affairs this afternoon. we'll be focusing on a recent book by robert parkinson of binghamton university entitled 13 clocks. how race united the colonies and made the declaration of independence? published earlier this year by the hondro institute of early american history and culture and the university of north carolina press joining us this afternoon as discussions our derek spiers of cornell university and rosemary zagari of george mason university. i'm eric arneson from the george washington university co-chair of the washington history seminar my co-chair and colleague christian austerman at the wilson center is not with us this afternoon, but i am delighted to report that today's session is co-sponsored of the omahundra institute and with us this afternoon to introduce our speaker is the institute's interim executive director catherine kelly about whom i will say more in a moment. the washington history seminar is a collaborative venture of the woodrow wilson center's history and public policy program and the american historical associations national history center. and for over the past decade. the seminar has been meeting weekly and pre-covid times in person at the wilson center and since the pandemic here in the virtual realm this is the final seminar of the season, but we will return on january 23rd with a full lineup that will take us to the end of may. our announcement of the spring winter schedule will be available early in the new year behind the scenes are two people who make these seminars possible pete beer stecker of the wilson center and rachel wheatley of the national history center, and as always we'd like to thank our institutional supporters the george washington university department of history as well as any number of anonymous individual donors and as we say every single week, we invite you to join their ranks on the logistics front, please note today's session is being recorded and can soon be found on our institution respective websites. and when we get to the question and answer session of the webinar, we ask that those of you with questions to use the raise hand function. that's our preferred way of hearing from you or you could use the q&a function on zoom. will call on as many people as we can. and now let me introduce catherine e kelly the interim director executive director and editor of books at the omahundra institute for early american history and culture and affiliate professor of history at william & mary. a prize-winning historian an editor her interest focus broadly on gender culture and politics in the early american republic. she's the author most recently of republic of taste art politics and everyday life and early america published in 2016, and i am happy that she could join us today to introduce robert parkinson. catherine welcome thanks, eric. i'm delighted to be able to join you this afternoon representing the omahondro institute for early american history and culture for those of you who don't know the oi is an independent research organization sponsored by william and mary jointly with colonial williamsburg and our mission aims that supporting the study of early american history and culture. logically enough. we sponsor fellowships and conferences. we publish a flagship journal the william and mary quarterly and we also publish a book series which includes any number of important path-breaking and price prize winning books including this most recent book by by rob parkinson. our mission simply put is to support the intellectual infrastructure that undergirds geographically chronologically and methodology methodologically transformative vision of the past and speaking of scholars who offer a transformative vision of the past. it's a real pleasure to be able to introduce rob parkin. day currently an associate professor of history at binghamton university. rob is a preeminent scholar of the american revolution his pack breaking work has helped us to understand just how important race was for the american founded most recently as eric mentioned. he's the author of 13 clocks a book that we were fortunate enough to publish. and a book that is the topic of today's programming his previous book the common cause creating race and nation in the american revolution was awarded the james a rowley prize from the organization of american historians and was recognized by the association for education in journalism and mass communication. rob is currently finishing a new book titled. the heart of american darkness savagery civility and murder on the eve of the american revolution which we will be published by live right? i'm hoping that we'll hear just a bit about that provocatively titled book at some point today, but first let's settle in for a lively discussion of 13 clocks. okay, so i will i will share my screen with you here. and have a little bit of things to tell your daughter, this is the we should be good. yes. okay, good. okay, so the cover of 13 clocks looks like this. i covered that kathy who just very graciously introduced me and i worked really really hard to get looking this good. thank you to the designers at unc press as well. for this because i so this starts out. with the the concept of 13 clocks meeting 13 colonies really comes from a john adams quote. and john adams when he looked like this. so 83 years old he as he and the founding generation were. approaching old age or certainly in the depths of old age some people in the early united states decided that they really needed to know what happened in 1776. and so they started reaching out to people and get there and toots or call their memories before they left the this mortal coil. so so one of those people was baltimore journalist hezekiah niles and he reached out to john adams and said, hey, dude, what went down in 1776 and john adams had spent a long time thinking about this of course, and he had a been talking with corresponding with thomas jefferson about this very topic off and on for the better part of almost a decade and so he had a very prepared answer for this and it has become an answer that is there's a couple of there's a series of letters that he wrote to jefferson about this and also, to his response to niles which has framed how we remember think about the revolution. and written about the revolution for a very long time since 1815 and 1818, but definitely in the in the last generation or so and i'll get into that a little bit here in a minute. so this is what john adams said and remember he looks like this it's important. i have his little elderly picture. it's portrait here because i'm gonna show you a younger version of john adams, which is a little bit different um than then him in so he said, the colonies had grown up under constitutions of government so different there was so great a variety of religions they were so we're composed of so many different nations their customs manners and habits had so little resemblance and they're intercourse had been so rare. and their knowledge of each other so imperfect that to unite them in the same principles and theory and the same system of action was certainly a very difficult enterprise. he said of the the the enterprise being bringing the 13 clocks to strike as one the complete accomplishment of it and so short of time and by such simple means was perhaps a singular example in the history of mankind 13 clocks were made to strike together a perfection of mechanism, which no artist had ever before affected. so atoms is talking about the miracle of which he's kind of hinting that there's providence and maybe god or just godlike folks like himself who really brought these these clocks to strike as one and this problem of the of uniting the country or the uniting the colonies as one. is what i think is shaped a lot of my work. this is the question of how how july 4th 1776 comes about it. it was part of the the heart of this book. well this this book which is they're 13 clocks is an abridgement of something. we don't really do in the historical profession very much anymore, which is we used to do it a lot. which is take really really big books and make them small books for teaching and that's in many ways. what what 13 clocks? at least that's how i thought it was going to be and then it turned out to be something much greater than than i have first imagined. it is a an abridgement of this book, which is my first one that came out in 2016 the common cause which you really the best the best way to look at it is this way it is 750 pages. and so therefore makes it rather unteachable and in any generation, but it seems like especially this covid generation. so i thought for a long long time about how to distill the argument of that book and think about this particular problem of the 13 clock striking as one the common cause the subtitle of that is creating race and nation in the american revolution and what i what i found in that research was that race lay at the heart of every single decision every single it the idea that that there are different stories here between there's the american revolution which is about ideas and about ideology and about natural rights, and then there's the experience of revolution which involves people