Mark Halperin

our founding principles and how they apply today.

And the book is basically a look back in order to understand some of the challenges we face now.

And grateful to have Professor Turley here.

Congratulations on the book.

Explain, as I ask almost every author I talk to, explain your motivation for writing it.

What was the idea you had that no one had done in a book yet?

Yeah.

So the founding was a turbulent time.

But as again, as you argue in the second half of the book, we're in another turbulent time.

And I think that the question is, is the predicate strong enough to get us through?

And we'll talk about that second piece.

But I want to talk about the first.

It's so timely for me because I was just at Versailles with my nine year old and we were talking about Lafayette.

And and we're and we're exposing him to Hamilton, not necessarily the best parenting choice, because some of the language and the plot lines are questionable for a nine year old.

But he loves the music and and talking about, of course, Hamilton, everybody learned that the founders were pretty darn interesting people.

And the two you write about are every bit as interesting as Hamilton.

I'm not sure they're going to turn yours into a hit Broadway show, but they could.

So talk about the two characters.

And then we'll talk about one American, one French.

And then we'll talk about the connection, both symbolic and practical, between the two revolutions.