mr. sahner it is a historian of the middle east and he has spent a number of years in the levant, i believe the last seven years. he is a graduate of princeton university and started oxford as a rhodes scholar. he has written for "the wall street journal" and the times literary supplement. for those of you who are frequent visitors who are meeting know that we try and reach out to new experts, new faces, new ideas so we are in for a very exciting next 25 minutes and then we will open the floor to your questions and we have an overflow. we take questions also from. >> thank you all for coming. it's nice to be here. i have admired it center for longtime minutes wonderful to be speaking here. thank you for organizing this bit event and thank you for being here. want to begin very briefly by telling you a little bit about the book and what am i doing here and then we are going to launch the history of the future of syria. as was said my acquaintance with syria began seven years ago. i was at oxford on my road scholarship beginning to study arabic and received wisdom there were two good places t