i'm sorry that my colleague brendan sÖderberg couldn't join us tonight.the original idea was to have a conversation. we sort of brought the drug trade in the drug war in baltimore together with the drug trade and the drug war in a place like mexico. we're going to try continue to do that, although i don't have deep contextual knowledge of the city. but as big fan of his writing and a deep reader, his i will try to bring what i've learned from into this conversation. i to start by just saying that this is a remarkable book. i'm so glad it's here. it's out in paperback. it's purchasable here at red. emma's and it's a tremendous history. you have not yet had the chance to read. ben does are incredible thing, which is that he makes he sort of absorbs a massive corpus of very detailed historical facts about the history of the drug trade. mexico really entire country of mexico north to and makes into this very readable very lively very book that will as was saying really sort of slip in some knowledge while we are learning these sort of very engaging about the