Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion 20140322 : vimarsana.

Oh, what a high life. As i say in the book, it was very much like an italian film, i thought, and he was [laughter] he wasnt yul brynner, he was omar sharif. So hard. When i came back, i couldnt tell anybody what really had happened because when i tried, they didnt understand or wouldnt believe me. I would say things like slavery. I saw slavery. I saucer havents treated like slaves servants treated like slaves. Id say the women, they had no value. We went to a maternity hospital, and there was a woman screaming and then it turned out that her husband, who would come, was fighting with the doctor in charge because the wife died, the baby was about to die. The father didnt want to have to pay for nothing. He said hes going to have to take a lot of money down to get a new wife for all his other kids, so why was the doctor demanding payment . There wasnt a single word, and i had my afghan husband translate all of this for me. There wasnt a single word, shes died, it this is terrible, im so sorry, how could this have happened, how could you have killed her. No. It was about the Purchase Price of the new bride. So i, i understood where i had been, and i tried to tell a philosophy professor. I said my heart, im glad to be back. Ive been through hell and back. And i told him a little bit. A very great, famous man. And he said, you should have an affair. So i said, hes an idiot. [laughter] you know, the kind of conversation that i need to have has only become possible in the 21st century. The kind of understanding, the comprehension, the give and take. So i now work, as ive said, with muslim and exmuslim dissidents and feminists. And they get what im saying. I dont have to persuade them of anything. And they ask me why more academics and feminists especially dont understand and instead of understanding say, well, everything is culturally relative, everything is pulte culturally multiculturally relativistic. Who are we to judge another culture. The very same critics who know full well that america is a bad country, we have slavery here, were racist, were sinful, we were imperialist, colonialist, capitalist. The history of islam is a very long history of antiblack racism and slavery, gender and religious apartheid and yet nobody here is saying, oh, my god, so were all with blood on our hands. And maybe islam is not pure. And maybe it could be, the tradition has been dangerous. First to muslims and then to all others. Maybe its a dangerous tradition. Instead we say, well, you know, were so guilty. I mean, were so persuaded by the works of edward said that what matters is colonialism, not womens rights. And i believe thats what we have to focus on. Another yes. We keep hearing about sunni and salafi and shia, and i havent heard you mention it in afghanistan. Is there theyre sunni, theyre sunni. Theyre like saudi arabia. Shia are in persia, iran. And i said there was a perpetual, endless religious civil war between shia and sunni. Thats everywhere. Iran is now shiite, and it is trying to dominate the gulf states including saudi arabia partly as a religious war, partly as an economic matter. And saudi arabia is sunni. And those in afghanistan are sign think as well. Sunni as well. Thats what i okay, yes. I didnt know that at the time either. I didnt know that my afghan husband was a pashtun which is the largest and historically the most dominant tribe. There are many, many tribes in afghanistan. Its, basically, the country is mountainous, its inhospitable, its treacherous, it is dangerous from every point of view. People live in small villages isolated one from the other. They have no interest in a centralized government up until this moment. I hope it changes tomorrow. And theyre it is afghanistan now is the largest opium producer, and the warlords are making a lot of money from it, forcing the farmers to do that, to adult sate the poppies and cultivate the poppies and it finds its way to the west. We buy it, were hooked on it. It killed that wonderful actor, Phillip Seymour hoffman. Well, he killed himself with it. So it is a very, its a complicated history. Again, its not one that i ever discussed during the courtship and romance with my afghan husband. I have learned it by reading many, many, many books. And by talking to people. So thats the sunni shia disasters. I wish they could resolve that. But, you know, not up to me. Yes. Yes, you said that you were pregnant coming back . Yes. How did the child deal with both the world and i think most of the children cant and dont. I had a discarriage. I was too a miscarriage. I was too ill to even carry a child. I didnt even have a choice. But your question, if both the parties are living in a modern, western world, this may be less of an issue. There are some women, and i write about them, who have married muslim men because they wanted to have a life that was made for them, ready made. Always with company, female company, always with ceremony, always with something to do, no loneliness, to decisions that a you have to make in the west when youre sort of free and independent. Everything is done together, every rule thats like the borough park, by the