because my first memory of this building were in the 70s and many of you were not alike in that if you can imagine the 70s i was a very young girl and i would run up and down the corridors and back then you could actually take the elevators down and go through the tunnels without security. many times i would get lost and hot neck up somewhere else in the library of congress or over the capitol building. but really this is where i spend a lot of my time growing up, so for me it is a particular thrill to be back in the raeburn house and again thank you very much for having me here. it is really quite an honor. in terms of where a m-i will give you a background about my personal background, my journey

to the book and why anything particularly at this point in our nations history, why this book and why our founding documents in the history of our nation are so very important. because we really are i think a really very important -- and i think we'll have to figure out in the end who are we as a country, what do we believe in and that will set the patterns for the next generation. i think the best place to start is to look and act documents, their history and that is what is really what drove "the essential american." again i would like to say especially for the claire booth luce policy institute, have a great little story. i told a friend that i was coming here, and for those that might know dana, i've know dana for older a decade and she works for my father at the american enterprise institute. she actually got that job because she came to washington to look great job, came to one of these events, met somebody

decade of her life you never know who you might events so make sure you all mix and mingle later on. she is married to a gentleman, lui haga for those of you who are symphony lovers. he was the first chairs violinist for the washington symphony for a long long time. he retired a year ago. they met because she went to a meet and greet and now they live happily down the saint simons in georgia so you never know when an event might lead to a happily ever after. again my first memory of d.c. was in the 70s, and this was way before my dad one. i'm going to take you want a little bit of a reminder of kind of my background and his career because i think it is important for us to understand where we came from and why it is important to learn a lesson. if you can imagine in the

1970s, this might've been around 74, we lived in carrollton, georgia. we lifting geralds and, georgia because my father who went to emory and went to tulane and got his ph.d., part of the deal was he got some scholarship money if he promised to come back to george and tea 20 finish. a fair deal. when he finished that dissertation he found a job offer in one place, carrollton, georgia. so that is where he went. he had two young to young girls and my mother, we all looked in carrollton, georgia. we packed up to come to washington on a big train trip which you can imagine then was a big trip for us. my mother's mother was going as well. we were getting ready and we are coming down the big hill to our little house. my grandmother tripped and broke her arm. broke her leg, she broke her leg. my sister had to get someone to push her around the entire time.

luckily she was -- and didn't have a problem with that but grandma got on the train and she wrote the train the whole way here when we kept our family vacation intact. what i remember and the reason for this story is if you can imagine a little girl in carrollton, georgia riding the train up, going into the dining car in the morning, sitting down at what appeared to be a very elegant table with white tablecloth at that time and a little flour and looking out of the window and seeing as you cross the bridge of the potomac the washington monument. and the feeling that i had knowing that i had just entered our nations capital. later i learned as i'm sure many of you know, that the top of the washington monument is the capstone. on the east side it says last day which is praising to god. as the sun rises over washington everyday the strike -- sun strikes the words praise be to

god. i treasure map that when i come to washington because it really is a special city and i think for those that live here you can occasionally forget that. but i think it is very barton for us to remember that it is a very special city. so my first political memories are not of the trip to washington that are of the 1974 campaign. again, little girl from georgia. it is 1974 and my father decides to run for congress. as a republican. now back then there were no republicans from georgia, not really. there was rodney cut. there was mack mattingly. there was buzz how when my father so you get all three of them in a bitty room together, that was the entire republican group. that was it. but he decided to run it because he was in georgia that would mean he would run against jack witt who at the time was the dean of the george -- georgia delegation. he was the most senior person.

i'm sure many people told him it wasn't a good idea and lori and i were talking earlier. i know we actually have a granddaughter of someone who remembers when we announced he would run, so we do have a long trip in georgia. he rand, and he ran really hard. for those who remember 1974 either from the history books are for real life, 74 was the time of watergate. you can imagine a wet like to run as a republican in georgia. really hard. he ran, ran, ran, ran and at the end of the term we went to the victory party. you don't want to have a defeat party because it is really bad. i remember dad sitting there with his yellow legal pad and back then we didn't have the great map that you wander over and pull things out of. you have someone call from her precinct and they would say hey this is precinct whatever. here of the votes for a and b.

