so join me in welcoming lewis lapham and holger hoock. [applause] >> ready to go? >> yes. >> shy tell you that i think this is a wonderful book and i hope you all go out and read it. it's a dish thought i knew something about american history, and i didn't know this story, and it's got all kinds of angles and questions to it, and so we're going to start with holger talking about what the -- first of all, what is the theme, what do you mean by the violent birth of the american revolution. give us a small sketch of the story you're going to tell and then till us how you got -- why you got into writing the book, what prompted you to do this work and where it began and why is it important. >> thank you. good evening. it's a history of the revolution and the revolutionary war and starts around 1774-75 and we take the story for the war to 1783 and then look a little beyond what happened to the various parties and the legacies of the revolution, both in the narrative of the british empire and of course the new american nation. i first got curious about revolutionary viole