way. Everything is laid out of rules that you follow. Youre set. And, indeed, one of the women at the drop of a veil, Mary Ann Ellie razor, she had a wonderful time in saudi arabia married to a member of the royal family. She was very happy, had five children, and then one day that man said to her, i divorce you, i divorce you, i divorce you, and im taking the kids from you. Go away. And she did a very smart thing in the last 20 pages of her book, i was shocked. I was going to use her as an example of somebody who really made out happily. She said and i, with the help of friends, i kidnapped my kids back, and they grew up in america. She was from california. But then she did this marriage in the 1940s. Theres somebody even more fabulous in the 19, 1918 from scotland who married a tribal chiefs son who became a diplomat, and she is the progenitor of the tahrir shah, idri shah, the contemporary writer. So she went there, and she wore a burka, and his father said to her, Louisa Elizabeth was her scottish name. He said, well, if shell convert to islam and she knows how to hold the fort with a gun, you can marry her. And she was happy to convert to islam in 1918, and she was a scottish highlanders daughter, and she knew how to hold the fort. Very, very wonderful writing, the best adventure writing the roe see that fords rosita fords which which probably nobodys heard of. And shes out of print. Shes in the 1920s and 1930s, and she went everywhere, including to afghanistan. British, as i said, they go without sleep, they go without water, they dont need food. [laughter] they climb the most rugged landscapes possible and on horseback. They ride into desert storms, straight into them just for the fun. And im not exaggerating. So i think that we have reached, very rapidly, nearly the end of this wonderful evening. Is there, is this about it . We have time for one more question . One more question over here . Sure. How did you get a passport . You are have to read the book you will have to read the book. [laughter] [inaudible] i got my afghan passport, youll read the book, youll see. Youll see how. [inaudible conversations] well, its in the book. [laughter] if there are no more questions, a reminder [inaudible] a reminder for our interwith net audience at home, if youd like to purchase a copy of american bride in kabul, please, call the number on your screen. Dr. Chesler will sign that to you, well mail it to you wherever you are free of charge. Theres a link to the live stream, and in the event that we live stream, you can watch at any time at your convenience. For those of you here in the house, we have an american bride in kabul with, and we also have a selection of dr. Cheslers other books. She will be signing here at the table to my left. This was fascinating. Please give her a big hand. [applause] thank you. [inaudible conversations] is this out of everyones way . [inaudible conversations] visit booktv. Org to watch any of the programs you see here online. Type the author or book title in the search bar on the upper left side of the page and click search. You can also share anything you see on booktv. Org easily by clicking share on the upper left side of the page and selecting the format. Booktv streams live online for 48 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. Booktv. Org. Professor jerry muller sat down with booktv at the Catholic University of america to talk about his book, capitalism and the jews. This interview is part of booktvs college series. Its about half an hour. Host professor jerry z. Muller, in your book, capitalism and the jews, you write that discussions of jews and capitalism touch upon neuralgic subjects. What do you mean . Guest well, capitalism itself has often been a neuralgic project. It is, after all, a process that is a central one in the modern world. Its one that precedes by what was called creative destruction. So its constantly innovating, creating new products, new ways of marketing things, new ways of life. And in the process its destroying older ways of life and, hence, both attracts people and is sometimes a source of resentment. The jews have been intimately connected with the history of capitalism in a variety of ways, both in the ways in which people have thought about capitalism and in the actual practice of capitalism. So when it comes to the way in which people think about capitalism, one of the interesting themes is that i found that when premodern thinkers thought about commerce and especially about finance and money making, they often connected it with the jews for reasons that had to do with deep historical reasons of the role of jews as financiers and as money lenders and in general as merchants in the middle ages. And then often enough i found when i was writing an earlier book called the mind and the market of capitalism and modern european thought, that the way in which modern intellectuals thought about capitalism was often related to the way they thought about jews. And then there was the fact of when j, ws jews, because of their commercial background and for a number of other factors, for a number of other reasons when jews found themselves in situations in the modern world where they had a modicum of equality of