name but he quickly because he doesnt runun the show you can e he doesnt know what hes doing so he hires people that do and he respects them. So it becomes mutual and then as time goes by and is there for three or four years and as time goes by some of the things he does in some the stories in his books and some for things that happened to himim and by the way you mentioned this when he first stepped off the train the first time in the middle of the night and the dakotas hes wearing glasses because he has the wear glasses. He cant see and he is told immediately, by the way you can expect from now when everybody is going to call you for eyes and they did. Everywhere he goes he is known as for eyes and he accepts it and thats the way it is and he stored his classes in the brim of his hat. Hesss right he has one pairf glasses and is riding a horse and theres a stampede of cattle which is in but he always has spares. He accepts that with humility and accepts all of that with humility. I think that is what makes them is popular as he w is out for te people. That brings me to historic fiction and sometimes people think a writer is leaning on the word fiction. You are always leaning on the word because of the research and accuracy. I had a wellknown historian at one time. When youre riding fiction you can ride anything you want. You can create your own history and pull the strings into all of that. While that may be true for people who ride, its not true for me. I do an enormous amountai of research mainly to get the facts straight in to get it right. I make huge amounts of notes of what happened when it happened and what happened to and who was there and who was not there. Thats so important. I hear from teachers, high schoolteachers particularly using my books in their classroom and what that did was added a bit of shock because these are novels in your teaching history of the novel. What i heard was first of all they said we trust that the history is accurate but the other part of it is if you can get the character to relate to that somebody can r get into thy dont even realize its history. So thats extremely flattering but it also adds a responsibility to get it right. Dont play around with history. Everything in this book particularly everything happened the way its written. These are novice by definition. The fiction is the dialogue because you were there. No one will ever know exactly what the conversation was between Teddy Roosevelt and his wife in a certain situation. Well just never know. Its up to us to just fill in those blanks but by doing my job if im doing it right its seamless. You read about the events as they happen like you were there and how it happened between the characters. Thats what i try to do in every book i ride. I also think the reason you have such a large audience is these are very accessible novels in the sense of we can read them and we can understand them academically but at the same time you are very precise in youran language. You mention corduroy road and of course my mind is thinking i dont think he means the jacket and i found myself looking ite up. You have that level of nuance to make sure that its precise but at the same time the book more less, talk about the division between researching and riding. First of all i would address the person he said thats for the historians and the people who know every blade of grass and everything that happened. I just let them know ive done. My homework. And gods and generals in my first book i made a mistake. I madeis a mistake from the colr of the plume in jeb stuarts hat. Who knew . [laughter] and boy did i hear about it. They said it was a plume, no its and i got letters. From now on if im going to talk about something as miniscule as that its going to be right. That way the historians will no im doing it the right way. Im sorry with the other part . [laughter] aidala member the question but that was the answer. About the dialogue we know you are using diaries and other things in various books but we believe the dialogue because of the effort you just talked about. Theres a really powerful place where Teddy Roosevelt is moving and bunnies present and can no longer interact and you have this beautiful line with the farris brothers and hes said he outgrew. Its not a melancholy book. But the framing of it is about sacrifice and that comes up with world war i. Issue go through first of all the dakotas and you get to the war most people know about Teddy Roosevelt and San Juan Hill and you go through thatof part of it is certainly important. The governor of new york went on to his presidency. Hes president of the United States. He goes on a tour on