 Welcome to Books, Books, Books. I'm your host, Mihaila Stoops, and today we're talking about history books versus historical fiction novels. My guest is John M. Glenn, PhD. He is not only a history professor, a historian, but also a novelist. His first book is American Armageddon. This is a book about our country's involvement and exit of Vietnam War. His second book is a novel. It's about to be published, and it is called Not Until We Have All Your Wounded. John, thank you so much for joining me today. Oh, my pleasure, Mihaila. Thanks for asking me. And I want to start by understanding from your perspective as a writer, what is the difference or what are the differences between a history book and a historical fiction novel? That's a great question. It's, I think it's important to recognize that history, or facts, if you will, in history are sometimes nebulous things, sometimes hard to prove, and depending on who you're talking to, they might disagree. For example, we know that the Alamo was stormed March 6th, 1836, and that Davy Crockett was there, but was he killed there? And if so, I mean, if you listen to Walt Disney and Fess Parker and John Wayne, he died fighting, but there's an eyewitness account from a Mexican soldier named Enrique de la Pena who says that Davy Crockett surrendered. So was Davy killed fighting or did he surrender? Well, it's a historical fact that he died, but how? So my point is that history facts are often nebulous things, confusing things, and we don't really know what happened a lot of time. And so historical novels can put us in the time, listen to the dialogue, and also introduce us to some of the facts. But you've written both genres. And I'm making the assumption that it takes a lot more research to write a history book or a book that is historical non-fiction. Very much so. Writing a history book is demanding. You have to be certain that every fact is accurate. And as I suggested, that can be hard, can be difficult. Writing a novel is much easier as I found out because obviously you can make some stuff up. Now, the research in a novel is not nearly as extensive, but I'm writing my second novel, my third book right now, and I find myself doing all kinds of additional research. And I guess if the reader really needs to know, they can start looking up some of these things and say, oh, this really happened, but then, oh, I guess he's made up this part of this dialogue or this particular character. So as a reader, I can't really say, oh, I'm getting 100% accurate information if my information is based on reading historical fiction. No, absolutely not. Fiction just by definition is not factual. And while in historical fiction, there's a lot of history included, no, it's absolutely, you can't expect it to be totally accurate. And Mihaly, as you're suggesting, that can cause a problem for the reading public in that some of them, hopefully not many, will assume that a historical novel is accurate history and that's just not the case. So for American Armageddon, your first book, I suspect your targeted audience is slightly different than your audience or your readership for your second book, not until we have all your wanted. Good point, that's accurate. I think when one looks at the cover or a general perusal of a book, one will find that it's either a history book and in the case that we're talking about, or a novel. And immediately it should register if it's a novel, okay, some of this is not going to be accurate. I wrote American Armageddon as a result of teaching the history of the Vietnam War for over 20 years. And one time I was called in to do a summer session of only two weeks in length. My class on American history and the Vietnam War was like 15 weeks in length. So I had to shorten the class down, obviously. And I did that by identifying six battles that got us into Vietnam that showed how we were going to succeed where the French had failed and then how we got out of Vietnam. And that became, as I prepared that class, I got to thinking, hey, this would make a pretty good book. If someone just wanted a quick 150 page analysis of what are we doing in Vietnam? What the heck went on here? How come? And I have people all the time ask me, I never understood why we got into Vietnam. And so this book will explain it. So are there any similarities or any lessons we've learned from the war in Vietnam that we may be applying to our involvement in Ukraine? Very much so. I don't think, I haven't read of any large numbers of American soldiers, advisors, whatever you wanna call them, in Ukraine. I have a good friend who has done a lot of training of the Ukrainian Army. He's an American former general. And I wrote to him before we had our interview and I said, you know, how many actually, how many American soldiers are there in Ukraine? He said that all the training is being done in Poland and Romania and not in Ukraine. And the point I'm getting to is, as soon as an American advisor is killed in Ukraine, if it happens, then that's when things start to roll. And the wife or the brothers or the family of the American that was killed, they wanna know why was he killed in Vietnam or she, why were they killed in Ukraine? And then the president at that time was going to have to do what Lyndon Johnson had to do in early 18, as early 1965, and that is either get in or get out. But with the war in Vietnam, there were so many journalists present, right? Or so many people that could convey the information, accurate information about what was happening there and it required physical presence. The war in Ukraine in this day and age, the satellites could give a lot of information, no human physical presence is required. And that's one point I want to make. And the second point is that in this day and age, it appears that historical truth has become very relative. You watch the news or the updates on a certain conflict as part of the war in Ukraine and surprise the news from one side said that they're victorious and the other side also claims that they're victorious. So how does this work? What is historical truth nowadays? And is it, if I decide to go to a history book because it's more researched, can I make the assumption that that's accurate too or not? No, I don't think you can. I was using a teaching aid when I was teaching full time that was supposed to be accurate telling me things so that I could pass them on to my students. And at one point they had General MacArthur in 1953, I would say, they had General MacArthur actually invading China, coming out of Korea and invading China to finish the Korean War. Well, I mean, that didn't happen. That just didn't happen. And so you have to, as you're suggesting correctly, one has to analyze the book from the author's point of view. Okay, who is this author? Is this author a Republican or a Democratic political person and do they have an agenda that they're trying to pursue through this book? Or is this person, whatever the bias happens to be, you need to identify that before you can buy into any of the so-called historical facts. I used to have students come in relatively often into my office and they'd tell me something that I didn't think was accurate. And I'd say, where'd you get that? And they'd say, I read it in a book. Well, no, that's just not good enough. What was the bias, what was the agenda that this author had? And almost all authors do have an agenda and they're trying to push their thesis. The situation in Vietnam was just to contain communism, two words, contain communism. And however we had to do that, that's what the presidents from Truman to Eisenhower to Kennedy to Johnson to Nixon, they all wanted to contain communism and they were going to do it through a proxy war in this little Southeast Asian country called Vietnam. But I'm making the assumption that reading a book about the Vietnam War might be more factual or more accurate than a book that would be published today about the war in Ukraine, simply because it feels to me that publishing a book is not administratively or financially as much of a burden as it used to be. There are a lot of people that are self-published and before it was, you know, publishing houses could have controlled information that would have reviewed the book, could control the information and so on. But nowadays, you know, anybody can publish a book and then there are many people that don't read books. They read blogs, for instance, or they read tweets. That's their source of information. Good point and you're absolutely correct. The one other thing I would add is that with the absence of time, more historical evidence comes to light and so something that might be written about the war in Ukraine today in 20 or 30 or 50 years like it's been for Vietnam, they will find out different things and they'll know more and they'll have better and more accurate historical facts, if you will, to back it up so that the passage of time allows for historians and others to do more research and dig in and get better facts. And I think books about Vietnam are more accurate, certainly today than they were in 1975 and books about Ukraine will be more accurate in 2050 than they are now. Well, that's a long time from today. The longer time passes, the more historians and other people find new little nuggets, new little things that will help clarify what's gone on. And I remember I had a great teacher in my PhD program at St. Louis University and he could come up with things about Abraham Lincoln that were astounding to me at brand new things about Lincoln. And wouldn't you think there's over 5,000 books written on Abraham Lincoln? And wouldn't you think that we've covered virtually every part that we need to cover? And yet this guy, his name is Mark Neely, he would come up with new ideas, new thoughts, new ways to think about certain things that Lincoln had done. It was amazing to me and quite eye-opening. So, you know, let's talk a little bit about your second book that is just about to be published or has recently been published, not until we have all your wanted. Does it also take place in Vietnam and is the story about the Vietnam War as well? True it is. Mark Twain said, write what you know. And those are two things that I know. War in Vietnam, I was helicopter pilot, medical evacuation helicopter pilot, 1971, 72, stationed in Da Nang in the 236 Med Detachment, flying helicopters out to pick up wounded in the field on a daily basis. So the, in fact, the Vietnam War class was one of my favorites to teach because so many students just didn't know hardly anything about it, you know. And it's not their fault, it's the history teacher's fault. And what you do as a history teacher is you focus on what you enjoy. And so a lot of the teachers of the students that I ended up getting were focused on the American Revolution or the Gilded Age or FDR or what have you. And finally, at the end of the class, the last day of class before the final exam, they would say, oh, we had this war in Vietnam. It started this particular year and it ended this particular year. Okay, a final exam is Tuesday and that was it. And so they'd come to my class, absolutely knowing virtually nothing about the war. And yet a lot of their fathers or grandfathers had been involved in it and maybe got killed or wounded or what have you. And in addition, then I also had some street creds, if you will, in that I had been there. And so they knew that what I was telling them probably was accurate, although you can't guarantee it because I probably had a bias as well. And so I would always tell my students, be careful of what I tell you. You wanna make sure you research it and make sure I'm telling you the right thing. But the second- And as a provider, you do have a historical fiction novel, then you have a little bit more flexibility