writer for the "dallas morning news" turning out pieces on the finances of bill white and also josh hamilton so wonderful rain. you have written a book biggest lead, that was a while ago and visited business book. how did you begin the process of figuring all of this out? and just to go on sort of in a nutshell, what was it about your reporting methods not being a professor of history, someone who sort of natives living doing this. how did you figure it out? >> it is a very good question. and it is one that has been asked all the way long. who is going to hire me or give me an advance on a book if i'm not a historian so i had to go the extra mile in the book proposal and prove that i was. in a lot of ways i found i am a reporter. that is who i am. that is what i do and i found that my reporting skills works to do history. there was one little thing that i did that i don't think and maybe i shouldn't even say this. the historians may laugh me out of the room but one of the things i realized in doing this book was that i couldn't be one of these guys who went out and and -- for three years and

senior writer for the dallas morning news turning out pieces of the finances and also a profile of josh hamilton. wonderful range. he wrote the book previously, though it was a while ago. how did you begin the process of figuring all of this out? sort of in a nutshell. what was it about your reporting method not being a professor of history, someone who made his living doing this, how did you figure it out? >> that's a very good question. and it is one that has been asked all the way along. it started out with who is going to hire me or give me an advance on a book? i am not a historian. i had to go the extra mile and prove that i was. in a lot of ways i found that i am a reporter. that is to i am and what i do. i found that my reporting skills work to do history. there was one little thing that i did that i don't think i should even say. historians might laugh me out of the room. one of the things i've realized in doing this book was that i had to -- i could not be one of these guys that went out and beavered away for three years and then came back with this much stuff and all across indexed. s