to introduce our speaker and the recipient of the 2011 paolucci/bagehot book award, professor pauline maier. professor maier is a professor of american history at mit where she has taught for more than 30 years. she received her ph.d from harvard university in 1968, and it's also taught at the university of massachusetts and the university of wisconsin. in addition to being a greatly acclaimed scholar, she is also a devoted teacher of generation of undergraduates, regularly offering a survey course in american history. her books have focused on the power of ideas and the shaping of early america. they've also recovered the human complexity of a founding experience bring important nuance to conventional understandings. in her first book, "from resistance to revolution," colonial radicals and development of american opposition to britain in 1972, she sought to identify the causes of the transformation of generalized discontents into revolutionary commitment in the years leading up to the war or independence. in the old revolutionaries, political lies in the age of samuel adams in 1880 she sur