people of color or or women or anything like that, but those are different those are entirely different conversations and what i found in my research, is that that those are so intertwined with one another that the the argumentation for how to make the cause the cause of fighting the revolution common was by turning to and employing all sorts of language stories images about slave insurrections and the potential of violence on in the back country, especially about indigenous peoples. that was the the what the leaders of the revolution turned to over and over and over again? they thought about the roles that that african americans whether enslaved or free or indigenous peoples would play in this revolutionary time. they thought about them so consistently and and and on a almost hourly basis, i found more than if not daily and certainly weekly they they thought about they thought about what role folks in those status. i guess you say that would play in the revolution all the time. and so and where i first went to look for that evidence about that came actually from what the next thing that john adams says in this letter to hezekiah niles, which says this if he says if you want to know why i'm right. um about what how the revolution came about he said young men and letters of all the states about this. i think he in his mind he thinks about people who would become historians should undertake a laborious, but certainly interesting and amusing tasks of searching and collecting the records pamphlets newspapers and even hand bills of the 13 colonies to find out how the temper and views of the people had changed. this is in his the other letter he writes about this same topic to jefferson three years before he writes denial. so this is this adam's thinking about about how are people gonna figure out what happened in 1776. well, this is where they should do. they they should go look at print. and so that's for for the common cause that's what i did i went and looked at lots and lots and lots of prints and i instead of doing what previous generations of historians had done and looking at newspapers and looking at either. the essays that appeared off and on the front pages or the advertisements that would appear on the back pages of the of the newspapers. i looked at the really really boring stuff in the middle the the um short paragraphs and small little notices that happened with in the very middle of these newspapers. that talked a lot. about british agents military officers indian superintendents in in new york or south carolina um naval captains you name it people who are agents the british empire who were especially in 1775 and 76 who were doing their best to try to figure out how to end the rebellion by pulling any lever. they possibly could and as as a lot of them were doing and it's not just lord dunmore doing it in virginia. they are considering what role enslaved african-americans or native peoples in the back country might be the the pulling that lever might be the thing that ends the rebellion. and and and of course they are because if this is a britain is broke and this is an expensive prospect and if you could end the rebellion before the british have to do the really really expensive thing like equipping an army and paying it and and sending it across the ocean and then and then funding it in america to put down this rebellion you'd be a hero of it. so so you have royal governors all over the place who are mulling over how to make themselves a hero and so they are thinking about making failing themselves of opportunities like these and so the what i found in the newspapers is patriot leaders, really seizing upon that fact and then publicizing it as much as they possibly can and putting those stories front and center in with and we think about the sort of the news feed in using today's parlance of what people about the revolution they knew a lot about these particular stories. and and so if we were to follow elderly john adams's advice. and we look at print. well we find in print. well, there's some stuff in there that i don't think he'd be really super keen about us finding and what i found and and i was really blown away by it. i was really blown away by. the amount of of talk that it's hourly that it's that it's that it's all the time. and so therefore i wanted to really sort of have have the archive itself the fitness the massiveness of this archive that i found and and that i started out with newspapers, but then when it looked in the sort of cross-reference that against the sort of the the correspondence in the papers of the continental congress and the and the founding fathers and things and those it became this massive archive and the reflection of that of course that's massivity is the thickness of this book the that there would be this many stories and this much talk about about trying to the the colonial population. really by scaring them is is something that really is that the heart of this story. so but what my surprise came because because of the effect of these these letters that john adams is right one in that same letter. he says what do we mean by the revolution the war? that wasn't any part of the revolution. it was an effect in a consequence of it. the revolution was in the minds of people and this is affected from 1760 to 1775. this is a very very very influential. quote it's written by the elderly john adams written or who appears here on the left. but it is a it is. about the john adams of a younger man. and that is this is the one on the right is the john adams of the 1760s when he's about 40 years old and he's i love this this portrait of him because he's kind of giving us a little bit of side eye here. he's kind of he's kind of showing a little bit of playfulness and that i think reflects that if we were to go back and look at these things like i did what would we find? we would not find that the war has nothing to do with the argumentation of what the revolution is about. it would not be something that is affected from 1760 to 1775 by that which he means this is about natural rights. this is about consent. this is about representation. it's about ideology and it's done by the start of the war that notion. has had a particularly strong historia graphical effect, and why well, where do we find that letter? we find that letter here, of course in this book, which i don't i can't see some how many people participants are are in this session, but i would bet that just about everybody has read this book. that letter appears before chapter one or before page one in chapter one of bernard balans book. what do you mean by the revolution the war the war had nothing to do with it hearts and mind and it actually appears as john adams plagiarized himself when he wrote that same thing to three years later to hezekiah niles before chapter 5 of valence book so that notion that the war had nothing to do with it that it's a package thing again. we've seen that lately in the in the last history wars about about dunmore's proclamation 1619 and all this kind of stuff that's been going on in the last couple of months. i'm sure we'll talk about that a little bit more as as the session goes along but the idea that that independence is that everybody's on board. as soon as the shooting starts and the and that people's hearts and minds have been changed so to such a degree by these by this ideological change that has had a tremendous a historic graphical effect, and i didn't see all when the war. these stories about enslaved people and and what role in slave people and and native people's might play that becomes the thing that people are reading about and talking about more and more and more and more much more than talking about liberty or rights. that's the thing that people are and and as i was reading all these newspapers. i was reading the same story over and over and over again. i had i had this. what i call sort of in the preface of 13 clocks i have this kind of idea that i had this kind of weird superpower that i had developed where i would turn microfilm reels just look at newspapers that i'd never seen before and i would try to predict what i was coming next. um, which is a pretty lame superpower as there's a historians, i guess would instead of you know, flying or being invisible. this is the thing that we would do is to predict what was going on in primary sources next. but anyway, that's and i was one i would drive home from the library and i would think about what powers that actually was and what it meant for things like revolutionary mobilization. and that's when i began to think about how these same stories are be that would appear in the pennsylvania packet. that would be introduced by order of the continental congress would then appear in boston and new york and annapolis and williamsburg and charleston same exact story like we would today with a modern news wires and or if a letter that is may or may not be a little bit manipulated by patriot leaders appears in boston how it would then appear in the exact same fashion because of how the newspaper business worked in new york and philadelphia and baltimore and williamsburg and charleston. what is that? what does