Booknotes: Stories from American History

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This book was on the presses just shortly after September 11 and reached bookstores about six weeks after the terrorist attacks. Although we were initially a little wary about releasing a new book at such a time, the subject matter proved rather appropriate and, in fact, led to some interesting conversations with audiences and the press during our fall book tour.

From our opening event at the National Archives in Washington through stops at Books and Company in Dayton, Ohio and the Selby Public Library in Sarasota, the questions never seemed to stray far from September ll; In response, I frequently found myself drawing upon statistics from several of our Booknotes authors:

• James McPherson reminds us of the Civil War's enormous casualties. Eighty to ninety percent of the soldiers, he explains, were volunteers. By the war's end in April 1865, 620,000 soldiers had died-fully two percent of the American population. "If two percent of the American population were to be killed in a war fought by this country today," McPherson says, the deaths would total five million. "One can readily imagine the impact…that number of deaths would have on American society today."

• Another half-million Americans died as a result of the 1918 influenza pandemic. Gina Kolata reports that the virus spread so quickly among America's World War I soldiers that their dead bodies were "stacked up like cordwood." For those with post-September 11 worries about the threat of biological attacks, it may not be reassuring to know that some of the viral genes that caused the epidemic still exist. They are stored under tight security, however, at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

• James Bradley tells of the thirty-six day battle for Iwo Jima, an eight-square mile volcanic rock in the western Pacific, during World War II. From this single battle, the death toll stood at 22,000 Japanese and 7,000 Americans, soldiers who were "just little boys." Bradley says. There were "so many dead, they couldn't bury them in individual graves."

In the aftermath of September ll, in addition to our near round-the-clock coverage of the government's response to the attacks, our producers sought out writers who could help explain what had happened that day and, perhaps, why. We've included two of those interviews in this paperback edition-a chapter with investigative reporter Peter Bergen, who once interviewed Osama bin Laden, and a chapter with historian Bernard Lewis, who explains how the stage was set for the rise of Muslim fundamentalism. We've also added a chapter on another history-making event, the contested 2000 election between Al Gore and George W. Bush.

Publish Date: November 6, 2001 Publisher: PublicAffairs ISBN: 1586480839 Retail Price: $29.95 Other Books in the Series: