A roundtable discussion about the U.S. in wartime was held with authors featured in the anthology, edited by Brian Lamb, Booknotes on American Character: People, Politics, and Conflict in American History, published by PublicAffairs. Among the topics they discussed were the qualities of leadership, the military draft, reasons for going to war, and how the lessons of their books would apply to the war in Iraq. The authors responded to viewer telephone calls.

Eliot Cohen is the author of Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime, published by Simon and Schuster. The book examines four war statesmen, Abraham Lincoln, Georges Clemenceau, Winston Churchill, and David Ben-Gurion.

Jay Winik is the author of April 1865: The Month That Saved America, published by HarperCollins. The book chronicles the last thirty days of the U.S. Civil War, a chaotic period that could have permanently changed the country.

Dana Priest is the author of The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America’s Military, published by W.W. Norton and Company. The book argues that the humanitarian and peacekeeping assignments the U.S. military has taken on in the 1990s has made them the dominant day-to-day influence in foreign policy.