legal opportunity, they tended to do disproportionately well in capitalist societies. And that in itself became a neuralgic point. Because in some cultures especially those that were suspicious of commerce or where it was felt the jews were doing better than others it sometimes led to envy and resentment. And especially in the wake of the holocaust, jews themselves, while they fought amongst themselves about this issue of disproportionate jewish achievement under capitalism, tended to downplay it, tended to not want it to be subject to pub lusty or of publicity or of scholarly inquiry. Before the hold there was a lot of jewish historiography on this issue of capitalism and the jews. In the decades after the old cost, there tended to be less of it. Then in recent years theres been a kind of renaissance of historiography on the role of jews if capitalism and the relationship of capitalism and the jews, and some of that i tried to bring together. So the neuralgic point then has to do with the salience of jews in the history of capitalism and the fact that their disproportionate success was sometimes the source is of envy and resentment. So it was regarded by many people as a subject that only anti semites would want to think about. But, in fact, of course, its a subject that since the history of capitalism is a central theme in the modern world and since its um possible to understand the modern history of the jews without thinking about their links to the history of capitalism, its something that as scholars and as educated people we ought to take an interest in, and also it leads to a lot of larger questions about achievement under capitalism that we can get into if you like. Host something you explore, is there a stereotype of jews and capitalism . Guest there is, there are stereotypes, sometimes positive ones, sometimes negative ones. The association of because jews were often connected with merchandising and with finance and because of their disproportionate economic success, sometimes they were regarded as greedy or materialistic, especially by those who may also have been greedy and materialistic but were doing less well under the capitalist process. So thats one stereotype. The stereotype of the jewish banker exercising secret power around the world which was a stereotype that arose primarily in late 19th century europe in regard to the rothschilds then became a characteristic one on the european radical right and then some aspects of the american far, far right as well. Host professor muller, why have jews been extraordinarily successful in capitalism . Guest well, i should say that they havent always been, but, but on average, as i say, when they lived this societies that gave them in societies that gave them a modicum of equality of legal opportunity; that is, it didnt legally discriminate against their entry into various aspects of capitalist life, they have tended to do disproportionately well over time. The reason especially in the western world but not just in the western world. Part of that is because of deep historical factors. For a variety of reasons, jews in Medieval Europe and in early modern europe tended to be dispropositioner nately disproportionately involved in activities even when commerce was a sort of island within a larger noncommercial sea. They tended to be involved especially as merchants. A small number, but a salient number of them were involved in various forms of lending money and then eventually various forms of finance. So one reason is because they came with, they came to modern European Society and to American Society with a much greater immersion in commercial culture than people who came from, say, more peasant backgrounds. Thats one factor. Secondly, among jews you tended to have very high levels of male literacy in societies this which most people were still l illiterate. And you tended to have a high respect for the written word and for systematic learning. That came, ultimately, from rabinnic culture which jews were expected to try to achieve some mastery of, though only a small percentage were in a position to do so. But as i say, in societies where most people were illiterate, among jews you tended to have high levels of literacy, especially among men. And literacy tends to be a prerequisite, really, for engaging in sophisticated kinds of commerce. So that was a factor as well. And then you had the fact that jews, because jews had tended to be discriminated against and excluded from many other areas of Economic Life, i mean, for most of the middle ages and much of early modern europe they couldnt, for example, own land. There were small exceptions, but by and large they couldnt. And by and large, they were excluded from craft skills. So there were, while there were jewish artisans, it wasnt the High Percentage of the jewish population. And then when they came into Central European societies and western european societies and american societies where eventually the legal barriers against them declined, there was still the factor of social discrimination keeping them out of many established areas of the economy, and that led them to look for new economic opportunities. So jews tended to be often innovators in terms of marketing