debt but write them down and i can remember him adding them up. he is a pretty good mathematician. my mom is a mathematician but he is pretty good at math. he would add that began to see if it would change the answer. unfortunately it didn't. he lost with 48.5% of the vote which we all know how much you lose by, you lose. but the next morning he didn't complain. he didn't cry at. the next morning we got up really early. we went over to the ford factory and we shook hands with the family. thank you for your help. we will be back again next time. the next thing, next to the same thing happened. he ran really hard and he was sure he did beat jack went. was 1976 and he said he knew he had a chance until the republican primary, some guy named jimmy carter was really getting ahead. and he knew it was going to be a really tough race because we were in georgia again. jimmy carter ran a great race and worked really hard and dad

said he thought he had a chance until election day when he stood in front of the library which was our polling place and he saw the buses pull up. and he realized the buses weren't there to vote for newt gingrich. they were there for somebody else. so again that night he added up and added that the again and again and again and again he lost. with 48.3% of the votes. so what do we do the next morning? we got up again and went to the ford factory. thank you very much for your help. we will be back again. mother tells a great story in a for this recently from her. we were talking about the history and the family and what we went through and at this point they had lost twice and they decided not to run again. mom said she can remember going to a local a.m. p. running into a friend and saying, you are not going to let him run again are you? he just can't run again.

if he loses it is going to be embarrassing. like the first two weren't, right? mom had such a great answer. of course he wants to run. and as we now know, he ran. he won and in time it was in 1994, republican resurgence on the hill. the reason i tell the story is not to say my dad lost a lot because i know it is embarrassing and i don't like to highlight that but my point is very clear. i want you to understand that persistence matters. that it is very important that we as a people are optimistic and persistent because in and that is what makes the difference. now thomas jefferson said all he needs to get a foothold is for people to remain silent. i think we need to be very very aware of this quayle because we have to understand we can't be

silent. the complicity is just as bad as doing something and we have to have the ability to stand up and. >> about what we think is important as a nation. today more than ever conservatives -- back and i don't think in particular and i will talk about this, i think particular no offense to men. my kids always say that, no offense. it is like now you are going to say something bad. particularly women conservatives are incredibly important. male conservatism has been important for a long time but i think women, it is our time to step up and be proactive and i'm going to talk about that a little bit. we are on a journey and we have this incredible rich history. a lot of which is in "the essential american." i think we have a really bright future which i'm going to talk about as well. if you think about it we are billing. we are it. the people here in this room, the people in our nation, we are the link between an incredibly

wonderful history and an incredibly bright future and it is our job, i think our future is based on our ability to speak up to articulate a clear vision of a great future that everyone can be engaged in. i think we have to paint a telling picture that people want to join in and want to be helpful and want to be a part of it. we have to inspire and remind people of our rights and with rights comes responsibility of americans. our future is predicated on americans understanding and their believe that we all have an equal opportunity to share the american dream. we have to understand and we have to articulate and convey a vision that resonates -- it has to resume. when i say resonate, michael girl plays violin in which he plays -- she is not great okay but she is good. when she plays and she plays

well you can feel it. you can feel a aggressive beginner body. he plays with such passion. but we have to be able to convey and articulate a vision that resonates with the majority of americans so they can understand and feel it in their bodies. i am going to talk a little bit about the founding of our country which i'm sure you all know about that we will talk about it anyway and that also about where i think we need to go. when you think about the declaration of independence it clearly states, right, that we have self-evident truth that truths that our creator people rights and we loaned it to the government. i think we need to think about this is what we are and what we are not. self-evident means it is truthful so i think we need to understand we need to have society based on truth. when we say equal we are created equal, not in the end it is all equal. this is a real challenge for us in society and this is going to

