[inaudible conversations] thanks for joining us at the east city bookshop. If you are here for the first time, welcome, thanks for stopping by. We are excited to have you here for tonights event and just so you know we have one to two author events every single week plus the weekly book club, twostory times per week and a variety of special gatherings like coloring books and winds with you enjoy your time tonight, check us out on the social media at east city bookshop on facebook and insta graham and city books on better andsign up for the newsletter and youll hear about all the other cool things we have coming up. But tonight it is our pleasure to welcome doug, the New York Times bestselling author who has been an advise advisor to to american president s and is one of the few living historians to have written about all of the american president s. He is interviewed six u. S. President s, second to first 71s, coauthored a book with one, has entertained too in his own home and served o
And i like to talk a lot. Prisoner of war slows me down a little bit. Civil war prisons and prisoners of war fall outside of the traditional heroic narrative of the war. And looking into this story, in a sense, that requires one to dive deeply into the wreckage of the war, the consequences of the war. And, again, you lose objectivity very quickly the longer you stay down in the wreckage of the war. Andersonville is the most famous of the military prisons. Its a long way from the rest of the civil war world, both literally and figuratively. The prison site was chosen on purpose 150 years ago to be as remote and as insulated a place in the confederacy, far from perceived locations of battle. And 150 years later, this prisoner of war story remains distant from the rest of the narrative. We have the tendency to talk about prisoner of war camps, and andersonville, off to the side of the main narrative of the war. Its, you know, as we talk about battles and campaigns, oh, by the way, theres