and so on. And then if you add all those factors, the fact that jews tended to have more International Connections than most people. This was especially important in the early modern world where, for example, in the spanish and portuguese empires and the dutch empires you had groups of jews, some of whom had been forced to convert to christianity in the Iberian Peninsula and then settled in various parts of the iberian coast, the brazilian coast, parking lots of the crib parts of caribbean, savannah or charleston in the United States, amsterdam and antwerp, london, and that formed the source of International Contacts that at some points was important to jewish history. And even as late as the turn of the 20th century you had a very interesting circuit of an International Circuit of jews, mostly of lithuanian origin, who had come from lithuania to south africa. Some of them had settled in paris and london, and today became a circuit for the sale of ostrich plumes which were very important in fashion at the time. So if you take all those other factors plus the International Deaths and you put them International Connections and put them all together, that tends to explain as far as we can disproportionate jewish success. I suppose theres one other factor, too, and that is they came from a culture where there was quite a bit of emphasis on what you might call selfcontrol and deferred gratification. And, again, when you put that together with the commercial background, the higher levels of literacy, the tendency to go into new forms of commerce because they were discriminated against in older forums, the tendency to have these International Connections, the orientation towards book learning and so on, all of those tended to make jews disproportionately successful in capitalist societies. Host when jews have been successful, have there been instances in history where they have been punished for their success . Guest absolutely. The attitude of the Larger Society towards this jewish success depended on, i would say, two main factors. One was the salience of jewish commercial success. So, for example, when they came to broun in the to britain in the 19th century or to the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries, they were functioning in societies that were already highly commercial. So that they were one group of people involved in commerce among others. In other words, they cant be successful without being particularly salient or noticeable. But in many areas of, say, Eastern Europe in societies where most people were either peasants or you had a small layer of landowning aristocrats where Neither Group was oriented towards commerce, in those societies jews were often the commercial class. And they, and in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries with the development of ethnic nationalism particularly in those areas and the desire of more people from peasant backgrounds and so on to move into these commercial and professional positions that were largely occupied by jews, in those societies jewish success was more salient. They stuck out more. And tear success was more their success was more resented. And that was an important factor in understanding the extent of antisemitism in eastern and central europe. Host how did stalin use the jews . Guest so one of the chapters of this book has to do with jews as communists in a chapter called jews as radical anticapitalists. Jews had a variety of political responses to capitalism depending on where they lived and when. A lot of them, especially in western europe and the United States, tended to be liberals in the european sense; that is, oriented towards parties that were commercially oriented and so on. Their respect of civil rights and what have you. But in Eastern Europe in particular and for some generations in other, in britain and the United States as well poor jews coming from Eastern Europe were attracted to socialism. And a very small percentage of those were attracted to the most radical and antidemocratic form of socialism, namely communism. For a variety of reasons, although very few jews were communists and very few communes were jews, jews in the early stages of the bolshevik revolution and the communist regime this the soviet union in the soviet union were often found in very, disproportionately found in salient positions in the communist regime. That was partly because they spoke many languages, they tended to be more literate than most bolsheviks and so on. Al e though most jews were anticommunist, there was a small percentage of jews who were salient in communist parties. And that remained the case in russia in the 1920s and 1930s, and then over time stalin increasingly came to use antisemitism as a tool of restoring or regaining his legitimacy. And that was particularly the case, actually, in Eastern Europe after 1945. In Eastern Europe after 1945, most of the jews had been murdered under the nazi occupation. The small number of jews who remained found themselves under situation where they were under soviet occupation by the red army. Some of them joined the communist secret services and the communist party in order to try to get back at those people who had assisted in murdering