that mean? and that that to me was? an important gear in the 13 clocks striking together that there are there are a lot of years in the internal workings of those clocks about what made the colonies come together. but one of the ones in the very center that we've really been ignored a lot is how the page about how patriot leaders like john adams and thomas jefferson really seized upon some of these stories because they knew that they were not controversial like like things like religion or even slavery there. these were things that that if you want to talk about what 18th century colonists have in common it is the nightmares about slave insurrections and and native massacres. that is the one thing that people no matter if you're quaker or or an anglican or even a catholic that those things we are people in america really have in common and you can get more people to buy in by making them afraid of this one thing that is that is making that that in 18th century is the thing to be afraid of and so what we haven't i don't think talk to enough about is how the how those stories are deployed. um and what that means why it's at what does it mean that the idea of domestic insurrectionists and merciless indian savages working with the king is it is the 27th and final and climactic deal breaker grievance in the declaration of independence. what does that the argumentation for why we why we should come together and be one country and create a republic. is at the at the exclusion of certain people, what does that mean? and so and so and just i want to show you a couple more things for me that this happens the how of this as much as the why if it's the how of how the 13 clocks are come together. it means so much because we know that the revolutionaries did some really radical things they change they made major changes to colonial political life. they they there was a significant attack on aristocracy and established churches and they really did transform meanings of representation and consent and they also decided made the conscious decision to throw away monarchical subject to it and embrace republican citizenship. and that that's something that didn't happen before the idea of yes. peter silver is exactly right that in the seven years war stories about native massacre scared everybody and it sort of galvanized people. well, or or jalapore is right that those things happened in the new york conspiracies of 1741 or that that happened in king philip's war or that happened all the way going back to the very beginning of the colonial period but what didn't happen in any of those cases before was there wasn't an also a effort in making a new nation a new republican regime based on a very different political theory of citizenship that they didn't really even understand in 1776 and that therefore the the members of the club were able to make decisions about who was in and who was out and that's why these kinds of founding stories about about african-americans and indigenous people supporting the crown. continue to have a very significant effect about who was deemed to be in and out of the country. that could be directly logistically the case in some places. well a legally in and out, but it's also contributed to this notion that some people belong here some people don't and so what what 13 clocks really looks at is the prevalence of these stories and why they matter for us today in the the what john adams and his and his colleagues did in 1776 when he was a younger man and not an 83 year old man how they made that happen is really important for us today, and we should go back and take another look at that and not rely on his sort of elderly say so for what it is. okay, that's enough for me. thank you very very much. our first discussion this afternoon is derek our aspires and associate professor of literatures in english and affiliate faculty in american studies visual studies media studies at cornell university. he specializes in early african american and american print culture citizenship studies and african-american intellectual history in his first book the practice of citizenship lack politics and print culture in the early united states published by the university of pennsylvania, press in 2019 won the modern language association prize for first book and the bibliographical society st. louis mercantile library prize. and it was a finalist for the library company of philadelphia's first book award. he's also the editor of genealogies of black modernities, especially issue of american literary history published in 2000 2020. his work has been supported by fellowships from the national endowment of humanities the social science research council and the melon maze initiatives derek the floor is yours. thank you. thanks to the organizers for bringing us together and thanks for to robert. for writing this incredible book the teachable version two incredible books as opposed. i should say. i also want to acknowledge that i'm speaking to you from the traditional homelands of the gay kono or cayuga nation members that are holding shawnee confederacy that figures in part and robert's book. reading 13 clocks a book about store. the stories revolutionaries told about themselves. i couldn't help but think of letters from an american farmer the book published by jay hector sinjin decraft kerr and any number of other names in 1782 that purports to be the authentic account of the years leading to the revolutionary war by farmer named james from pennsylvania. james travels to several colonies not unlike adams and suggests that each region had its own distinct character based on climate economy and proximity to sell territory. he decries the luxuries gained from its like saved labor in south carolina and compares it to south america and a more spanish than british style of life. he suggest at the backcountry was a land of lawlessness that nevertheless would eventually become settled and he describes the american as a new race quote. they are a mixture of english scotch irish french dutch germans and sweets from this promiscuous breed that race now called americans as have arisen and quote. that is white men of silent anglo-saxon stock read their newspapers kept their religion to themselves and were on the whole benevolent and slavers. this account of who is an american takes me to two moments in the book the first is parkinson's contention that quote a shared feeling of intercolonial trust and unity what requires some forgetting i'm i keep coming back to the notion that trusting unity require forgetting and it feels a bit like deja vu right now that is an alchemy in which all the differences farmer james notes could be transmogrified into the shared project of creating a new american race. and we can see how patriots in their print supporters intentionally amplify amplified for instance fear around indian incursions. not only in newspapers, but also in book covers. so for instance, i will share with you one of my favorite books to teach in the early american lit seminar. this is the cover to cover from sue's from mary rowlandson's captivity narrative. first one is from 1682. so one of the first editions published in cambridge, and then the second one is from 1773 and you can see a really notable difference and i would say especially after reading parkinson's book that this difference is not just about the technology involved in having an engraving on the cover right susan rollins narrative initially emphasizes her devotion to christianity her safety etc by 1773. grand has got a gun. granny is the patriot granny is protecting the household. this is from boston in 1770. this is my granny with the gun and i say this because my grandma had a gun and then this is the 1773 cover that really illustrates the ways that a particular brand of americanism is shaped as the patriot protecting home from the encouraging of the savages of various kinds. so parkinson's account of revolutionary print culture, especially colonial newspapers helps us visualize a kind of circular process in which an event or as importantly a specter of an event via the slavery conspiracy or the threat of british alliances with indigenous peoples or other convulsions would become a published account a shaped intentionally crafted published account and listening a sort of response both in print and in action, which would then lead to a new event. comic sort of self-fulfilling prophecy in a way this account of print is a revision and refinement of both benedict benedict. anderson's imagined community thesis which suggests that proliferation of french in the early 19th century in particular created a sense of print nationalism through shared text what we learned though, is that these shared texts were not sort of passively generated shared texts. they were intentionally crafted and this scans with what trish lockron our use in the republican print about the way that early national print culture wasn't actually sort of this evenly distributed happy. imagine convenience actually pretty fractious and fractured. and so what we see in this sweet spot moment between say 73 and 76 is a moment when through a number of until we say crafted. coincidences right the 13 