store. and we like the look and we like the feel, but we certainly are neither quaint, nor old-fashioned. .. have been doing that for 20 years. if we don't have what you need today we can have it very quickly or even better we can show you something else you might love. these are challenging times. a book seller called it the dark ages. i won't say that. i don't think that is true. we are in a time when the industry is under a big flocks and publishers and authors and booksellers are not sure what our business looks like or how we are going to make money in the next few months. that being said we are finding new young customers on a daily basis who are just discovering us. maybe in part because the big box retailer is no longer available or because the localism has caught on especially with younger people. we get new customers all the time. the customers we had 4 long time are very loyal but their reading habits have changed. we have customers who used to buy many trade books from us who may be buying the books. the nature of the business has changed. every new customer and old customer, we know that and have to be ready to give them personal service we are known for. we want to do that. >> next on booktv military historian jonathan jordan presents a biography of generals dwight eisenhower, george patton and omar bradley during world war ii. the worse it -- personal and working relationships of the three men who were friends and opponents. it is a little under an hour. >> good evening, ladies and gentlemen. welcome to the national world war ii museum. of pleasure to see such a pact house and i can tell you you are in for a good show having spent the day with tonight's speaker and having read most of the book. we are pleased to have c-span that wanted to fill mr. jordan's presentation. we had a nice relationship with them over the years. is great that not only will our members across the world view this on our web site but also c-span is going to be airing this hopefully soon. tonight's speaker, jonathan jordan is author of loans star navy, texas league original the fight for the gulf of mexico and shaping of the american west. some of you may have read many or all of his writings on the second world war personalities, battles and weapons such as world war ii magazine, are injured general, military history, and so on. he is a contributing author to the armchair reader, world war ii and the amazing book of world history. he is the editor of the library of texas edition to the people of texas. mr. dorgan is the son of an air force pilot and vietnam veteran who grew up on military bases throughout the country, of ohio and new jersey and the philippine islands. one would think with all of his writings is full time job is as a historian but mr. jordan is a practicing attorney out of that land the, georgia. he is at the national world war ii museum. please give a warm welcome to the author of "brothers, rivals, victors," eisenhower, patton, bradley and the allied victory in europe. mr. jordan. >> thanks very much for that kind introduction. and thanks to the national world war ii museum for letting me share some more stories about three of america's most impressive soldiers. the title of the book is brothers, rivals, victor's. those three where does the only part of the book that weren't revised, cutoff, taken out, put back in, slice and excised and put back to paper in 2006. the reason the title alone survives five years of editorial bloodletting is because those three words brothers bigger still rivals, victor's to me some up a partnership of three american generals who produced one of the most extraordinary results in our nation's history. i would like to spend a few minutes sharing stories about the brotherhood, the rivalry and ultimately the victory in western europe that was eisenhower, bradley and patton. the brotherhood began a century ago this summer in august of 1911 at the united states military academy in new york. it began when a young cadet from kansas for all practical purposes never left the state of kansas before, met another young cadet from missouri who for all practical purposes had never left randolph county, missouri. eisenhower sent omar bradley, more familiarly known as brad, became fast friends at the academy. west point was designed to instill marshall quality and bring out the military sciences in their students, neither were particularly militant in those days. eisenhower was a notorious rulebreaker particularly when they concern cigarettes or curfew. brad was a solid soldier. he ought ranked i by the time they graduated from west point. he wasn't the kind of guy who would stand out in a classroom. he was a quiet guy. these two cadets didn't stand out in the classroom or even in a crowd but they did stand out in one place where they could fight their battles on fields of grass. their love of sports and forced a relationship that would last till the end of their days. as a young man i's sport was football. he was a solid defensive tackle who cracked helmets with jim 4. he was an above average punching bag which we would call a running back. until he injured his knee in a football play, football was his passion. even after the injury derail his sports career at nearly derailed eisenhower's military career he had to ask the doctor who certified him. eisenhower love football. he participated as a cheerleader before his graduation and shortly after graduation he worked as a small town football coach and he was the football coaching mentality that would affect his later style of management when it was more than a game at stake. brad enjoyed football and played with eisenhower but his passion was not on the gridiron. he held the west point record for the longest baseball row and had a mean curveball. his senior year he batted of 383 average swinging the slugger to respectable number that any professional team nowadays including our new orleans would certainly value. there was another thing that brought the two men together that they shared in common. they would mess up the great war. the war to end all wars. the war in europe that so many classmates got excited in. experience and reputation to those men in uniform who were fortunate enough to serve. bradley's regimen spend its wartime from alaska to montana on guard duty. the fourteenth industry got around to settle in to go to france until just after the bell began to ring out in celebration of the armistice in europe. eisenhower spent the war on the other side of the continent. he made a name for himself as a trainer partly because he was such a good football coach but