their relatives. And so, again, in the years right after 1945 in Eastern Europe you had an unusual situation where, again, most jews werent communists, and most communists werent jews, but you had this Salient Group of jews in leadership positions in communist parties in hungary, romania, poland and elsewhere. And those parties, because of their policies, were very much resented by much of the population. And in the late 1940s and early 1950s, they tried to also regain their legitimacy or gain some legitimacy by putting their former, their jewish leaders on trial and accusing them of being american spies and so on. And this was something that stalin was very much support i have of supportive of, if not the motivating force behind. So at that point stalin and hisin ons in eastern his minions in Eastern Europe used spectacular trials to try to, as i say, bolster the he psychiatry massey of their regimes. Host professor muller, it was written that its hard to imagine a more provocative title than capitalism and the jews. Why do you think he wrote that . Whats your reaction . Guest it wasnt intended to be a provocative title. It was spended to be simply descriptive. I had decided to write a small book on a big topic. Capitalism is a big topic, history of the jews is a big topic, but as i indicated, their intersection is a key topic both in the history of capitalism and certainly in the history of the jews. I think it was regarded by some as incendiary precisely because of some of these factors ive been talking about, about the identification of by antisemites of jews with forms of capitalism that they denigrated. The way in which it was often used by anticapitalists who drew upon a history of antisemitic stereotypes and images in order to characterize capitalism. The fact that these negative stereotypes about jews and greed and materialism and money still have a kind of afterlife, although a diminishing one in the western world, also, i guess, adds to the charge in some peoples minds. But, you know, my view was people wore radically who are radically prejudiced are going to always find facts to bolster their existing presuppositions. But people who actually want to get some objective sense of modern history, modern jewish history might very well be interested in this book that, as i say, deals with a large topic in a a rather short space and from a variety of angles. And so since the book was really about cam limb and the jews, thats what i called it. Host whats the connection between your week and Milton Friedman between your book and pillton friedman . Guest well, one of the chapters of the book has to do with a theme that Milton Friedman developed in a lecture of his that i think was called capitalism and the jews. And there in a lecture that was subsequently published, he claimed that there was a kind of paradox in regard to the jews and capitalism in that capitalism, he thought, had been good for the jews, and they had done disproportionately well in it, but jews had tended to be anticapitalist. And he set out to answer the question as to why that was the case. So in one of my essays in the book, i tried to explore both of those issues again. Was it true that the jews diddies proportionately well under capitalism . It turned out that it was, but often for reasons that Milton Friedman didnt explore. His assumptions seem to be that sort of all minorities would do well under capitalism, under conditions of equality in the free market, and for a variety of historical reasons, thats not true. And then his assertion that jews had tended to be anticapitalist, i think, is not true either or, rather, it takes a small slice of jewish history and makes it larger than it really was. That is to say those jews who came from eastern from the russian empire in late 19th and early 20th century to the United States and to a lesser degree to britain and france, they did have an anticapitalist propensity for two reasons. First of all, capitalism wasnt working very well in the late russian empire and certainly wasnt working well for them. And ten when they came to then when they came to the new world to places like new york and worked in the Garment Industry and so on, they often found themselves working under very long hours under terrible working conditions, and that led them to organize themselves and sometimes get involved this socialist politics and so on, and their children who were the ones who Milton Friedman grew up with often maintained that sort of anticapitalist orientation through the 1930s, 40s and 50s. But, in fact, that was a kind of fleeting stage in history of jews and their Political Attitudes towards capitalism. As i mentioned, in 19th century europe and in the 19th century United States, jews had telephonedded to be procapitalist. Tended to be procapitalist. They vote that way today in most European Countries as well. They vote that way in the United States too, though Milton Friedman considered anybody who supported a sort of welfare state version of capitalism as tantamount to socialist. So part of it has to do with his definition. But, in fact, leading spokesman for capitalism did emerge in britain and the United States in the 1960s, 70s and 80 from people of