clocks clicking the place both because of circumstance but also because of patriots taking advantage of that circumstance and realizing not just that no fear can create a sense of cohesion in this moment, but that people responded to it and this is the important part of the circuit right? it's one thing that patriots play up on so particular kind of racial or prejudice prejudicial animus. it's another thing to note how people responded to and we're galvanized by it. and the other thing i know in the moment i have to reflect on the book. is that if print was to lifeblood of the revolution the business of enslavement helped keep that blood pumping? the book gives press context for reading how race gets made in print through freedom ads for the sale of enslaved people. so for instance the boston gazette issued at parkinson sites in the first chapter offers an ad for a likely -- and also advertisers for fugitive named caesar important to note that you would go to the newspaper office to collect reward. so it's not just that newspapers were sort of passively reprinting ads. it was part of the business model, right and again, so this feeds into the kind of feedback loop where stoking fears could actually generate revenue for newspapers. and create a sense of cohesion. um so questions. why does this reframing of american revolution as essentially a history of american whiteness or the generation of american whiteness important? why is it important that we take up the question of how organizers use whiteness as one of several of connective tissues, that would make a united states in i think part of the answer is the way in the way that parkinson's strange racialization as a strategy and a choice these writers had a set of tools before them and they made the calculation that some tools will be more effective than others. right the other thing i want to note though. is that by the 1830s black historians would be taking up this moment too. they would be some among our first revisionist historians. so for instance in 1838, pennsylvania as the state of pennsylvania was about to restrict voting rights to white men black pennsylvania's published an appeal of 40,000 pennsylvania studied with disenfranchisement, and they cite the articles of confederation, especially the one defining citizenship as the free inhabitants of each state poppers vagabonds, and he's just from justice accepted etc. and then they cite minutes from the constitute from the convention. noting that the state's voted down by margin of eight to two to one emotional from south carolina carolina to include the word white. and bring this up because it reminds us like parkinson's book that revolutionaries were constantly thinking of not only about enslavement, but also race they were making race in the moment through letters articles and law and these pennsylvania's remind us in 1838 once again that other choices were available. the revolutionaries not only knew better. they could do better some tried. i'm at least me to rethink the notion of citizenship as a club that parks and gives us yes, perhaps it's a club. i like that metaphor, but there are already people inside too and those people inside were gonna have their say, so thank you, and i'm looking forward to the discussion. thank you. robert would you like to respond? yes, i will. well, i will say this derek i have. papers taped to my monitor to remind me and sort of on the shelves around my in my that remind me of what this is really about and one of the and there's circularity is one of them event. discourse policy event and it kind of just goes back at the circuit. so i don't know if you've been snooping around my office, but the but that for you to pick up on that that is a really really excellent point i mean that is that is really what one of the things that i'm trying to think about this is how how these how an event would happen how it gets portrayed. that's the real sort of moment. that's it's extraordinarily important for things like crev curse, wyoming massacre, for example how that then gets portrayed leads to different policies including things like the the sullivan campaign to eliminate the honda shawnee in in 1779 and how that then sort of goes back and forth and how you tell stories about that. so those that's really really contingency is the really important subtext of the whole book that things could have turned out very differently. and and you see this in a like the example that i always think about is something like the french. certainly, the french are seen as for generations since the end of the 17th century. they are the most hated and feared enemies and then by 1782 their bostonian celebrating the birth of dephon. yeah, and so how is it that the french can be? yeah redeemed and so quick a manner? but other people cannot what's going on here? and so so there are moments of revolutionary forgetting i have amnesia of real sort of creativity on the fly about thinking about people and i have i talk about the german mercenaries in the same kind of way, but some people can't and so and and why is and and it is about that kind of moments of storytelling that i think that can that again doubled down and tripled down that are really important at this moment. thank you very much. before we move on to our second discussant. i will just ask those of you in the audience with questions to remember that you can use to raise hand function and you can actually get into queue now and get it ever everyone else or you can use the question and answer function itself. we prefer not to use the chat function. i've eliminated ability to multitask here between parts of the screen. so q&a function if you want to write your question raise hand if you want to directed yourself. and now our second discussant is rosemary cigari university professor and professor of history at george mason university. she received her phd from yale university and is a specialist in early american political history and women's history. she's the author of numerous articles and books including the politics of size representation in the united states 1776 to 1850 a woman's dilemma mercy, otis warren and the american revolution and revolutionary backlash women and politics in the early american republic in 2009 to 2010. she served as president of the society for historians of the early american republic. that's very the screen is yours. okay. thank you all for all the audience for coming for attending virtually and for the wilson center and the american historical association for sponsoring this i think especially in these pandemic times this kind of intellectual community is really important and necessary to keep going so and thank you for having me and thank you rob for writing these books this book in particular 13 clocks. i should say up front that i am and allowed champion of this book. i am a blurber on both books. so even though my support for and enthusiasm for the books i don't think is in doubt. i think what rob has done here is an extremely important intervention in our understanding of the american revolution and our understanding of tree of race in the united states and in our understanding of the origins of some of the contemporary dilemmas that we find in our nation today. i i know you didn't write it actually originally with that purpose in mind. that is to explain our current dilemmas since you began writing it in the early 2000s, but it is an extremely timely work that i think really reflects very importantly on a lot of the issues. we're dealing with today in the united states. so that said i want to highlight a few things that i find especially important or insightful about the book and then i'd like to move to some um criticisms reservations or at least at least points that i'd like to discuss further with you about the book or the audience. so so here's what everybody to for us to think about first of all, i think one of the things that strikes me about 13 classes. i mean, it's an amazing accomplishment amazing distillation of this 700 page book into 200 pages that preserves the core of your argument about the importance of race in the lead up to the revolution because your book concentrates on the 15 months prior to the declaration of dependence and to the declaring of independence itself. and so i think that that's extremely important that you do that and show how profoundly first of all fractured the country was and i think that's a point that a lot of in the traditional narrative or the popular narrative of the american revolution people don't understand how divided the colon or even even colonists were just spread out across a very large country a very large north american continent i should say and they were much more attached to their own individual colonies or to great britain than to each other. and so there were often boundary disputes that are often fights about about who should pay for fighting indians. for example, um, there were there was not a lot of mutual understanding of recognition of the commonalities that united these these mainland north american british colonies in the decades prior to 1776. and so i think it's really important that you stress that and that the