hurt some people's feelings because people like for people to be happy. but the reality is in the end you have to have people -- they work harder. can't have a society where everyone gets the same thing in the end. that is not a free society that creates entrepreneurial people. when we talk about in doubt bair crater we are talking about god giving us power and our power comes from god. not that the government decides what power we are going to have. it is a very different paradigm. i think we need to think about life liberty and pursuit of happiness and the freedom to act as you want to do but also you have to remember is this pursuit of happiness this is important. that means you pursue it. that doesn't mean you have it. and that is very different. i had a nine and a 11-year-old and they are great ages. they are really fun. the 11-year-old is a girl and a 9-year-old is a little boy. we get into these discussions sometimes and they are really frustrated with me because they are not happy and i have to

remind them that is not my job. is not my job to make them happy. it is my job to discipline them and love them and to encourage them. it is their job to figure out the boundaries of how they can be happy. i think that is hard for us to do as a country. i'm going to talk a little bit about women do and why i think women are so important in this next phase where we are politically. if you are not one of these normal women don't take any offense. in general i think women operate a look differently at i see this and my sister. i have a sister that is three and a half years older. she is absolutely amazing. she is probably the best manager or leader i would save people that i've known and i say that because she cares about everybody who worked with her, i mean generally cares for them. she worries about how they feel and what they are doing and how they work and what she is able to do is she actually pulls all

of their strengths and figures out how to use them together. she is an incredible manager, very talented women but women often have that skill of figuring out how you knit together and created team versus seeking out how you create a group that impedes against each other which is a very different dynamic. what women do is say because they are by nature the child that they get earth and they also are the mother, i think women are much more forward-thinking because we are always thinking about, especially when you have children, what is the next generation? we can't help ourselves. we worry about her children. we worry about their future. we worry about how can we make sure things are ready? i think by designed the way god created us we do worry about what is coming up. we care for children. it makes us either crazy sometimes which does happen. also develops patience. i think one of the biggest joys ahead with having children is that i am developing a little

bit more patience. i had this experience this weekend and my husband will laugh over this. we once had someone from -- someone watch her children. the kids marched off rapidly and did exact to what they were told to do which was amazing. but they turned to us and said look, you tell them 4000 times and they do it. one of the things about parenting is you begin to realize you do have to be -- you have to repeat yourself, dear ari repetitious. is very deliberate. you have to do it over and over again and if possible without screaming which always helps. some of that ability to say the same thing over and over again in the hopes that eventually you'll hear someone saying you know they have the nicest manners. i say yes maam, no man and thank

you very much. when you hear that you think -- after the fourth solvents time something sunk in and makes you happy. the other thing women do is they create nets. i know guys like to laugh at that, my husband does that part of the reason we create places of safety or relaxation is that allows a place for people to be able to knit together as it community and a family. a lot of times i think in society be left at that. we don't need a nice place to sit over there for but it is true, you need that sanctuary. in fact i was talking to a teacher last week and she goes you know it is interesting how much information you get when you are carpooling. some of my best discussions with my children are during carpooling. i hear about what is happening and what they are doing and she does the nice thing about that is that leaves the home as a place to be saved. not all homes are safe but i think one of the things i start to to do is to mothers to make

sure my home is a place that is safe in children will love -- feel love. again i think that is what women try to do. they try to build places and communities that are safe. we as a conservative society think about how do we build the next-generation. i think we need to use those same skills. i think we need to be a will to think about how can we knit together communities that help each other. how can we figure out how to over and over and over repeat the same things about getting frustrated because it may take a really long time. how can we make sure that we build on strength and we don't tear down people because of their weaknesses, because i have a lot of weaknesses. we all have weaknesses but i think those core fundamental values are very important. one of the reasons that i wrote "the essential american" and one of the reasons i think it is so important is because it reminds us that work matters. i don't sounds very shocking to hear that, but i think we forget

