Rick Atkinson spent the first quarter century of his wor lifetime in daily journalism.

For almost 30 years now, he's been reporting history nine volumes thus far centered largely on the military's role in the making of America and the execution of its foreign Along the way, he has won essentially every literary award, including three one, two, three He was a central on camera source for the Ken Bur documentary series on the American Revolution.

His portraits of soldiers in com including his three volumes on the rescue of Europe and Nort Africa in World War Two.

Those books have been universall as scholarship and craftsmanship of the highest His latest project is another tr this one involving the birth of our nation on its battlefield The recently published second volume of that series was chosen by the Arkansas Cente for the book for the project, known as If All Arkansas read the Same book.

And as part of Our America 250 observances, we welcome Rick Atkinson to Arka and to our airwaves.

Thank you so very much for this Thank you.

Steve.

I'm pleased to be here.

Nothing about this period in Ame had nothing about the revolution was guaranteed.

There were no there were no safe harbors, as it were.

That's true.

David McCullough once said that narrative history, there's no such thing as a foreseeable future, and there's no such thing as a foreseeable future when you're living the events at the time, the likelihood of the Americans successfully extracting themselv from the British Empire, defeating the professional Briti Army and the Royal Navy, the greatest navy the world had The odds were really stacked aga So the idea that they're going t to fight for eight years as the revolution is going to, to last for eight years and come out of it with their ambitions, realized the ambition to detach themselves from the Em to form the basis of a new repub To have half a continent given to them in the Treaty of P in 1783, all the way to Mississippi River seems very improbable when it all begins in 1775.

Is there a way to summarize?

Is there a thumbnail explanation How did they pull it off?

Splitting from the crown.

You know, I think we know from our national history that when you're fighting a counter insurrection, you're trying to suppress an insurrecti particularly if it's an expediti You have to go somewhere to do i You have to win.

We know this from Vietnam.

We know it from Afghanistan.

We know it from Iraq.

We have to win.

If you are the insurrectionists, if you're fighting on your home you have to not lose.

Washington comes to recognize that he doesn't articulate it in quite the same way, but he certainly comes to the realization, and that's what they've got going for them.

They have to not lose for eight whereas the British have to win.

It's a matter of outlasting them Of bleeding them.

Nick by Nick of wearing down British will, both in the military and the body politic at home.

So I think that ultimately is the secret to success in the rev You were a central figure, I think it's fair to say, in the Burns documentary series on the American Revolution.

So you had, it seems to to an observer to be it was a hybrid work, you know, the printed page and the moving image.

It was a collaborative sort of effort then.

Yes.

His work was harder, I think, because Ken and Sarah Botstein, David Sc all had to recreate something had happened 250 years ago without having the benefit of photographs, without having the benefit of living veterans to talk about without having obviously, any footage available.

Watching them do it, watching them come up with the t the artistry to recreate the American Revolution in great fidelity to history, I have to say, was a pleasure and a privilege.

My task is to create with words.

A picture that the reader can ta and imagine what it looks like and what it sounds like and what it smells like.

Well, they're doing the same thi but with a different medium and with greater complexity.

In some respects, and I think the 12 hour or six part thing they did for PBS was really terrific.

Heighten your appreciation of the documentary for.

Absolutely.

I've never been involved with it as I was this time heightened my appreciation for that treasure.

National treasure we call Ken Bu for his, extraordinary patience and his commitment to history, his patriotism, all of those thi I think they all are part of the ingredients that go into that particular fil You're a lifelong student of his the enormous research that went to this trifecta, if I may call it, that's one in the making.

Anyway, we've got two volumes no Not good.

But did it reshape or some way reconfigure your appreciation of that era and what it took to break away from the Empire?

Oh, for sure.

I mean, that's one of the pleasu of doing what I'm doing is an op to go much deeper than I ever ha My knowledge of the American Revolution was pretty superficial.

I think I'd spent a lot of time writing about more contemporary I know World War II in Europe qu I know Vietnam, I know more recent wars, including the invasion of Iraq i the Persian Gulf War.

You know, I think I had a lot of misconceptions that many America have about the characters, the events, the mythology for the revolution.

And this, for me, was an opportu to try to get to ground truth about George Washington, about Benjamin Franklin, about all the other characters i and about the British.

We tend to stereotype George the and the whole British effort, stupid lobster backs.

And that's wrong.

It's much more complex than that So part of my ambition has been to really, first of all, demolish the mythological parts of the re to make the characters three dim To tell the story of the revolution, including all the ugly parts.

And there are quite a few ugly p living, breathing, swimming.

In the research that you did for this, this era.

Can you look at those events of almost 250 years ago, look at those events and and see that they in some way, or did they shape the America that we know today or the Arkansas that we know tod Oh, I think that's too much of a I don't think it is.

I think, you know, the revolution remains a bright mirror in some ways, in which we see characteristics of the American character traits that form the American ch And they include ingenuity, pers commitment, brutality.

All of these things are part of we are, who we became.

They were all part of the stew b at the beginning of the country.