question you poses what made americans come together what makes the teen clocks strike it once and you know, i love that metaphor of john adams because it points to how difficult if no almost impossible. it is to make that happen. and so i think that's a really important kind of groundwork that you lay in the book that that gives people a real sense of of the state of play in the colonies the north american mainline british colonies in the decades before the revolution. you also provide an incredible level of insight into the nature of of the technological revolution occurring in the colonies in the decades leading up to the revolution and during the revolution and that is the revolution and print culture and again, you don't make the contemporary analogy but that revolution in the in print in the printing of newspapers in particular but a pamphlets of all sorts of documents revolutionized the way people thought and you know one one some historians say that you know, the number of newspapers doubled in the decades prior to the american revolution then doubled again after and this kind of change is only comparable to the kind of change we've experienced in our own lives with the advent of the internet with you know, with with digital media and again, you didn't write the book with that analogy explicitly foregrounded, but i think it's important for readers to know and and they see through your your extremely exhaustive research into the print media of the time how thorough going that print culture revolution was and how extensive it was and how penetrating it was and how it really had a profound impact on the way ordinary people thought not just political elites, but wait ordinary people thought and you know, i hastened to add that the rate of literacy in the north american british colonies was among the highest in the world at that time even higher than in great britain and in new england among white males. it was all approaching universal literacy and even for white women in new england, you know, perhaps 60 to 70 percent maybe about half that in the south but still that's a lot of people can read and a lot of people who can read these new printed materials that are what that are doing what you show us, which is spreading fear. um, and so you know, i think that what you see here is that you know there there is a and an effort by political leaders and by newsmakers news printers partly to sell publications by the way as as derek pointed out to to capitalize on that fear by printing these articles that scare people and and they fear people about things they're most susceptible to be scared about especially indian massacres and slave insurrections and funded by the british promoted by the british. so i think those are really important things they they just take an a center stage in your book in a way that is very powerful and i think help people to really understand the revolution in a very visceral way that is very different from a traditional narrative. i i also appreciate your nuanced understanding to the question of race race is in your subtitle, but in your introduction you point out that you don't use that short-hand word race in your text and you do it for good reasons because the idea of race as a coherent category as a biological essentialism as biological essentialism did not coalesce as you say and as i think a lot of most historians would say until after the revolution it was coming into being but the words you use are very carefully chosen prejudices stereotypes attitudes and you use the words of the time merciles savages domestic insurrectionists. and so, you know, you convey to us what people at the time felt and you help us translate it into our modern term of race while warning us that that category of race had not yet taken on. the rigidity or the meanings all the implications that we have attached to it today. and then finally, this is a kind of historic graphical point, but i think what you're doing here in many ways can be can considered is a moving us beyond administ morgan's classic work america's slavery american freedom, which famously posed the paradox and really opened the eyes of a whole generation of his story and not that other historians. hadn't hadn't seen the problem before of slavery and talked about it including some very important african american histories, but he framed it as a paradox and i think for a long time we've talked about the paradox of slavery for instance of slavery for black people and freedom for or liberty for white people, but i think what you're doing care is showing it's not a paradox. it's that white people actually used the the subordinate condition of people of color to advance the cause of liberty that in fact it was it was a motivator. it was the one of the things that made the revolution possible. and so, you know, i i still like that idea that it's a paradox. it's a paradox for white people not really for the people of color that are you know being portrayed in this way by white political leaders and white writers. um, so my my thoughts are issues that i'd like you to discuss our other people to discuss so the first issue is is kind of historic graphical and sort of for those in the audience who aren't early americanists that may not be of much. but i'm since i have you here i can close it anyway, so, you know. how do you align your argument along with balance ideological origins of the american revolution or with the classic arguments about the coming of the revolution as being caught, you know being motivated caused by the objections to you know infringements on american liberty on representative government on taxation without representation and famously, i think you kind of are not quite fair to balin. i mean he's talking about ideology too. and he also uses print culture, but he's talking mainly about pamphlets and he's talking about a triad, you know slavery corruption and conspiracy that um, he sees these themes and these pamphlets that americans are mobilized by i mean, he has a parallel argument to you. are you have a parallel argument to him the motivation is different and he's saying that you know americans oppote, you know opposed liberty against power civic virtue against corruption, you know, so are your arguments compatible are your how does your argument fit with the with the with the idea what that the more intellectual arguments the the about taxation and representation and representative government because arguably and as many other stories have argued, you know, those did provide causes bonds of unity between and among the colonies. i mean in that one of those quotes the 1818 quote of john adams. um, he says what united people are principles opinion sentiments and affections. okay, so you're talking a lot about sentiments. all right. okay, what about those principles and opinions? how would you know? these interpretations compatible. are you arguing that regionally the this you know the the slavery and and race argument and are more powerful now. i do want to know you do a very good job of looking at newspapers from all over the continent from all the colonies, but is it as powerful say in new england as in you know, south carolina, um, okay, so that's one of the things i wanted to ask you but related. is is the whole question of fear as a motivator? okay. all right, so an older generation of historians objected to a similar argument propaganda in the american revolution and they said oh, it's these elites manipulating these, you know hapless masses who can't think for themselves and then a whole generation of social historians said no. no, you know ordinary people have have agency have have their own ideas. saw what they and took what they wanted from the revolutionary movement. okay, so, you know, how do you respond to a charge that you're moving in the direction of of propaganda and and leads manipulating the helpless or helpless masses? and and so, you know, i'm just curious about what you would say to that and then i guess sort of related to that um is and and this is where i think your caveat to not call it race in the in the body of the book. it serves you well because as you know, there were many other others during the lead up to the revolution and during the revolution itself catholics and you you know antique catholicism was rampant in the north american protestant british colonies prior to the revolution and was used as a motivator to you know, get people, you know riled up about british policies. you mentioned the germans and you even say at one point the germans were considered white. well, so, you know that broadens, you know our notion. who these others are pretty much in a way that could work if you're just talking about the use of this kind of fear during the war itself, but after the revolution in terms of talking about white supremacy, and you know are more modern conception of racism. it poses some problems. which leads me to my last point and you can take the easy way out here or the hard way out on page 185 you say republicanism and exclusion are inseparable. not only is white supremacy and ideology. it is intertwined with and dependent upon republicanism that was born in 1776. okay, so the