It is for people my age disorienting. For people, my children and grandchildrens age is the only america they have known and the most natural thing in the world. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. The wonderful thing about the gulf coast, is so underappreciate it and that is good because it gives us a lot to write about. If we were in new York San Francisco or chicago those cities and places are all so well known and new york is the literary capital but on the gulf coast we tend to think about from texas to the Florida Panhandle there really is instability, we have a similar environment, similar trees, long leaf pines, palm trees, sandy soil, salt in the air. The gulf of mexico and nourishes and supplies us with wonderful seafood, estuaries, wonderfully rich and tradition and culture. In and around these things for hundreds of years, it is an extraordinarily rich subject to take and of course along comes the oil spill in 2010 where all of a sudden we are in center stage and people are beginning to look at the gulf coast and think what is it like . We didnt know we got so much oil and gas from there. The nation became tuned in to how important the gulf is. Learn about the rich history and literary life of mobile, alabama on booktv and American History tv at 5 15 eastern on cspan2 and sunday at noon on cspan3. You are watching booktv on cspan2 with top Nonfiction Books and authors every weekend. Booktv, television for serious readers. Here are some programs to look out for this weekend. Today live from the gaithersburg book festival in maryland. For complete schedule from that festival visit us online at booktv. Org. This weekend on afterwards former Supreme CourtJustice John Paul stevens talks about his book six amendments which details ways to amend the constitution. Tonight, senator Elizabeth Warren talks about her book a fighting chance. Booktv visits mobile, alabama to talk to local lawyers. Tomorrow night Steven Pressman recounted jewishamerican couple who rescued 50 children from nazi control dna in the 1930s. You can visit us online for this weekends schedule. Now booktv is live from the gaithersburg book festival on the gaithersburgs city hall grounds in maryland. For the next few hours we will see authors panels on world war ii, the book industry and we will hear from others dan balls, bill deadman and animal homes. First, steve vogel, the author of though the perilous fight, he talks about his book live from the 2014 gaithersburg book festival. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] direct your attention up here. In the back if you like to move forward you are also welcome to do so. Welcome to the fifth annual gaithersburg book festival. I am a lover of local history and theater and trains. Lets wait for just a second. [train whistle] wonderful thing about gaithersburg is we are in the middle of Old Town Square and there is a real town here and including the railroad station behind us which is a wonderful place to go to. Gaithersburg is a diverse city that supports the arts and humanities. We are pleased to bring this festival thanks to the generous support of our sponsors and volunteers. Please say thanks to all the different volunteers today. A few announcements before we start for the consideration of everyone, please silence all your devices. This is being recorded by cspan booktv and unless you want your cellphone to be a permanent part of history i suggest you silence it right now. In order to keep improving this event we need your feedback, we have surveys here that are in the back of the tent and on our web site and by submitting a survey you will be entered into our drawing for a cool new e reader. Our guest today is steve vogel who will be signing books after words. Directly behind us is the politics and prose tent where you can buy a book and we have not assigning area to the right. Steve will be glad to sign your book. It is a fabulous read by the way. The quick word about buying the books here today. This event is largely supported by the fact we have people willing to buy the books today so i know there are other places and other choices you have for buying books but if you are able to buy a book today and get it signed you will really be supporting the festival and politics and prose and the local economy so keep that in mind today. You are your purchasing dollars account for events like this. Introducing steve vogel. Our student daughter and guess today is steve vogel, the author of through the perilous fight 6 weeks that saved the nation and he also wrote a book called the pentagon. He has written extensively about military affairs and the treatment of veterans from the wars in afghanistan and iraq. Is reported about the war in afghanistan was part of a package of Washington Post stories selected as finalists for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize. He covered the september 11th, 2001, terrorist attack on the pentagon and subsequent reconstruction. He also covered the first gulf war and the war in iraq. In addition to the u. S. Military operations in the balkans, rwanda and somalia please welcome steve vogel. [applause] thank you very much, thank you. We will make this instead of a lecture make this more of a conversation about steves book. You might have noticed the subtitle, through the perilous fight 6 weeks that saved the nation. I want to ask steve howe did 6 weeks save the nation . Good question. You have to start with you have to imagine the scene president James Madison confronted on the morning of aug. 261814 when he comes back to