Hello, my name is kai bird, im the executive director of the leon leavy centers for biography at cuny, university of new york. We are sponsored by Sheldon Whitehouse and the abto promote the arts and crafts and biography among other things. We been a sponsor of the National Book festival for some years. We are here on a session with the 20th anniversary actually of the National Book festival, the theme this year is american ingenuity. We are going to be talking tonight with two notable publican intellectuals, Harold Holzer is one of the countries leading lincoln scholar, currently the director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at hunter college. Ted widmer is himself the author of eight books, professor witmer is now on my faculty abwe will be discussing his latest book lincoln on the verge thirteen days to washington. These are two very different books. Im going to hold up each of them. This is literally a mini biography, not so many, its a substantial book, focuses on 13