easy way out is to say this is in the conclusion and it's kind of hyperbole and i was just stretching things. the hardest thing is for you. to justify it, which i'm interested in. i don't actually object to the idea that white supremacy is an ideology or that was intertwined with republicanism, but is it dependent on republicanism? i mean, i know you're trying to explain that republicanism required, you know, the definition of citizen a definition of citizenship and that requires inclusions and exclusions, but does and it's it does founding a republic require exclusion and if it requires exclusion, are you certain that? it's the exclusion of the same groups that you're identifying as the motivators or the unified force american revolution. so i will stop there just once again saying i think it's a terrific book. i you know, i think it is an incredible teaching book and i think it's a book that historians can learn a lot from and really has a lot to teach us in many many ways about the present moment. thank you so much robert some thoughts. sure. yes, so thank you for that rosemary. um, so three things to talk about. okay, so one bernard balen two propaganda through republicans, okay. so yeah, i i it took me i i i was at the page proofs stage of um for the common cause in 2015 or whatever when i finally realized 15 years in that. oh, i was i remember driving in my car and remember and thinking dawned on me that oh really what i was doing because i mean it's really big fight with barbara balen and gordon wood. i didn't even realize that was doing that. for 15 years, so maybe that maybe that shows a little bit of history graphic forgetting on my part and i think my i do maybe it's because it is because that they are the braylon's book. which i admire very much is. is very close to what some of the things that i'm saying? and i just see the limitations of it in a couple of ways and i would also say sort of some of the argumentation that that thb makes as well. in that well, first of all, one of the points that i make in the in the larger in the larger book, but also in 13 clocks, is that once the shooting starts? all the stakes change and that's when you know, we have this sort of artificial we when we teach these things we have this sort of broader american revolution. that we talk about that starts somewhere in 1763 for five and then ends in 1780s. that's the american revolution. you know when i teach my error of the american revolution class. it's a 30 year thing or longer. but the revolutionary war is just a small part of that and and we set like we like to bifurcate these two things, but that's not how people at the time lived it and so the war itself so the idea that this is that that a packaged finish deal in on april 18th. 1775 is where i part ways with with phalen and i but i do think that those the arguments that i think do resonate with with some colonists and not a few colonists, but but some colonists. those are argumentations about masculinity about honor about identifying liberty and identifying conspiracy and making the right choice here and that those things are highlighted from the 18th century past from the 17th century past from the roman past the idea of of the virtuous liberty loving masculine. republicans will take action to defeat tyranny that is right in front of their face and that and we can meet and we can add potpourri to that too that argument i think. does hold a lot of water? but then as the stakes go up in 1775 76. i think they have to. go deeper than that, and i know that because that's that's what a lot of people start to talk about the same guys who are writing pamphlets in 1774 about those topics. don't really write about that stuff anymore what they write about is about and and it's almost like this is that now the test has come but and they start talking about the test and the test is the the tyrants who we thought were tyrants now, they're doing this and now you have to now it's it's very obvious. what the tyranny has become is to become naked and obvious right in front of your very eyes and you have to take steps in that direction and i think that that as the stakes go up and you have to broaden the base. it can't just be other elites that that are also reading these pamphlets that look like you in other colonies. you have to broaden the base here and you have to get a lot of people to put their bodies and their families and their fortunes on the line that's going to require a different level of argumentation that i think goes past economic arguments. it goes past just sort of purely political theoretical arguments and now and where do we go after that, you know, i think we in in the colonial imagination you go to race you go to those kinds of things. you know, it's you open the toolbox and those kinds of fears are laying right at the very top of the toolbox. so i do think that that my argument here and i do and again i want to get to ideology here as well. now propaganda um, i have struggled with that word for a really long time. and it is certainly not. when when? historians in the 1930s and 40s thought about propaganda they were thinking about the creel committee and they were thinking about gerbils and they were thinking about world wars mass media totalitarian stuff. um, that's and so so then when they thought about the american revolution they said well, is this right? is this? is this the same kind of manipulation and and as you said right the same kind of elites hoodwinking and unsuspecting people. and i think we are now i struggled with that myself. like is that really what's going on here? and i thought about that word propaganda for a really long time. and over the course of many years of staring at the wall. i began to think about the the base word. probably propagate. and propagation which is a very 18th century concept about growing your own things, whether it's the society propagation of the gospel or the or propagating crop yields or propagating families or limiting the propagation of smallpox all kind of things like that is something that 18th century people are really really familiar with and that is what i think the the patriot leaders are trying to do is propagate more patriots like them and so they were trying to do their very best to get people to to agree with them and make the best arguments to get people to agree with them and sometimes that worked and sometimes that really didn't work and and of course there's a tremendous amount of agency, you know, the the robert gross another line that i think about that it's not taped in my monitor, but it's pretty close in my head is what brought people to the conquered bridge. and what brought people to the bridge what why were they? why were the minute men there to take a bullet? and everyone i think who was there would have a very different reason for that. but what i can back to over and over again was the atoms and jefferson and franklin and washington went back to these stories over and over again because they thought they would resonate with people. they thought this is something we should spend our time and money telling the american people about they because we we only have a very small box here of of arguments that will work because people disagree about what liberty means and people disagree about about whether or not we should have freedom of religion. i just finished brenda mcconville's new book the brethren and about and that's a book about in north carolina the enlightenment of the enlightenment ideas about religion aren't people are very unhappy about that and so the end and they think that the revolutionary leaders in north carolina in 1777 are secret catholics, and they're this is a sort of a popish thing because they are saying that that they don't really believe in the trinity and so there's a plot to try to kill patriot leaders and those guys consider themselves patriots. so the the the window here of what well how you make these argument is a very very small one. and so, how do you how do you sort of thread that needle over and over again? and again, i think that this is the race is really a safe argument as opposed to others. and and page 185 i'm glad you think that white supremacy is an ideology. that's good because i i agree maybe if i were to change that sentence what i should say is republicanism in the form that it takes and found in the united states in 1776 didn't needed white supremacy. i'm not i'm not exactly saying that republicanism. across the board in every context and every age does although maybe exclusion is is an important part especially if you're going to throw out a lot if you're gonna pull up a lot of different anchors. like aristocracy and you're going to or and you're going to enfranchise a whole lot of people you're gonna have to figure out how to exclude people. i mean this is this is sort of the the because you not everybody's gonna be happy with bringing everybody in that's the that's not historically what you know, and we think about the american the universalism of 1776 and 1789 leads to a backlash of exclusion by the 18 teens and 20s all over the world nationalism really does change shape in the 19th century as a backlash against