Freeman talks about her life in writing, she appeared in her monthly call in program in depth in september 2019. Joanne freeman, youre gonna hate this opening question. [laughter] trace the arc of our nations history from 1783 to 1861, the political history of our nation. Wow. I wont use the word hate. [laughter] thats a little daunting. Trace the arc. Im gonna do historian thing and speak generally. I guess i would say if youre looking at american politics from the beginning straight to we could even go past the civil war you are talking about paradoxes and conflict and improv. The periods i tend to focus on really more the early part of the earth and its the improvisational nature of that that really fascinates me more than anything else because the nation was founded in a world of monarchy and the United States was a republic beyond that there was a lot of open grounds theres a lot of improv in those early decades about what the onation is, how it functions, the tone of the governme