washington and you have every Federal Building save one has been destroyed. The great landmarks of this country, the capital, the white house and with it the Supreme Court, library of congress, they have been gutted. You have an American Army that has been vanquished, on the run. You have a British Force that just left the capital by lands but then you have a second British Force moving up the Potomac River and still frightening the Nations Capital in alexandria. The United States treasury it this point two using the war of 1812 is broke. Dont have money to improve money to pay for, you have parts of new england talking about the session. It is hard to imagine a more decrepit moment American History. In a few weeks we talk about in this book, through quite a bit of luck, just the right things being done, is able to turn the situation around and we emerge with a victory at baltimore together with another victory further north in plattsburgh, n. Y. The completely changes the direction the war is going, allows the United States to escape this largely disastrous war in terms much greater, much better than anyone could have imagined just a few weeks later. The United States is put on of course that for the first time establishes there unchallenged sovereignty over much of north america. Over the last few weeks i read the book and if you all remember the hunt for red october, remember that . That is how this book read. One more chapter, one more section, goes very vibrantly in shorter sections and you spend almost as if you are camera spending equal time with the american side as the british side. Really cool style you wrote this in. How did you write this style . Part of it is having worked as a journalist. Sometimes what the editors tell you is we want a ticktock. What i was trying to do is everybody has heard about the burning of washington and the battle for 4 mchenry but very few people could put the story together and tell you the chain of events the lead to this moment. Really hadnt been done as a narrative history so what i wanted to do was gather every document, every interview, every ships log, every letter that had dates and times, and by that put together very chronological, day by day, hour by hour, sometimes minute by minute account using techniques like James Swanson used very effectively in his stories about the lincoln assassination for example but it is an attempt to put the reader at the scene, knowing what is known at that point by the characters you are writing about. We all approach the war in 1812 as a mysterious work, not certain what it was about but we all have a lot of myths about the war in our head and sometimes they are true and sometimes not. What were the great myth or legend you had to confront in your research about the book . In some ways it is not as much of a myth now but theres a misperception in the United States that people tend to have forgotten we were the ones who declared war on Great Britain. Some people say Great Britain was trying to take back the colonies and that is what this is about and in fact it was the United States that declared war on Great Britain. This conflict has to be seen in the context of this amazing struggles that had been going on in europe for 20 years between england and france. For the last decade with napoleon on the scene, the british had come to see this fight is a struggle for civilization. In that mine much as the United States post 9 11 at you are either with us or against us attitude Great Britain had that attitude and they didnt hesitate to trample on american sovereignty to further their ends and that included stopping our ships at sea to take sailors to put the work on oil navy ships or blocking our trade with europe and president madison had come to believe the United States had won its freedom a generation earlier in the revolution it hadnt really truly men they decided we might as well remain a vassal state. It is a fundamental understanding we need about this war. There is a low point of the books, when the british occupied washington d. C. And proceed to start torching different buildings. There is this myth which you address in the book and an oped last year in the Washington Post about this myth in our head that is a retaliatory raid. What did you discover . That is basically a pr campaign waged by the british after the fact. We have to go back to the beginnings of this story and the arrival of a man who really changed the nature of the war in the chesapeake, george coburn, george, very effective will Navy Squadron commander who decided he was going to bring the war to the American People in the same way William Tecumseh sherman 50 years later in the civil war. He launched a campaign of torching towns and trading plantations in the chesapeake bay. Lot of these actions took place before anyone was going on in york. And york and canada which is today toronto being burned, this was something the british brought up as justification after the fact when other capitals in europe were saying napoleon didnt burn any capitals, why were you burning a capital in north america . What this attack on washington was about was an attempt, he saw an opportunity to put this war to end. He thought that by attacking the nations seat, sewed humiliating the government of James Madison, sewed disgracing it he could perhaps force it to collapse and at least force the United States to make peace on british terms and he very nearly succeeded. Why did the british go after baltimore . They attacked d. C. First and then go after baltimore. Why baltimore and what were they