a lot of times especially when we e-mail and text that words have great importance. thoughts and ideas create reality and therefore results. so we need to be very careful not only with what we read that what we think and their ideas. these documents remind us of our exceptionalism. they ask us to do more or to be more. they also provide 30. when reagan said mr. gorbachev tear down that wall, he didn't say i hope one day it might fall down on its own. he said tear down the wall. very very clear in terms of what should happen. and i think as we think a better future, it is very important for us to understand our past and again that is the core belief behind "the essential american." there are amazing stories. we have family stories. when i told you about my dad losing twice, obviously a family story, tell it to my children

when they fail to remind them they have to get up and be nice and gracious and work really hard again and they can give up. we also have stories -- my grandmother, same one who broke her leg, was raised on a farm. and in a rural area and a metropolis. i think everyone around her was related to her. she was -- and she was born in 191-10-1913, they're not really sure. but she was part of a farming family so they didn't own the land. they just worked it. which means everybody had to really participate. everybody who is involved. so when she told her dad she wanted to go to columbus, georgia and get her r.n. degree, he wasn't happy. he needed those hands. he needed her to help him out. so her mother gave her her egg

money, literally her egg money, her nest egg and her father disowned her and said don't ask me again and she went off to columbus and got her r.n. degree. for a woman from a family who have never had a diploma, it was a huge event. now i tell the story to my children because i want them to understand that we value education and education is important as is doing what you think is really right for you. now you will be glad to know that when her father became sick later in life and he needed someone to help him, she of course was there and take care of him for which he was grateful. but it is really important. education is important. my mother who is the oldest of four children was told when she went to college you have choices. you make it out in three years and your sister will go after you or your sister will wait another year. they didn't have enough money to send to children the same year.

she said i will give it a try. went to auburn and graduated with a degree in math. and got out in three years and became a high school math teacher. again, we value education. my sister kathy lynn mentioned earlier, as is a similar story about raising money for cancer. my sister had arthritis. she had rheumatoid arthritis. if you have ever seen anyone who has this disease it is an incredibly debilitating disease. she had days six or seven years ago when she literally could not get out of bed. i mean literally had to be lifted out of bed. she began taking a drug called temporal and totally transformed her life. it didn't fix anything but stopped all the progress of the disease. so my sister having conquered that come at least for now decided she wanted to raise awareness for arthritis and decided she wanted to walk a

marathon. for those who are not aware it is 26.2 miles. she asked if i would go along and help raise money for this for rheumatoid arthritis. i said sure, of course. you are my sister and i will do anything you want. i could think about the first year is i will have to carry her. she is never going to make it. luckily she is little, five feet five inches and very petite. i could. herb if i needed to. surely i would be able to carry her. but, kathy of course made it through, and 26.2 miles in seven hours and 47 minutes. we raised $40,000. we have done it two other times. we raise $146,000. you really can do incredible things when you put your mind to it that those are some of our family stories. in terms of our nation stories there are couplet want to highlight today because i think they are so important. fornes abigail adams, often overlooked but if you think about the revolutionary war period women weren't in front. they want to once in front of

the room. they were left behind the children of but me look at abigail adams and her letters with johnny's a woman at barely was very very bright, highly educated and had really -- asked really great questions. when you read her letters and you see her questions she you think she is giving him the next thing to do to make sure. one of the things she said as she reminds him that every member feels for us like when you get calls from people who say remember the people in georgia? remember the people in texas and remember those in california? she reminded him of the people at home. she also reminded him if a form of government is to be established what one will be assumed? what is going to happen? how will we form this government? how will it be made up? clearly there were relationships not only providing them the stability of the family but also intellectually challenged him to think about what is the right form of government.