unfortunately that meant the army which like i didn't want him fighting in europe. it wanted him trading under men to fight in europe. so eisenhower rode out during the war to end all wars, can't meet maryland where he trains men fighting in a new group the army put together called the tank corps. the brotherhood grew in 1919 after the first world war ended when lieutenant colonel eisenhower that someone named george patton. patton had a storybook career as an author. he exo in individual sports like running and fencing. he represented the united states in the 1912 stockholm olympics. he was the army master fencer and polo player. he chased pancho villa around mexico with general pershing. patent shipped on general pershing with two great battles and was badly wounded in september in 1918. he was killed on november 11th that year, it was his 30 third that year, it was his 30 third birthday, his hopes for more battle or military glory were dashed. bradley and eisenhower paid lip service to the idea that the casualty lists and come to an end. patton made no bones about it. he had seen his chance, is one g chance for glory taken away from him. at camp meade the additional maryland, his home for revived when he met an optimistic lieutenant-colonel named isaac who was commanding the tank battalion. the two men's love of the unreliable mechanical beasts would cement a friendship that would last to the end of their days and i can't doors as they came to know each other spend many day experimenting with tanks firing weapons coming up nations of men and machines and enjoying their inner warrior years with their two young families. i can and george were the odd couple in many ways. he grew up in an isolated part of california. he came from a wealthy family. he was home schools for a while and went to private schools when he was older. he grew up something of an introvert who drew his energy from within rather than from other people. when pan needed to solve a problem he read, he thought about it, he prayed, he meditated and figured it out himself and executed it. at love reading history and drew his inspiration from historical figures of midi land napoleonic times. but eisenhower by contrast grew up in a large family. seven strapping boy is, no girls. he went to a big public school in kansas, as all america town as you will ever find. he learned to fight on a playground and when he should stand up for himself but also learned when he should cultivate allies like his older brothers. he learned how to relate most import wheat to the man on the street. his family wasn't especially pour but when you have nine mouths to feed money is in tight supply. he could certainly relate to the american middle class. by the end of their assignment to camp meade ike and george had become close personal friends. ike and his wife were frequent guests at the patton house and george patton's giror loved to play with an eisenhower toddler but in 1920 the army broke up the tank. patton went back to the cavalry, to remain with takes awhile longer. the final side of the triangle dropped into place in the 1920s one colonel patton station at the hawaiian division organized a trapshooting deemed toward -- for the division. alarm bradley showed up to try out. brad was one of the great shot. he hunted since he was a young child. he was a crack shot and hit 23 of 25 plays, 23 in a row in rt ct. that was pretty impressive shooting. but patton's simply shrugged his shoulders and said that is fine. they did get off to an auspicious starred they felt a good grab shooting team, the fact was bradley had little in common with the wealthy polo playing circle. brad was a quiet man by nature. he grew up in a small home in missouri. he was an ois iy child and his father, a country school teacher died when brad was ois iy 14 ley waing the family with no mes of income other than the money he could make lan hunting smal game and his mother taking on borders. to head injury to insult when he was 17 bradley was involved in a skating accmilitaryent that sma his teeth and jaw. i don't know if any of us recall how secure or insecure we may have been when we were 17 but a disfigured smile doesn't by pld confmilitaryence. brad's family couldn't afford to get his teeth fitatd and brad went for his young adulthood ashamed of his smile. even after his teeth were replaced he almost never wanted to show his teeth. if he ever smiled it was lut aeo the book jacket. a tight-lipped grimace even to the end of his years. he never got a belly laugh around others and never wanted to call attention to his features. moreover he wasn't a real social lion. has wife was someone who ther pjected to the bathtub gint george and i grew up during prohibition. brad was a simple man with. he loved his ice-cream and drank coca-cola and had food alleo yis that limited him to an unspectacular diet. for that reason bradl a g lost confidence of his socreel peers especially when in sicily and wherthern europe, he ran in circles of the military elite particularly the british whose officers he found to be elegant, well-educated labor still well mawellered and apeoe to speak fluent french. the early ties manifested themseemses in the second world war. as you see from the exhibits in the museum the iweller work arm was very small. the u. s had the seventeenth lao yest army in the world behid bulgaria and belgium even amongst with abundance sweden. eisenhower had a theory. he said if you know the commander intimately you will be able to judge how the unit will act in a given situation. eisenhower was confident he had a real fighter in george patton. one of the combined chiefs of staff ordered him to make three in north africa, ike asked george to leave the landing at casablanca on atlantic coast. the landing for a supposed to be the most difficult of the invasion because it was on that side, particularly dangerous but his luck held. he took casablanca in three days and months later after the americans took one on the chin in castor bean pass, i reached across the continent from tunisia to morocco and asked his friend george if george would take command of the americans fighting in tunisia. george asked ike if he could have omar bradley as deputy commander and with that of the brotherhood at west point, camp meade and hawaii became america's true fighting team. i suppose it was inevitable that when you have three head strong talented guys like this sparks are going to fly. these men started to get on each other's nerves in the close quarters of fighting but they saw each other as rivals of sorts. it was the unique rivalry because it