and so my first book was a biography of alfred e. smith, the first catholic to run for president, a poor boy who became the great reforming governor of new york and then would have been a great president, but he got wiped out by herbert hoover. and i love that story. i spent 20 years writing it, and i decided when it was done, i'd better hurry up on the next book or i'd be dead. the next one was about free speech, which we kind of all assume we've always had free speech in this country. we have a first amendment, and it isn't true, you know? for the first hundred years, there was a lot of censorship in america. and the freedom we have today a lot of remarkable people fought for to achieve. this story, though, is very personal in the sense that it's still a history. it's not a history of me or my family, but i am the most recent of a long line of alcoholics going back at least to my great grandfather, and i got sober 30 years ago. so i've always been interested in the story of recovery. i read books, you know, the histories of alcoholics an