the other one is gene kirkpatrick which i think i am very fond of. she is very interesting because very very bright woman, who is a democrat originally, part of a great party, part of that organization who is very concerned in the 70s because of the way foreign policies was unfolding. again very concerned. she became his national security adviser. really her 1984 speech of the republican national convention, think you it's a good speech today and put it in in new places and new names and that speech is just as relevant today as was then. it clearly lays out that if country cannot lame itself and deal with -- at the same time. and i think this whole idea of judgment we have to think about is a country because where we don't want to not have right or wrong to think clearly in the forefront we must have truth. we must understand that when we

say two plus two is my dad say equals four. it really does equal for. the rest of the standard of truth but we have to have truth without judgment. if you look at our history, we have a cycle of victims and oppressors and the next cycle is over and the victims become oppressors and to have the same cycle and then it reverses. so the way to fix that, the way to think about possibly fixing that is to have truth, not necessarily without judgment but with an open mind so it will lead you to a more creative decision that would be inclusive i'm going to back up and give you a little bit abraham lincoln to think about that. my favorite selection out of "the essential american" is lincoln's and i grow. you can tell i have -- we had a

bit of discussion when we publish the book because i couldn't figure out what to cut. i have lincoln's first and not grow. i have the gettysburg address, the emancipation park in with -- park proclamation. what do you leave that? i couldn't figure it out. when you look at the trends of the wording and how he changes the person from his first macroinaugural which clearly is very legal case of why we shouldn't go to war but we will probably have to come if you read the first inaugural it says you know state has succeeded. we know it will end up at war. i don't want again about war. i wish it wouldn't go to war but here are the legal outlines of what is going to happen. if you look at that and then he moved to the gettysburg address in less than two minutes, and 287 words never using the word i adore me. never talking about himself. human from the founding of our nation to the future and wrapped

it all in this great promise of tomorrow. an unbelievable speech. wherever it was he was a well-known order. he stood or two hours. don't worry i'm not speaking for two hours today. as you can imagine lincoln getting up after a two-hour oratory same 297 words and so short the photographer could take a picture but today the gettysburg is dressed as one of the once remember. the second macroto me is really heart-wrenching and i want to spend a moment talking about it. if you can imagine the first and not grow the capital of the dome was half finished. it was half finished and there was the scaffolding up on the capital and at that time they had continuous construction and it was a sign that the union

would endure. at the second and not grow it was all but ensured that it was a win and the dome was finished. so he comes out. is a cloudy day like today, little overcast and the story goes that he comes out and as lincoln approached the podium, the clouds broke in the sunshine on him which must have been incredible if you are there. buddy talked about a couple of things in the the not grow address which i want us to think about. where we need to move for next-generation. he talks about let us judge not that we be not judged. you can tell in this address that he has become a man who truly understands that he is in the hands of god. you could see it in his speeches. he could see it in his writings. you could see how faithful he had become as a leader in the and the president but he talks about let us judge not so we may not be judged. he then closes with a great

line, with malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as god gives us to see the right. let us drive the centers to work we are in. now you may think what is this have to do with me? you are a college student, an and in turn any work in an office. what does that have to do with me. i am a writer and a mother and do a lot of laundry, ate loads this weekend and you wonder what does it have to do with this? i think it has a lot to do with us. first of all we need to understand that we are a nation about moving forward, we are a nation that wants to reach out to others and include others and we don't want to lean on judgment. we know them and that doesn't get us where we need to go. but i think we also have to understand if we really want to think about where we want our nation to be, my children are older than i do have my two little ones is we have to think

about a nation that can be focused on the truth as well as creative solutions. part of saying what is truthful without judgment is the truth is still the truth. doesn't make the truth go away. it just makes us focus on the truth and create a creative solution versus looking at a path. let me tell you what, you can't fix the path. it doesn't change. there is nothing there for us. it is gone. we have to think about how we can create and solve problems for the future. that is what we are about. then we have to figure out how we make it so attractive that we absorb the majority of the country with it. that we are all working together. if we are going to do this, how do we work hard enough to make that happen? one of the things they think is

