Book Festival Surprises? Funny You Should Ask.

In History and Biography, documentarian Ken Burns and his print collaborator Geoffrey Ward -- whose book "The War: An Intimate History, 1941-45" has just been released in conjunction with their ongoing public television series -- were scheduled to talk about what Burns called "the American experience" in World War II.

Before they took the stage, however, Stanford historian David Kennedy offered a dramatically different take on the same subject.

Instead of focusing on the valor and life-changing travails of individual American soldiers, Kennedy outlined the bigger picture. He focused, at one point, on a "showdown meeting" between the American military and its civilian overseers. It took place on Oct. 6, 1942, in the Washington office of Donald Nelson, "the head of something called the War Production Board."

Nelson's job was to marshal economic resources to support the war effort, but he had concluded that the scale and pace of the mobilization advocated by the military "was not feasible." The White House backed Nelson and two momentous decisions resulted. The D-Day invasion was delayed by a year and the existing plan to conscript and send into battle 215 Army divisions was scaled back. Instead, just 90 divisions were to be deployed.

The result? World War II was fought more with American money and machines than with American men -- and "America's World War II was like no one else's." We lost more than 400,000 dead, Kennedy said, and "we do them all honor." Yet the Soviet Union lost 24 million and even a relatively small country such as Yugoslavia lost five times as many as the United States.

Just down from History and Biography was the Poetry pavilion. We got over there to hear N. Scott Momaday, who offered one more priceless festival moment.

Once again we were feeling ignorant. Momaday is a distinguished Native American author who won a Pulitzer for his novel "House Made of Dawn," but we didn't know he was a poet -- or, as it turned out, a fabulous storyteller.

Momaday read a poem called "Forms of the Earth at Abiquiu," which he wrote after meeting Georgia O'Keeffe. He introduced it by telling the tale of that meeting.

Invited to visit the then-80-year-old artist in New Mexico, he knocked on her door. O'Keeffe answered wearing a tuxedo and they fell immediately to talking. Eventually his hostess realized that she hadn't offered her guest refreshment, so she got up to fetch him a scotch and soda -- and did not return.

Nervously, Momaday waited and waited. Ominous bangings emerged from the kitchen. Eventually, O'Keeffe came back, confessed she didn't have the key to the liquor pantry -- and disappeared again.

More nervous waiting ensued before she finally appeared with the drink on a silver tray.

"It turns out that Georgia O'Keeffe had taken the pantry doors off at the hinges with a screwdriver," Momaday said as his audience roared. "And of course, I had to write a poem."