jewish background, not least Milton Friedman. So i think that friedman was right about the fact that jews had done disproportionately well under capitalism, though he hadnt gone very far to explaining why that was the case. I think that he really overstated the case in regard to the political orientation of, of jews. Host schacher, what does that term made . Guest shocker. Generally speaking, it means trade. It seems to have its origin from a hebrew word having to do with trade. In 19th century germanspeaking europe, it came to be used primarily by nonjews, above all by antisemites as a term of stigmatization of commerce in general and jewish commerce if particular. In particular. So its related to the notion of haggling or, as today used to say in 19th and to some degree 20th century english, jewing. That is to say bargaining someone down in a way that was regarded as anything in some way. And so is it was a way of referring then to jews and commerce in a manner that was intended to be stigmatizing. Host what role did karl marx have in promoting advertising antisemitism . Guest well, marx is a very interesting figure in this regard in that in a couple of ways. Early on in his life, in 1844 he wrote an essay called on the jewish question. And there he basically took all the negative stereotypes connecting jews and commerce and money making from the middle ages and said nowadays the problem is not jews and their relationship to commerce and capitalism, the problem is that now all of us are engaged in capitalism. And so he took all the negative characterizations about commerce and finance that had been connected to the notion of usury in the middle ages, and he applied it to capitalism as such. So one of marxs key notions thereafter was the notion of the labor theory of value which, essentially, maintained that all real economic value came from labor by which he meant above all physical labor. Be what we would call Blue Collar Workers or what he called the proletariat. And the role of people who managed that labor or who created companies or who invested in companies or who innovated to find new products, new markets and so on, all of those elements of capitalism that have to do more with using ones mind tan using ones body than using ones body, all of those are regarded by marx as, essentially are, superfluous, as not adding real value. And so marx is really important in this story because he takes a lot of medieval stereotypes about money and about the lending of money that were connected with the notion of usury. And part of that notion was that people who lent money were, essentially, parasitic, that they werent really doing anything productive. Which is a highly mistaken notion, and its, as i say, overlooks the whole role of the mind in Economic Life. He took all those stereotypes and expanded them from applying to the jews to applying to capitalism as such. Host professor muller, whats been the reaction of Catholic University professor writing about capitalism and the j well,ews . Guest i dont think that the fact that a i teach at Catholic University the fact that i teach at Catholic University has been major factor. In fact, ive been here for much of my professional life, and its been very productive here. But im, in fact, not cat luck. I am catholic. I am jewish. And that may have played some role in it. But on the well, i think people on the whole, i think people have responded to the arguments of the book more than where i, where i teach. Host how long have you been with writing about capitalism . Guest oh, on and off for a lot of my professional life. I guess i started writing about it in the, in the early 1980s sorry, in the later 1980s. I worked for years on a book called the mind and the market capitalism in modern european thought, which had to do with how modern european intellectuals from voltaire in the 18th century to Friedrich Hayek in the 20th century thought about capitalism and its moral and cultural ramifications. While i was that, ultimately, came out in 2003. While i was working on that book, i published another smaller book on adam smith as a social and political thinker called adam smith and his time and ours designing the decent society. And then after the mind and the market came out, i worked for a while on these more jewishoriented themes, and ive continued to think about and write about the history of capitalism. Last year in, i think, the march issue of the Journal Foreign Affairs in 2013 i had a piece called capitalism and inequality, what the right and left get wrong. That explored some of the longterm themes in capitalism, and im still working on it. Its a big topic. Host is there a date certain when it was founded . Guest no. In fact, one of the interesting fallacies, i think, in writing the history of capitalism, one thats now been dispelled among some historians, is precisely this notion that was confined starting point. In the beginning of the 20th century, there was a big debate in germany between with two men about who was most responsible for the origins of capitalism. Was it puritan protestants in the way that faber thought, or was it jews . Actually, its more accurate to think about capitalism as an extension of a process