abraham lincoln and his second in our grow address and talk about ronald reagan when he gave that brandenburg gate speech and why words are important, to talk about jfk and his statement of don't asked which are country to do for you, which is what everyone is doing but what you can do for a country and to ask are we really doing what we should? i think the hardest is to be a good example. that is the hardest thing i do every day and i fail every day usually buy lunch. sometimes it is the later. with children who understand what that means because they see everything you do. and they see how you asked them to do things and they see how you react to people around you or take them. i think we all need to understand that every one of us has an incredible network and can be a good example. how do we do this? i am using some of my dad's things. i try to learn most days.

usually i learned from failing. i'm pretty good at dealing terkel i'm getting better at learning from failing but one of the things we have to learn as a conservative movement and as women is what resonates. we talk about building a movement big enough to resonate with the majority of america. what does resonate? just like a violinist can hear the notes they play resonates. he was telling a story about the greatest violence in the world. his story was, here's the greatest violence in the world and the response from the greatest violinist in the world was correct the notes -- and what they did is they went back and listen to the tape of this maestro andy realized he slowed the tape down and you could hear his flaws. you could hear when the notes were off but his hearing was so

good that he could correct it before the human ear could hear it. so he was literally correct in as he played. we have to have that ability as a community and the movement to figure out if we are going the wrong way, if it is not resonating and we are not building positive energy and optimism than we to figure out what we are doing. just like a violin in the end it has to all be fantastic and pleasing to the year. with figure how did that. because this will be a long process and i think in the end we are never over. life takes a long time. i tell my children life takes a long time if you are lucky. i am the girl that gets up on saturday with her to-do list. my to-do list and my husband's. he is not too happy about that. he's the he is the guy that gets up and sits on the couch. he has to rest first. i know that we are together for a reason because god wants me to

learn to be patient. i'm not there yet and god wants him to do -- know but it is good for me because i am very focused and i get too involved in activity and i try to do too much and jimmy is there to to rein me in and say you know honey that is not what life is all about. is also about being with your family and having fun. one of my favorite stories about my husband is the egg story. we took our children grids, toast and eggs every morning. in fact this morning i cooked the grits and eggs but in many cases jimmy does. so for a while we had a raging battle about who had the best dates. you can imagine the pressure on those children to declare mommy or daddy the best cake maker. it was awful. i had to say he won for quite a while. kind of embarrassing for me but i was getting over it. finally i asked him -- what is with the aches? he is like honey, you have to love the six.

you have to love those six. which means you have to pay attention and know what you are doing. that is become our code for no matter what it is you have to love the aches. hewitt got to love the committee meetings you are in. have to love the colors you are dealing with. it doesn't matter what it is, you have to love your aches. jimmy does love physics. of course not any more. he has gotten the doctors reported he and i are off the aches for a while. lastly i think we need to remind ourselves that we really have to be true do we are as a conservative movement. i think for women, i have listened to a mother talk about how she was a math major and is a it will buy them understand because i are up in an age where i have an undergraduate in finance and an mba in finance and i have a cfa. i can do whatever he wants but i think as women we now have to figure out that we have choices. we can do that or we can do this or we can to -- and every woman

is different. every woman is going to change a couple of times during her life. i worked in corporate finance for 15 years. iran i ran a big corporate group with $4 billion on demand than i had to children and now i'm a writer. the good news now is nowadays you can read that yourself as you change and grow. as you decide you have a different priority. i think in the end you have to be authentic which means i'm the same standing today in front of you as i was this cooking eggs for my children. you have to be very clear about who you are and what you will and won't do and i think you left understand that it is important to matter what you do get to have to in the end love all the eggs you are involved with. but ladies you know we have an m.a. in. we have a big job in front of us. i mean that collectively but i think together i know that we are up for the task. our task is to be truthful without judgment, to be created

and solutions, to let all americans come in and join the movement and to understand that everyone can pursue the american dream. i would like to like to thank all of you all for your time, your commitment, your passion and for serving what i think is an integral part between our incredible history and our incredible future because we are the link up our great american story. thank you so much. praise be to god. magog bus to and god bless america. [applause] and i think we can take any questions. yes you may ask about exactly how the eggs are cooked.

