without further ado, please join me in welcoming james sherow. (applause) >> well, thank you will and that's a generous introduction and i appreciate that and thank you for hosting me and i really am honored by this. also, the raven bookstore thank you for hosting this as well and this is quite the privilege. i'll start with a question that came to my mind as i started researching this book. because, why in the world would anybody want to do a book on the chisholm trail. it's been expanded in movies and novels and so my approach to this was to make it and ask some different questions than before and do this within an environment of historical context. the things that i was looking at is i like to follow joseph mccoy's life because his life really encompasses everything that this trail system was about. when i look at his life and the opening of the chisholm trail why. the trail? why was so important in the first place and why it was the trail done at this particular moment in time. more importantly, why joseph mccoy and why this particular indivi