in presenting the story and so on. But yet, as you mentioned to me, you still do a lot of research and- Absolutely right. Absolutely right. I was talking to a close friend of mine who was in Vietnam with me and he appears in the novel under an assumed name, of course. And I said, hey, I've just finished this novel. Oh, by the way, you got wounded. You were hitting the hand and in the leg, but you're in the hospital and everything's fine. And of course he never was wounded. And so we laughed about that that in the book he's actually wounded. And so he was glad that he wasn't killed in the book. So yeah, you can use the history to get you where you wanna go. But of course, unless you were there, you can't identify any dialogue going on as say, back when they're writing the Constitution or writing the Declaration of Independence, you don't know what Franklin said to Jefferson. It wasn't recorded. And so in a historical novel, you can make that part up. And I think it's fun for the reader. It's fun for the author and it's fun for the reader. So it seems that to me that you've enjoyed so much writing this novel that you decided to write another one. You're working on another one right now. I did have a second one in mind. The basis for the second one is my master's thesis. It was about a Civil War naval lieutenant whose name was Charles Reed. And he had a bunch of exciting adventures during the Civil War on the high seas mostly. And so this next one is about a guy named Yancey Howell who is the younger brother of Verena Banks Howell Davis, who ends up being Jefferson Davis's second wife. And so this guy, Yancey Howell, the guy that I'm writing about, he has all sorts of insights into what went on in the higher ups of the Confederate government because his sister is married to the president of the Confederate States of America. Wow, that's pretty interesting. So you wrote two books that are focused on Vietnam and then you decide to choose a completely different time period. Well, I had all this background. I had my master's thesis that I did gobs and gobs and gobs of research for. And so I've been able to draw on that to have this guy, Yancey Howell's experiences just like I was able to draw on the novel not until we have all your wounded. I would tell you Mihaila, the title comes from a time when I was in a helicopter with another guy and the American advisor came and told us we should leave because mortars were being shot at us and the pilot of the helicopter, I was a copilot, the pilot of the helicopter said, not until we have all your wounded. And it was pretty impressive to me. And so we stayed, loaded their wounded and then left when we had them all. And of course we weren't hit by any of the mortars but it was close. I'm sure the descendants of all those people that we helped save are gonna really love to read this book. There's an unofficial historian of the 236 Med Detachment. His name is Gary Hagen and I'm still close with him. And I told him that I would finish the book and that it was being published this summer. And I'd be sure and send him a copy as soon as I could. And he was thrilled. Yeah, he just couldn't have been more excited because virtually all of the activities are actually true. The names have been changed as they used to say in dragnet to protect the innocent. And the picture on the cover of not until we have all your wounded is a picture of myself and another pilot, a friend of mine. Her name's Jacqueline. Yes, you're the one with a mustache. Yeah, our thinking at the time was, hey, I'm already in Vietnam. There's really nothing the army can do to punish me if I grow a mustache. They've already sent me to Vietnam and what else can they do? Put me in the brig, hey, I'd be safer in the brig than flying these silly medical evacuation helicopters. Well, I think that's a very important fact to know is that the cover of the book is an actual picture of you. So it makes it so much more real. I think so. I think you're right. So the book is now available on Amazon. Am I right? No, it's available through what's called Fireship Press, F-I-R-E-S-H-I-P, Fireship Press there in Tucson. The American Armageddon book can be purchased through Amazon by putting in my name, John Glenn, and then American Armageddon and it'll come right up on Amazon. So two different places, right? And the one that you're working on right now, your third book, you estimated to be complete when? No, a while yet. I've written about 30 pages and it hasn't been edited yet. And so, yeah, we're looking at a while yet, but Fireship Press likes to publish military and especially also naval books. And so I suspect that they'll be interested in the next one. I'm calling it Fortune Favors the Bold and this guy, Yancey Howell, is pretty bold and I'm hoping that the title sticks and we'll see. It's a good title. It's definitely, it caught my attention right away. So it's a good title. Well, John, thank you so much for joining me today. And I am looking forward to reading not until we have all your winded and then the next one, Fortune, what was it? Fortune Favors the Bold. Yes. I might change that to Fortune Favors the Brave, but I don't know, it's way too early to be concerned about that. Yeah, but it's a good title. So, and so is not until we have all your winded and I think that says a lot and with your picture on the cover and it feels like a true story. Even if, you know, maybe there are some details that you had to change. It feels like a true story. So a lot of people would probably be interested. Well, thank you again and I'm looking forward to your next book. Thank you for having me, Mihaela. And to our viewers, a hui hou. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please click the like and subscribe button on YouTube. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Check out our website, thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.