>> what it was your favorite speech in the book? >> my favorite speeches lincoln's second not aral address. it moves me to tears when i read it because you can't tell how hard the world was for him. you could tell how much he felt when he talked about we believe in the same god in the same bible and pray to the same god. this is where we are as a nation i hope it will be over soon and you can almost feel his heart breaking in two but in the end he again is very merciful without judgment and wants us to work together for a bright future. steve thank you so much. in your interactions with liberals, people of the liberal persuasion persuasion what are some common ground you are able to connect on especially with the material in this book? >> that is a great question. the question is what are the common grounds between republicans and liberals in terms of this book.

we have mlk in the book and his speeches, and incredible speech and again i think we need to look at people who reach out to others include them in the movement as role models. jfk is in there. fdr is in there as well but again the idea was and is to have american stories. all of those that i mentioned, all of those authors asked us to be more antiwar. none of them say stay where you are and don't let government solve your problem. that wasn't their idea but really how do we figure out together. i will give another example in this is an area i think we have a lot of opportunity in. two fronts. one is conservation. i've been involved with over a decade of my father was involved before me in the trust for public land. i think organizations such as that that are conservation minded and do a lot of work in saving land publicly for people

who use i think public service has gotten a bad baghdad rap insures of being environmentally aware. i love the environment and god really the environment. if you we are city stewards of the earth and to take care of it for me stewardship stampler but we have to figure out how to do it in such a way that it makes sense because if we just have rules and regulations we can't control what the rest of the world does. we have to build and solutions that actually work, not just for us, but accent and so others will adopt it as well. i think we have to be very proactive in terms of the arguments. >> hi, and wondered what is the best way to take in some of the speeches? i know what i'm reading a book in my eye weighs over at the words that don't really observe a completely soaked did you listen to a lot of the speeches on tape? eiji read them aloud to yourself? what process to do have to really absorb them? >> >> that is a great question. a couple of things.

in "the essential american" i do have introductions for each one, when did happen and why is it important? what was the outcome and wiser resume today? the other thing for those that are, i spend a friday night listening to ronald reagan, the speech on his goldwater speech. i have also watched the brandenburg gate speech on tv so the ones that are on video, think is best way to see them. clearly not all of them are. even rummy looked at at the book itself, the book of patrick henry, the first entry is very interesting but not only is there no written transcript of that speech that literally what there is someone else's recollection of being at the speech. that is all the record there isn't as where we get the phrase give me liberty or give me death. i think it is fun and also i know that a couple of them especially the documents, the northwest ordinance is pretty long. look of the parts that are interesting to you and matt

time. introductions are about 700,000 words. this are easy to get there and to figure out what other parts might be. the good news is you can pick it up, you can rewind and you can read the rest later because it is easy to use. >> i have a question. how did you go about picking the 25 documents? >> that is a great question. we do have 25. the original goal was 21. i failed, right? we have 25. and it was really hard. clearly we had to have the declaration of independence. we had to have the constitution. there something she know you have to haven't been that was the first probably 15 and we have to figure out based on that what worked. couple of things we try to do. want to make sure we covered our history. star with patrick henry and go to george w. bush. we did have the good coverage in terms of what has happened and

the other thing is we did want to have things not only that were very clearly in there but things that are of little less well-known. the alamosa beaches in there which is not as well-known. so we have had a little bit of everything to make it interesting. [applause] >> for more information visit the author's web site, jackie cushman.com.