that which you know, very well. so the i i think in in the republicanism in the form that it takes in the united states, it's it's dependent on that. i think i think it's it needs that to make it. a coherent project thank you very much. we're now going to our audience and the questions that they've posed. i've got a very basic one here that we can start off with that you actually address in. i think paragraph one of your your preface, but i'll let you answer here david stork writes. please clear up some confusion for me. i just ordered a copy of the common cause now i get the impression that 12 clocks it distillation of the the common cause for college classes. did i order the wrong book? no, david, i don't think you ordered the wrong book, but i i so the common cause is something that stretches over a long much longer period of time and it goes into the 1780s in but then it really goes into the at&t's and this book focuses just on a couple of the different chapters and and really that's those 15 months between a april and of 75 in july 76. uh it is it is i call it an abridgement sort of because there's a lot of new writing in it. and there's there's something there's a pair believe it or not in the 700 page book. there's a paragraph that i turn into a chapter about all the very different ways in which you know, the the not only the colonies disagree with one another and fighting with one another that's getting worse in the 1770s that all of these problems are getting far more exacerbated the pennsylvania and virginia are on the brink of war with one another over the over the ohio river country and and connecticut and pennsylvania are at war with one another over the wyoming valley and new york and and new hampshire are fighting with one another and over the vermont country. and this is all happening in in the 1770 sometimes within months of of the fighting at lexington and concord. and so and then there's slavery is a big problem and the loyalists are actually making really really good points. and so that's those are kind of things that i highlight much more in 13 clocks to kind of give you the give you the stakes here about how how difficult and enterprise as adam says this really was thank you. we have a number of questions that center on the question of fear. and sarah cunningham asks whose interests does the fear serve who writes and promotes these inflammatory pieces. she's thinking granularly particular authors or newspapers and alan. could gaiden asks did scare tactics create fear or more importantly confirm existing fears and biases and then finally paul blumhart asks, there seems to be an implication of demagoguery in the accounts of how the founders exploited fear of the other. is this an oversimplified observation or an indicator of how well this appeal has succeeded throughout american history us history. was it merely a commentary on the universal appeal of wealth positioned propaganda? okay, so who does it serve? i do think and who's benefiting the most at a granular level? so the john adams that's kind of siding us, right? the the 40 year old john adams that portrait is done in the 1760s and in 1769. john adams things are going very badly in boston for the patriot cause this is before the boston massacre and things are not going. well. there are competitors print competitors loyal will become sort of loyalist newspapers as we want to call them who are threatening the same adams isn't john adams is in john hancock's with calling them hypocrites think that the patriots are breaking the boycott and so it's a very precarious moment for the revolution in boston. and so the atoms cousins and john and james otis go to the print shop of the boston gazette and they and adams writes about this in his diary and he says we had a wonderful night. we just he we cooked up all kinds of things to put in tomorrow's newspaper. we cooked up a occurrences and paragraphs and all kinds of fun stuff and he says it's working the political engine quote unquote working the political engine. it's my favorite thing my favorite thing in the other than my daughters in the whole world. is this this paragraph that because this is the one moment when john adams tells us really a big thing about how the revolution comes about and he's and and so if you look at the next day's boston gazette, september 4th 1769, you would have no way of knowing what was cooked up and what was not and and what are the things that are cooked up is kind of difficult to know. um, there are letters in there. there's some poetry in there that's obviously cooked up, but there's stuff that you know is in the term of the day would be considered fake news. then that boston gazette issue goes all over the place. it goes all throughout new england. it goes into new york. it doesn't go deep into the south after that. but it but it gets exchanged and and taken directly. so the work that john adams and sam adams are doing that sunday night in the print shop goes all over the place, and i think they really do figure out that this is a really important ingredient to revolutionary mobilization. and so john adams will then later on after that when he's in philadelphia. he will write very explicit letters back home from philadelphia to boston and say put this in the newspaper this paragraph not this paragraph um don't give this one to the printer give that one to the printer and those will appear in boston newspapers under the anonymous. lineup from a gentleman in philadelphia to his friend in boston and you have no way of knowing that that's actually john adams writing to another patriot leader. and so we begin to see kind of the architecture of these things and and how they then get a put into different and so there's a management we're talking about propaganda. there's a management to this whole thing that it because there are no reporters and there's no journalists in the 18th century the only way in which these things appear in the newspaper is if someone like adams gives their correspondence the printer or there's letters that are printed from you know the come across the ocean or they're taken from someone other else's newspaper exchange the newspapers. and so these things are there is a directness to this. it's not accidental and it's not it's not sort of hell mel. and so i do think that that that's an important part of it. did i get to every point of that eric or is there more to the question that i missed? i suspect you could probably go on for next two hours talking about fear, but i think that that hit some of the highlights beer. yeah, no the fear stuff. yeah, yeah. so let me combine two other questions. the first just came in from martha farnsworth who asks bernard balen wrote in the 1960s. what do you think if you were still here he would think of the direction that you've taken and then joshua kaufman a bit earlier. wrote a question that i suspect many people are are thinking about it's a very simple question. does your research align or conflict with the propositions taken in the 1619 project? right? ah, i figured this would come up so, um, i don't think uh, well there was a in 19 and there was a 50th anniversary the conference about the 50th anniversary of baylands ideological origins and and some proceedings some of those papers were were published in the new england quarterly a few year or so after that and and so there was actually i actually could tell you some of the talk about about my first book of common cause appeared in a little bit of that and they're the some of balance students namely gordon wood weren't real big fans of it mostly because it moves away from this the idea of of natural rights and and there's more heroic interpretation of the revolution and it gets into the sort of the for me what's important is not the why it's the how and and you know, adams and jefferson and franklin and these guys are going to have regrets about what they do during the revolution afterwards. they're going to talk afterwards about and that's what i think adams adams doesn't want us. he want doesn't want us to do the work that that i was working on. he wants us to really work. think about those hand bills and those pamphlets. he doesn't want us to you know, it is the kind of don't look behind a curtain a about this after 1775. please focus on this really sort of heroic period when it's about pamphlets and rights don't think about what we talked about when it comes to scare him people about slavery afterwards. so i think that that the historians who who really believe that atoms interpretation is the right one. don't really love what i'm saying here. what was the second part of the eric? 16 19, there we go. okay. all right, so i you would think that i would be a 100% wholesale supporter of 1619 and and i don't i'm not gonna put a number on it, but i am i am a supporter supporter of the larger project. the for sure that we should think we should i mean what i'm saying is is racist at the heart of the founding, right? that's that's the the main point that i'm that is the takeaway from 13 clocks that and as i said before that, um people that you would not expect to be thinking about people of color at the moment that they are creating they're writing constitutions and writing declarations of independence. they're thinking about people who are all the time that those are not inseparable stories i said early on. um and when it comes to that very very controversial for a line in the original 1619 project by nicole hannah jones about that. that slavery was the main driver of the revolution. she's talking about causes. um, caused the revolution? 