going to do to the city . Baltimore, they dislike washington that they really hated baltimore. We have to look back at the cities of the time. Washington at the time of the burning of the city was a pretty small, almost a village, some 8,000 people and were living in the capital. It was almost like a collection of these fantastic buildings that had newly been completed like the white house and the u. S. Capitol but other than that, it was mostly middle hovels, a few mentions here and there, more woods and fields that are real city. Baltimore on the other hand was a city of 40,000 people, Third Largest in the u. S. And was a real center of support for the war and a real center of private hearing acts against the british and this involved commercial or private ships that were armed in attacking british ships with the approval of the American Government and the british really disliked baltimore for a number of reasons. You mentioned admiral coburn. It struck me in the book reading of this the importance of leadership, the british have great leaders. General ross, admiral coburn. Coburns boss isnt such a great leader and on the american side we fell apart until the moment in baltimore when the crisis really hit. How important do you think leadership was . It plays such an important role. Having different people in charge at the time of this crisis could have made an enormous difference. In the case of the british, they had been fighting france for two decades so they had had time to really develop an impressive cadres of officers. Coburn served with nelson in the mediterranean and general ross, sent over to lead the army troops, fought under wellington, the United States, the minutemen of the american revolution, that erech has pretty much passed. We didnt have a very Effective Army or militia. Very small officer corps and the ones we had were not of the best quality. General winder who was put in the defenses of washington was a political choice. His uncle is the governor of maryland and president addison was hoping that will get more militia troops to help on the defenses here if we appoint his nephew ended didnt work out that way. A lot of the blame for washington needs to fall on the Madison Administration in particular his secretary of war, john armstrong, who was dismissive of the idea of capturing washington. He felt it was too far, not important enough and despite raging from president madison himself and many citizens in town, armstrong devotes little to support general weiner or the militia troops on the defense of washington. And catastrophic results, madison didnt do enough to ensure his instructions were being carried out so he bears some responsibility. Lessons that were burned in the burning of washington were applied for three weeks in baltimore. This includes a new show of strength by madison and more effective commanders on the scene in baltimore. A narrative, there are a great deal of characters in the book, like game of thrones, a lot to cover. There is one character in particular who keeps coming up like a piece of red zone throughout the narrative and that is Francis Scott key. Tell us about him. He was a washingtone n. Fascinating figure. We sometimes think he was beamed down from outer space from the enterprise or something and ended up at fort mchenry to watch the bombardment but he represents the fears, the conflicted feelings of Many Americans during this conflict. He was from maryland originally, not that far from here in gaithersburg. He was born in what is now Carroll County but he practiced law in georgetown and was vehemently opposed to this war, a terrible mistake to declare war on Great Britain and he actually cheers when one of our many invasions of canada fails and he says to John Randolph of virginia, this may be treason but if so i embrace the name and yet when washington and maryland are being attacked he rises to the defense and get involved with the militia and involved in the debacle, he gets more or less volunteers for this mission to try to gain freedom for an american doctor who is taken prisoner by the british after as they leave washington. This puts him in position to witness a very Pivotal Moment in American History. What was that moment and what did it ultimately do . His timing was interesting because the british after leaving washington dont stay very long. They capture the city, why didnt they just hold it . This was a pretty small force. 4,000 men in the army force in the midst of a much larger country and even though the american militias had not fought very well there were plenty more of them. And move towards the region, they wanted to get back to their ships in order to move on to their other targets which included baltimore, new orleans was their ultimate goal. He launches this mission after they leave washington and it is actually the mission itself is fascinating. Is an important one. He has to get the blessing of the Madison Administration to do it because the americans are upset this doctor has been taken prisoner in violation of rules of governing the taking of prisoners and they dont want to have to swap a genuine prisoner for this doctor who set a bad example to encourage the british to take more americans prisoner. Francis scott key is an effective negotiator but the smartest thing he does is take some letters from british prisoners attesting to the good care they have been getting in washington and together with the rest of the american delegation they end up intercepting the british fleet just as the commander Alexander Cochrane has been waffling on whether t