john lingan writes with a sharp eye and open heart. please help me in welcoming, john lingan. [applause] >> hi everybody. hi friends and family. mostly appear it is wonderful to see everyone. thank you very much to politics and prose for having here today, having the book here. i have been to the store countless times for reading. it's a really wonderful experience to be up at the podium here. this is max, my friend and editor at the oxford american. who is obviously just eye candy for the moment. but i am really happy to have him here to talk about the book. [laughter] once i read for a minute. before i do that i just wanted to say how it is really lovely to be here so early in the, let's call it the promotional cycle for this book. in d.c. because the whole book takes place in winchester, virginia and berkeley springs, west virginia. both of which are barely 60 miles away, about an hour and and a half drive. so this is really to my mind, a local store in my mind it will become increasingly so. because sort of the change that i hope this documents a change from a sort of self