Category: interview

WWII history book – “Flying With The Fifteenth Air Force” (University of North Texas Press, 2018) – David Snead interview

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Dr. David Snead is a professor of history at Liberty University. He has edited or written a number of books on US history including WWII history. We discussed his latest project, an edited version of the memoirs of Tom Faulkner, a B-24 pilot in WWII.

1:03 – David talks about how he first got into history.

3:30 – David talks about how he went about editing this WWII memoir.

5:23 – David talks about Tom’s time piloting a B-24 for the 15th Air Force.

12:50 – David talks about Tom’s training and the attitudes of the B-24 versus the B-17.

19:15 – David talks briefly about the Tuskegee airmen.

20:27 – David talks about the facilities the pilots used.

25:06 – David talked about problems Tom might have dealt with because of how young a pilot he was compared to others.

28:36 – David talks about the documents he used to support the things discussed in Tom’s memoirs.

33:58 – David talks about the usefulness of oral histories for this book.

Links of interest

https://untpress.unt.edu/catalog/3816

http://www.liberty.edu/academics/arts-sciences/history/index.cfm?PID=7112

For more “Military History Inside Out” please follow me on Facebook at warscholar, on twitter at Warscholar, on youtube at warscholar1945 and on Instagram @crisalvarezswarscholar

Guests: David Snead

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: military, history, military history, conflict, war, interview, non-fiction book, WWII, world war 2, US Air Force, B-24, Europe, Switzerland, missions, Texas

US Civil War history book – “River of Death” (University of North Carolina Press, 2018) – William Robertson interview

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William Glenn Robertson has a PhD in History and has written books and numerous articles on the US Civil War. He became a faculty member of the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in 1981. There he revived the educational technique known as the Staff Ride and wrote the Army’s manual on the subject. He retired as the Director, Combat Studies Institute in 2011. We spoke about his latest US Civil War book on the Chickamauga campaign.

0:47 – William talks about how he got into studying military history. He grew up around it.

4:24 – William talks about the book itself. He talks about the motivation to write it.

7:27 – William talks about how his study differs from previous studies of the Chickamagua campaign. William talks about the personalities of the military leaders and also how they moved through and mapped the terrain they were fighting in.

16:05 – William talks about feeding and supplying large Civil War armies.

18:41 – William talks about the staffs of these armies.

23:49 – William talks about a southern family that had a son in the Union Army and who fed false information to the Confederate Army.

25:34 – William talks about the role of technology in the campaign.

32:04 – William talks about how no one had ever managed armies the size of those in the US Civil War.

34:43 – William talks about what documents he used for his research.

50:43 – William talks about some of the Civil War stories that saddened him.

59:26 – William talks about a serious problem he sees in the study of US Civil War history.

For more “Military History Inside Out” please follow me on Facebook at warscholar, on twitter at Warscholar, on youtube at warscholar1945 and on Instagram @crisalvarezswarscholar

Guests: William Glenn Robertson

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: military, history, military history, conflict, war, interview, non-fiction book, US history, US military history, US Civil War, Georgia, Chickamauga, Union, Confederacy

War films analysis book – “The Philosophy of War Films” (University Press of Kentucky, HC, 2014, PB, 2018) – David LaRocca interview

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David LaRocca has studied philosophy, film, rhetoric, and religion. He’s worked with a number of institutions where he has studied and taught these subjects. We talk about his editing work on a recent book on war films.

0:42 – David talks about how he got into studying war films. He was first interested in war photography.

4:33 – David talks about the focus of the book and begins talking about Werner Herzog.

8:46 – David talks about the philosophy of war and war films.

17:27 – David talks about who and what war movies are for. Are they for veterans or for non-military audiences?

22:08 – David talks about how realistic war movies can be.

26:44 – David talks about how movies have a way of telling stories that may conflict with actual events.

37:06 – David talks about who makes war movies versus who undergoes the experience.

43:53 – David talks about serializing war stories.

45:19 – David talks about video games and war stories.

49:12 – David talks about the various disciplines applied in this book.

59:24 – David’s work can be found at DavidLaRocca.org.

Links of interest

http://davidlarocca.org/David_LaRocca.org/David_LaRocca.html

http://www.kentuckypress.com/live/title_detail.php?titleid=3324#.W_ypnzFReM9

For more “Military History Inside Out” please follow me on Facebook at warscholar, on twitter at Warscholar, on youtube at warscholar1945 and on Instagram @crisalvarezswarscholar

Guests: David LaRocca

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: military, history, military history, conflict, war, interview, non-fiction book, Werner Herzog, Jeff Wall, Christian Bale, Saving Private Ryan, veterans, Normandy, Spielberg, Restrepo, Chris Kyle, American Sniper, video games