And so I think that, you know, we see those founders wrestling with some of the same that perplex us today the the obligations of citizenship, the limits of executive power, many other things that seem very contemporary to Americans in 2026 would have been very familiar to those in 1776.

Yeah.

You are.

You came from a military family.

Army brat?

Yes.

I'd say your father was a commissioned officer in the US Army.

I think obviously that had to shape your or that was formative for you in terms of your your life's wor It's much of a surrounded involve the American military.

Yes, yes I think Steve, that tha absolutely many wars in three, 3 or 4 continents.

Yes.

Yeah.

I grew up in the Army.

My father enlisted in 1942 when he turned 18.

He came back from Europe.

In 1946, he went to Penn State, and he went back into the Army because he liked it.

And so I traveled with him and the rest of the family from post to post around, around the country, starting in Austria.

We lived in Austria the first three years of my life when Austria was still partition the army was there.

And so I know the culture, I know the lingo, I know the acr I think I understand the heritage of the Army pretty well as a consequence of growing up in it.

And even though I was never part of it, I had an appointment to the West class of 74 and turned it down at the last minute.

Saved the Army a lot of trouble.

Nevertheless, I've always been interested in i and I think that telling the story of our wars and our military is essential to understanding the country, wh what we became, because it's a fundamental part of the whole American story.

Well, is it not possible or even highly probable that the military recognized tha I mean, your sources are just in I mean, the way you were able to get inside the story, it's been a good symbiotic relationship, I think.

I think I've been writing about my entire professional life.

50 years now, as a journalist, as a war correspondent, foreign correspondent.

I think that I got a reputation for ground truth being important Part of what it was that I was d of honoring what they're doing without being subservient to the I'm not carrying water for them then or now.

But I think the fact that I have you know, basic understanding of military life, the sacrifices that are made, the burden that falls on the entire family.

I've been there myself.

The the love that blooms on battlefields among com which is unlike any other kind o in the human space.

All of that, I think, has given me access and entree, for which I'm very appreciative.

I watched a conference and was able to watch a conversation you had some years back with a compatriot of sorts from Great Britain.

Max.

Max.

Max.

Hastings.

Yes.

And in which the two of you discussed a tendency among some, not all, to, in retrospect, kind of romanticize war, to look at it with.

I think the term was an almost l You were among that cat.

You don't you're not guilty of t You've.

I work hard to avoid it.

Yeah.

Max Hastings, one of my closest pals in a very fine historian, also former newspaper Yeah.

We deplore the romanticizing of Both of us have seen it ourselve Both of us have written about it We know that fundamentally, war is about dead boys and sobbing mothers.

And anything that you do that st too far from that core truth abo does a disservice to those who f It it runs the risk of romantici and making it easier to undertak as a, as a nation.

I think Max and I both feel that it's really important for w civic decisions to be made by de including the most profound decision, which is whether to go or not by the electorate, and that they need to understand clearly without any illusions that, first of all, it never goes the way you think it's going to go.

Secondly, that.

You know it it is a profound commitment of a to support the military, wherever that war is going to ta And that is a real commitment.

And we've seen the country lose on occasion, sometimes for good sometimes not good reasons.

The country needs to understand, going into any conflict precisel what the risks are.

Yeah.

Do you think you and.

Others of like mine, journalists, historians ha like Tim O'Brien comes to mind?

The late Mr.

Caputo comes to min Do you think you've succeeded in in pushing the face of war into the face of the country in in a in a positive way?

I don't know how positive it is.

Others may feel they don't want to push meaningf Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, Tim O'Brien, Phil Caputo there's a I Revere those guys, first of all, for what they went Second for how they captured it, third for how they also are very unromantic about i They try to tell the story with the mark stripped off.

And I think that I'm if what I write gives Americans, first of all, b appreciation for the sacrifice i for everyone involved when the country goes to war and to make Americans think, okay, this is real serious, this is a serious as it gets.

And as a good citizen, I need to take it seriously.

We're coming up on 250 a quarter of a millennium, and we would seem that there would seem to be a great division in the country.

As an historian who has chronicl as you have so much of history from our very founding.

You optimistic, can we can we come together?

You know, as an American, I feel that optimism is part of our birthright.

I am optimistic, for one thing.

As a historian, I know that regardless of the tr afflicting us in 2026, when the country seems divided, when Partizan bickering is ever more toxic, we've gone through much worse in We have survived revolution.

We have survived civil war, two wars, Great Depression, and on a Existential crises that have tested our metal showed that were made of pretty stern s As it turns out, when the chips So my feeling is that as dishear as 2026 can be today, that it's nothing compared to what we have previously, and that we should draw strength from that knowledge, knowing that we have endured the previous crises and come out the other side.

Look back 250 years.

We've come a long way in tolerance, diversity, sheer scal That also should be very comfort to us that the trajectory of the country, in my estimation, as a historian as a citizen, as generally tende you know, with certainly ripples And that gives me optimism.

Historians have plenty.

Mr.

McCullough comes to mind that you mentioned have lamented what they see is a a serious deficit in America's civic education.

And they attribute that to no sm extent on the sidelining of history.

