historical society and in particular conrad wright, the research director and especially in particular maggie hogan to, without whom there was no way i could have possibly written a book. if you find in the mistakes in the book maggie will be available after the top. [laughter] one of the fun question sets everybody writing a biography of abigail adams gets to and has to confront is how lucien how are other women affected by the american revolution? many of you know that john adams was gone for most of that decade that overlapped the american revolution from 1774 to 1784 and during that decade he put abigail in charge, not only of his farm down in later quincy massachusetts but in charge of the finances too. and i was happy to discover in this room five years ago while working on my previous book that abigail adams ran the addams family finances much better than her husband ever had. [laughter] she had a saying that we still have a version of today. nothing ventured, nothing had, which kind of scared john because he was conservative not only politically but in his temperament and his finances too.