thats been going on for a very long time. That is, trade has been going on in one form or another between people for as far back as we know. For a lot of the middle ages, especially from what we call the high middle ages on, there was a substantial amount of commerce this europe, but in europe, but it was confined sort of to urban islands within a larger agricultural sea. Certainly, capitalism picked up a lot after about 1600, and since then has expanded in its geographical range, expanded in the areas of life that it affects. So at first it was primarily about trading things. Later on and some people consider in the defining element of capitalism, it moved into the realm of protection. That is to say capitalism through wage labor. But capitalism has, is a protean process thats gone through many stages, and i think its hard to find a point where it absolutely begins, though one can see its, as i say, its expansion into more and more areas of the globe and more and more areas of life. Thats, actually, one of the themes that interests me and that i think i will be exploring in a forthcoming book. And that is the many ramifications of capitalism and its relationship to the state and its relationship to the changing shape and function of the family and its relationship to culture and the way in which people define themselves through whats produced in the capitalist process. So its a process thats got many ramify cautions. Host weve talked about jews, weve talked youve mentioned the protestants, the puritans. Guest uhhuh. Host is there a connection between capitalism and religion . Guest there are lots of connections, but they are hard to pin down. That is to say its clear that in some times and places the actual doctrinal attitudes of religions towards various elements of Economic Life did play a role in the extent to which they developed in a capitalist direction or not. So the probe hix on prohibition on usury in medieval catholicism, for example, probably did play a role in creating a space for others, in this case in good part jews, to play a predominant role there. Its been argued by some scholars that attitudes towards usury and the fear of lending money, the stigmatization of lending money at interest had a retarding influence on some elements of muslim economic development. Im not going with that theory necessarily, but im saying its a possibility. But its important to keep in mind that theres often a big gap between what religious doctrine says people ought to be doing with their Economic Life and what they actually do. It has much more to do with the keep of mentality that value vinism created in which people had to constantly methodically think about controlling their lives in which they didnt want to overspend in which they imp sized work. They thought the combination of work orientation and frugality tended to be highly conducive to protestant economic success and especially calvinist economic success. Look at 18th century europe, its striking that property stent countries and portions of countries, the pros tents were more developments. You can find such connections between religion and culture generally and levels of economic achievements. Youre watching booktv on c span 2, heres the most recent book capitalism and the jews. Thank you, thank you, all, for coming out today, thank you for all those who associated with the National Archives museum. This is actually, its one of my favorite places. This is my second time here. Father or mothers first. We fought over who would do this, and thats why you get us both today. We flipped a coin. When doug introduced me, i sounded like susan lucci, all the things i was nominated before and never won one. Anyway, there book, its a bit different. Doug mentioned our earlier books. This book we feel and hope you feel when you read it, its untold until now about how one man, created an empire on the high planes, and at one point, red clouds territory, and the cocht yows United States, and no one before, we dont think, really knew what was going on in that great swath of territory. The missouri river, mississippi river, and rockies. Despite louis and clarks exploration, they labeled it the Great American desert, and his story, narrative, timeline fits with so much that we didnt know what was going there were no newspapers, a few mountain men, french canadian hunters and trappers, but in that great swath of territory, nobody knew what was going on in the 1820s, 30s, and 40s, and well in the 1850s, and no one knew how red cloud had consolidated the empire. When he fought the war and won his war against the United States, the only indian you know, the only americanindian to win, not a battle, a war against the United States, they knew who he was. This whole narrative, it was just, i hope we found a hoot and a holler to research and report. I hope you find the same. It was so exciting. We spent a lot of time out west. The historical society, University Libraries from nebraska to wyoming up east to the dakses, north of montana, and we were treen daishesz starting the book. Our previous three collaborations, there had been people to interview, sailors who sailed through all these types of world war ii. There were marines still alive