We don't seem to study history a We've assigned the humanities kind of push them to assign.

You share that concern?

Yes.

I'm not an educator, so I'm not in the trenches with middle school, high school teachers, college professors.

But I feel their pain.

I hear their laments.

I share their worry, I think.

It's not a zero sum game.

Education.

You don't have to stress, Sam stem in the sciences and math and technology and all the rest of it to at the expense of liberal arts.

I was an English major.

You would think, coming out of graduate school with a degree in English.

What are you going to do with th Well, it turns out quite a few p could manage to blunder ahead in And.

I do worry that ignorance about our national his ignorance about the strengths the country has shown over 250 y helps to potentially undercut our our str The the body politic becomes mor If you don't really understand how we got here, how we've surmo past problems, past crises, how we have advanced over 250 years, 250 years ago in the period we're talking abou in the American Revolution, there were 2.5 million people in this country.

500,000 of them were enslaved bl They didn't really have a stake in the fine words.

All men are created equal.

Also, it didn't apply to women.

It didn't apply to indigenous.

It didn't apply to Native Americ It was aspirational.

And the notion that we have take aspirational thoughts enunciated by Jefferson and have gradually, over time, made them real.

It's still aspirational, there's no doubt about that, made them real, or is a reason for great pride, and again, a reason for optimism People have to understand that.

Kids have to understand that because the stakes are enormous for everybody in ke the the efforts to to make those aspirations tangib and real.

For now, 340 million Americans, I think we're hearing you say we're selling ourselves short as Americans.

You know, I do think there's some hand-wringing going on, and I loathe hand-wringing.

You know, better to use those hands to get to work on something.

I think that it's important for to recognize that even as defici we have been at moments in our h and we've done things that we ca particularly proud of, including that's behind us.

Let's move forward.

Let's take the lessons that we l along that 250 year journey and and keep adding to it.

You ever miss daily journalism?

I would be lying if I said yes s because I know how difficult it' I see what happened to my old newspaper, The Washing and they still put out a good newspaper every day.

It's just not the magnificent ne that it once was.

And I don't think that's just the soft haze of retrospect I began to feel at the end of my there that it was really a young profession, particularly reporti That became more and more difficult for me to think, okay, I'm going to go chase this story somewhere.

So I admire it.

I admire those who do it.

I wanted to survive.

I think it's really important to the Republic, but I don't really miss it.

You immerse yourself and spend years on a project and I mentioned daily journalism.

Now it's it's essentially hourly journalism, i Every newspaper is constantly up and then you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you know again I admire their ability to do it.

But you know, back in my day, if you know, filing two stories a d or maybe three, if it was really that was really something.

And, you know, now they're basically filing for PMS, radio, the web, different platforms, this platform, that platform doi You know, I worry and I've still got friends in the business.

I worry that there's less time for reflective thought, that that extra beat or two that you need to think it throug and to think through the story and to think through how you're capture the story is is not there because there's so many demands on journalists today.

Nevertheless, you know, the younger generations come alo and they've got faculties that I don't have.

And more power to them.

Well, something else has come al And that's the social media and the rise of social media where you can have, shall we say, your own facts.

Yeah.

And does that not make the job o of elevating the public discours and an appreciation of history and our civic or civic life infinitely more difficult?

I think it does.

I think, you know, people get in their silos and.

They have a set of beliefs and f and there's an echo chamber, and those beliefs and facts are reverberating.

And it's hard to crack into that And to to the extent that, you know, some folks obviously believe that there is no such th as ground truth, that it's it's all kind of subjective, and it tends to reinforce your predispositions and your your prejudices and all the rest of that.

I don't think that's healthy and I don't know how to fix it other than to encourage everyone, young people in partic to use a multiplicity of sources You don't just go to, you know, you don't just go to MSM or you don't just go to NPR for your view of the world.

You kind of aggregate these thin and somewhere in there you're likely to find something that approximates trut Yeah.

How far along are we on volume three of this one?

Not far enough.

I've had a little difficulty getting real traction.

I've been at it.

I've done research in places like the British Library, and I was at the Huntington Library in California.

I was at the New York Historical which has a wonderful library very recently.

But I need long stretches of uninterrupted concentration, particularly to do the the archival research that's req I need weeks on end, and I am not quite there yet, but I'm doing a lot of reading of secondary stuff, and I'll get there in the in the room where you wri Is there a window?

Yeah, there's a window.

I live in the District of Columb and I. I look out on a thumb of Rock Cr which is the the Central Park of Washington.

I'm a gardener.

I'm a very passionate, if sometimes a ham handed garden And I look out on my, my garden, which right now in, in the late spring in Washington is pretty g And I don't find it distracting.

I. It's a it's an opportunity for me to lose myself in this natural setting.

It's not that there aren't any other people ar or that there aren't any houses in the distance, but for me, and I've been working in that ro for a long time, it's the place I keep a sign on on the wall next to my desk and it says, get on with it.

And that's my mantra.

Get on with it.

So we eagerly await volume three of this one and whatever else follows.

Thank you Steve.

Rick Atkinson, thank you very much for your tim My pleasure.