Soldiers and civilians kept AUSA Book Program authors busy throughout the course of the three-day Annual Meeting and Exposition held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in early October.

The AUSA Pavilion, located in the meeting’s exhibit hall, provided counters for the authors to display their works, answer questions, and autograph copies of their books.

They drew attention from both casual passers-by and noted figures such as retired Gen. Jack Keane, a former Army vice chief of staff, and now a Fox News analyst.

“[Dr.] Richard Harrison was extremely good at soliciting attendees to buy his books,” said Sam Caggiula, Casemate’s marketing and publicity director, referring to a series of Soviet General Staff accounts of WWII Eastern Front battles edited and translated by Harrison.

Capt. John Nelson Rickard, CAF, had another successful AUSA appearance, selling out copies of his new book Forward with Patton: The World War II Diary of Colonel Robert S. Allen.

Retired Brig. Gen. Dani Asher, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), Reserve, also sold out of his edited book Inside Israel’s Northern Command: The Yom Kippur War on the Syrian Border.

Two former members of the Israeli Defense Forces joined Asher at the Authors’ Forum on the first day of the meeting.

Brig. Gen. Gideon Avidor presented At the Decisive Point in the Sinai: Generalship in the Yom Kippur War, and Col. Pesach Malovany discussed Wars of Modern Babylon: A History of the Iraqi Army.

Dr. Brian Laslie introduced his book Architect of Airpower: General Laurence S. Kuter and the Birth of the U.S. Air Force by addressing the unspoken question: “What’s an Air Force historian doing at an AUSA event?”

He reminded the audience that the air service was part of the Army through the end of WWII and noted that Kuter learned to fly to become a better field artilleryman.

After his presentation on Lossberg’s War: The World War I Memoirs of a German Chief of Staff, Maj. Gen. David Zabecki joined the audience as he answered a series of questions.

Retired Lt. Gen. Richard Trefry, AUSA senior fellow, moderated the forum along with AUSA Senior Fellow retired Lt. Gen. Theodore G. Stroup. Thanks in part to the publicity generated by the new AUSA app, the forum was “the best attended I’ve seen,” Trefry said.

For more information about the AUSA Book Program, visit our website at: https://www.ausa.org/resources/book-program