13 clocks is not about causes. it's about what happens after and and slavery on april 18th 1775. is something that is people are talking a lot about and some people are talking about seeing this opportunity of a crisis in the empire as a way to get rid of slavery and some people are talking about it as a way to protect slavery. it is one of those controversial things you have people at the first continental congress, who are who are set or include the african slave trade is part of the continental association boycott. they want to eliminate slavery jefferson writes in this summary view of the rights of british americans the pamphlet that kind of makes him famous as a writer. he says in 1773 and 1774 the quote unquote great object of desire is to eliminate slavery from american colonies which was forceded upon us by the king and we never wanted slavery into this kind of a really sort of really clunky argument that makes about that. um, but the idea the great object to decide this is a popular thing that get rid of sleep. and then there are people who are also there from south carolina who are saying get rid of slavery. what are you talking about? we want to double down and triple down on slavery. um, and so it is one of those fault line could destroy everything. what's interesting to me is? starting the next day. that really changes in when the war begins. that's you don't see that kind of letting there are there are the pamphlets that are talking about using this crisis in the of the the empire as a way to get rid of slavery the volume gets turned down to almost zero. and while the art the volume gets turned up dramatically about and then now the british are trying their best to use enslaved people to try to end the rebellion. to stop this and we see that in the declaration itself. jefferson writes a very beautiful paragraph about that that the language here derek talk about what could have been used in the 1830s by by abolitionist by by african americans in 1830s. jefferson has this beautiful he calls he calls the slave trade a radical a radical form of warfare. he talks about it slavery is an assemblage of horrors. he has these very powerful words and something and it's in his rough draft. they are capitalized right they are they are he means for them to be there and they all get struck out by the congress except for the bed at the end of that paragraph when he says and now they are using enslaved people against us that bit stays so the great object to desire gets struck out completely the merciles in the the domestic insurrection. part, and then they are using them against us that stays and that becomes so so slavery becomes something that's not controversial because they're only talking about one part of the equation and that that to me that part of it very much holds water of the 69% project are argument. that slavery is really important to this that part holds water as a cause. it's more difficult as a consequence you bet. thank you. so i get to exercise the co-chair prerogative to get my own my own question in and at the very end of the book you conclude we have for too long take an atoms and his colleagues at their word and you begin the book by taking apart. you know what he said what they wanted us to forget and we largely have was that the drive to have the 13 colonial clock strike is one was also a campaign stamped by the vicious the confining and the destructive you pose a question about the word we in a different context in the book, but i want to know about this week. so who are the we that are not forgetting. if you want what's that? oh wonder the big five 185. thank you. so it's not again because you look at you know, the the historiography, you know, yes, there are these celebratory accounts, but this also a very long list or at least a substantialist to people you know, who are not doing precisely this david walt striker is also, you know blurbed the book gary nash many others. so there's a portion of at least the historical profession that addresses aspects of what you want and offer us a somewhat less romantic picture here. i assume that we that you're talking about in this passage, you know is you know, the american people kind of you know, the broader culture here, but professional historians are often quite aware that what we write, you know in our little academic studies doesn't always, you know, make it into the larger public domain at least not as much as we want it to so talk about the week if you who you want to know this stuff and how how they might get get to where you want them to be? oh good. well, that was a that was a very fantastically phrase thing because yet we came around to yes, the we really is the american public. um, or the the we who we hold these truths to be self-evident right and so and that's one of the things that one of the reasons why i wanted to write this book is because i feel like i get my cake and eat it too. so i wrote this big long brick of a book that only the om hunter could have published. right, every other publisher would have would have had words for me and i think they did too. but but they but i got so i got to make the entire argument and put all this evidence out there for graduate students in scholars. which is which is important. um and that and that does you know, and i do think i think that that we underestimate our importance a little bit when we think that that people aren't going to out about this you i think they do. i think it takes time, but i think that they do. but i want then wanted i wrote this book very much for 19 year olds. i had i had 19 year olds in mind and this was part of the part of the challenge here was to write it in a it to work on the language to work on the ways in which i i made the arguments i the five sort of takeaways and the conclusion are in bold for a reason for to help to help teachers out there. i want just to hit you on the head with these are the five things that i think are really important and i could because i want the wii to know these things. i want this to be something that that as we know it head into the 250th. have 250th anniversary. this these kinds of arguments are part of the equation if we're thinking about race as a central part of the founding as a as a as part of the cornerstone here. this is this is part of you know, understanding the states if we thought that we could get rid of racism by passing a few laws in the 1960s. we the reason we that didn't work is because we didn't understand the depths of the problem. these are this is this kind of work is trying to get at the depths of the problem how we need to go much much much deeper into the crust and the mantle of north america to understand how racist penetrated it and this and this is what i think we if you grow up with these things, i also think it's about climate change about the our children are going to learn this at a very young age. then that that may be different that we might be different in a generation or so. but if i could jump in this is why i pushed against your other statement about republicanism and and exclusion being inextricably linked, okay. i would say they're contingently linked and i think it's really important for the future of our our society and government that we understand that choices were made which your book shows contingently that excluding certain groups and we can make decisions to include other groups. and of course we failed over and over again, but that first part of the declaration of independence, you know calls us to equality and equal rights, and and so you know, i mean, i think it's part of the history of graphical to emphasize one theme over the other but i really think important to at the same time that we we emphasize the centrality of race that we not lose the sense of hope and possibility for future inclusions that republican government and the the principles of the declaration of independence pulled out to us. i would i would completely agree with that. i did i don't mean for that to mean that we are then -- because of this. i do think that again the contingency part of this does give us hope that doesn't have to we aren't we aren't bound uh because of what has happened before. yeah. eric you need it. i just caught that. thank you. we've been 60 sessions over 60 sessions now is the first time first time that i had my mute on when i started to talk. my apologies. what i was saying is we could go on i think for quite some time. we scratched the surface that i think a very rich provocative and importantly times up. it is 5:30 and i have to draw this to a close. i want to thank our participants today as well as members in the audience our thanks to the 100 institute for both bringing this book out and for co-sponsoring this session. so have fun. that's a seriouson