wasn't a rivalry for power or even rank or position because at an, eisenhower and bradley accepted will the war department handed them. this was a rivalry for reputation. it was a rivalry for being right. it was a rivalry to show their ideas and methods for the best way to win the war. this was a rivalry of three men to prove each with america's top soldier. one ingredient of this rivalry was the professional rivalry. to pack in an army -- a horse is a big beautiful strong animal but also we a lot. in a battlefield conditions it is very vulnerable to enemy fire. if you leave a horse standing too long it will get mowed down so you better keep the horse running. and army was subject to the rules of the horse column. attack, attack, attack was george's philosophy. and most of the sicilian campaign, george was so wrapped up in the attack, attack, never thought about the more mundane things were logistics'. and the gas and bullets up to the man in front. he never thought about securing flanks. as brad saw it, george and ran many foolish risks. bradley, by contrast, was the product of the infantry. bradley had a unique appreciation for the vulnerability of the human body under fire and infantry men can't run fast and you have to be careful as a foot soldier. bradley took these lessons from the first world war from his training to heart. he was careful most of the time and was aggressive when he thought the rewards were being aggressive. and use to claim bradley and his corps commanders were somewhat timid. the rivalry didn't just start because of their general outlook of audacity versus prudence. it also extends to their method. these two guys had a different approaches. bradley's father was a schoolteacher and his father with a polo player and they had different mindsets. here is how the book goes through the different thaw processes bradley and patton had. tactics to omar was a type of mathematical problem solving. like a scholar working and algebraic prove he took the known x and wife actors -- why factors to drive the field operation. if everyone did their job the course of events would fall into place naturally. the secret to his success was his ability to grasp all parts of the equation on a monstrous moving battlefield and derive from them a plan in which foot soldiers would have confidence. patent would never think of putting his staff in the driver's seat and sitting back like a figure head. driven by in civil first for approval and overpowering feeling of destiny, he invariably turned toward the the 6 men, and they taught him it was conflicted for requirements of victory. when that happens he would get the boot in favor of whatever work. it was patent's ability to look beyond the rules built over years of study, experiment or prayer was what gave pat and his touch of genius. the third side of this triangle was eisenhower. eisenhower was trained to be a staff officer. his heart was with the infantry but in the end he knew his role in this great game would be the team's general manager. he would fire players and trade them to weather team that actually did that to a general he didn't like. sometimes he would shift around his defense or send in a new player for offense. eisenhower was a lot like bradley and his team outlook but he also knew that george patton was the kind of individual you could use profitably on the team. he could do lot with a man like patton. as eisenhower told general marshall at the sicilian campaign and was an army commander whose troops could not be stopped by ordinary obstacles. if the friction by their philosophical outlook and training had been enough fact is bradley and patent particularly had a style that diametrically opposed. they couldn't click together at a personal level as much as they would have liked. we all know about patent's golf. he had a vocabulary -- he even taught his children to curse. after the war eisenhower, reminiscing on his old friend patten said george patton loved to shock people. any thing that popped into his mind promptly came out of his mouth especially if it was bizarre. he loved to shake members of the social gathering by exploding outrages profanity and if it created an effect he would indulge in more of the same but if no one paid attention he would quiet down. this wasn't something that just happened for effect during the second world war. this is part of who patton was. in 1919 when he was on the boat coming back to america from returning from france his father wrote him an interesting letter where he warned him i have been worried that the gift of gab may get you into trouble. you are now 34 and the dignity going with your rank invest what you say with more importance so i hope you will be very careful and self restraint for your own good. at the was the commander of the third cavalry regiment stationed outside washington d.c.. hat and would sometimes go out for horseback rides with the chief of staff, general george marshall and occasionally take his wife kathryn to ride with him. in the presence of polite ladies most of the other officers tended to be more circumspect but not george. after one particularly profanity late and tirade catherine turned to him and said to him in a way only women can get away with, you can't talk like that. you say these outrageous things and you look at me to say i'm going to smile. you could do that as a captain or major but you are a senior general and the general cannot talk in such a wild way. none of that advice stuck. this was part of a new patent was. shock value or his bluntness was to he was so he knew it was a dangerous game. occasionally he would tell reporters attached to the third army in europe not to print things he was saying about politics or the allied high command. he knew certain things if they made their way into print would get him can the. he hated the press conference because he made so many guests during the war he never knew when his luck was going to run out and get him fired. in this end there was a clash about bradley, he grew to dislike patton. he didn't think the army in sicily which was his second corps reported to. he would send tons of small arms ammunition with final artillery rounds near the beaches. he would do irresponsible things. the seventh army headquarters would forget to run communications wire to the corps headquarters. he might not keep the air service in formed where the infantry was. bradley and patton in sicily also fought about tactics and bradley in the end to top all off with a field commander who received a certain report in 1943 about that and having caused a reference in a field hospital