further our program and talk about it, i am going to introduce the library of congress historian, john kohl. john is a special figure because he is the founding director for the center for the book and was part of the initiative that led to the legislation that created us four years ago. we are celebrating our 40th anniversary this year. i would like to acknowledge and appreciate john who has a special relationship with today's author and the subject of the book, mr. daniel murray, who will introduce our author and a couple other key components of today's program. thank you so much for your attention. enjoy the talk. [applause] >> as pam mentioned, i am john kohl and here to not only celebrate daniel murray and the book series for the center has underway but to acknowledge very special guests we have today. we have members from the daniel murray family, the descendants of herald murray who herald was one of daniel murray's seven children. do i have that right? and most of them have made the trip from mexico to be with us today. and i would like them to stand and be acknowledged in a special

i'm john kohl, director of the center in the book for the library of congress. i was talking to our speaker earlier tonight and described what i was doing. she said, you have a wonderful job. you promote books and reading. you live with books. and you are involved with the study of books. and i said, that's true. we also promote books through events such as tonight's. this is part of our books and beyond author series. it's where we focus on authors who have written new books that have something special to do with the library of congress. and in this case, as our speaker will tell you, there is a direct connection with the library and with an archive. and when i wrote the press release, i didn't really realize the extent of the collection that we have that supports this particular book. we have the archive not just the recordings for mary margaret mcbride. you will hear about that tonight from our speaker. susan is a special friend of the library of congress. she has been here before to work on a particular project. we have some of the editors of this project he