This conference from Purdue University continues with biographers looking at political history, this talk was part of a twoday conference called remaking american political history, its an hour and a half. Welcome and thank you for attending our session on this beautiful friday afternoon. We will have to compete with the outdoors and hopefully we will convince you that the made the right choice, hanging out with you to talk about media and biography and political history. A lien between the four of us weve written at least 17 biographies, it might be more than that i was losing count because Randy Roberts has written so many, youve written more than half of our total number i think. So, we have a lot of experience in this genre, weve been drawn to and have an affinity for it in some way or another. So, before we begin lets introduce the panelists and as i introduce each of you if you could stand a minute or two, telling the audience what was it that drew you to biography and what is it