washington post columnist, thriller writer who writes about the cia and such. this month, pulitzer prize winning author, colson whitehead as our guest. his most recent book is the under ground railroad. mr. whitehead, what s the appropriate response new book is appraised by oprah, president obama, you won the national book award, what is the appropriate response? if only it took the pain aw away. [laughter] has taken off in a way that s unexpected and startling and wonderful. just try to enjoy it despite my best efforts. why does it put you in a better mood? i ve been writing for 20 something years doing fiction 20 some years, sometimes we write a book and people dig it and understand it sometimes write a book and no one cares and it s sort of disappears so i have the pride the job i did with the book. . either you dig the groups of two prospectors or you don t and so you are either along for the ride description or not. definitely when i was writing was my second attem
exist and get to unpack them a little bit a little bit and learn about the reality of the experience. i wanted to start first by talking about how this connects to the first world war overall. it s not just america has these myths, but even the sense of how we understand the first world war to begin with, and we think of the kind general narrative that we attached to it, one of the most common narratives is that world war i was a senseless slaughter. we already talked about why this war even occurred. but once it s underway, it is sort of predominant image and we get that image a lot from popular culture, those are the kind of images i have up here for you, of the idea that this really was just meant and then sent needlessly to their death. i have an example, all quiet on the western front. you are gonna like this image. this is the cover for the first english edition of the novel. you ll recognize that image from something we discussed last class, and last class was with
she also talks about how the u.s. viewed itself as a defender of democracy and gets criticism how it treated its own the centers and. let s just over now. good morning everyone. this morning, we are going to be talking about, or rather we will be talking a conversation with last about neutrality. this conversation last over the sources several lectures, will wrap up older countries neutrality, but this morning we re really gonna focus on what neutrality looked like, and meant for the americans. especially in the first half of the war. so, the thing that i want you to understand the most, and this is really vital because, it s a very different understanding of neutrality that we have today. neutrality, at the beginning of the war, did not mean an activity. it did not mean pass it to passivity. and most certainly did not mean impartiality. so if it doesn t mean those things, then what on earth does neutrality mean? a definition of neutrality differs with each country. some,
washington d.c. office. so with this discussion in today led by our honored guest today which is the autobiography sir these papers or from the library archives of when he was writing the book that a acknowledgement makes the point maybe love was lost or forgotten about. so what is that like to find things?. was that stupid?. that is one of the great historians of the conservative movement as a great biography of barry goldwater the history of modern conservatism with history of the heritage foundation has a distinguished fellow in have come to admire him so much. but to come to full fruition this week with the victims of communism fund with the memorial here is washington so as to read through this you will see that preservation of liberty is the true passion so in the war of the captive nations over the years serve the major early program library of congress to look negative and eggs women 100 years since the bolshevik revolution in is whether those things as we inspire