>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.. [ Silence ] >> Good afternoon. Good afternoon, everyone, and I'm delighted to see you all here. It's wonderful, a number of you are new faces, and we always like to welcome you to our division, let you know that we have a great many programs. I'm Mary-Jane Deeb chief of the African and Middle Eastern division, and I'm also part of a division that has 20 people, and we represent -- well, we're responsible for 78 countries, 78 countries that cover all of the Middle East and Near East, the Arab world, Iran, Turkey, Israel, and we also cover all of Africa, north and Sub-Saharan Africa, and central Asia. And we go to Georgia, to Armenian, and we go as far as Afghanistan in our area of responsibility. These countries are here in a tangible way, in books and periodicals and this division in the vernacular, in the languages of the countries themselves. They're also in the rest of the library, in English, French, German, Italian, and other languages. They're here at the library in film, in plays, in photos, in music. So when we say that Library of Congress has an international collection which is larger actually than its American collection, its English language collection, American and English language collection, it means that we have more than simply -- simply books. And this, today's program, in a way reflects the way we collect in many formats. And as we're moving forward in the new digital age we have a huge digital collection, including materials from this division as well on Iran and Afghanistan and the Muslim world. That is a part of the much larger collection that is being digitized and made available to people around the world. We're here to let our collections speak for themselves to researchers, and we bring the researchers to speak about our collections and the work we have. And today we have the greatest Persian work, the Shahnameh, the Book of Kings, which is being celebrated on Nowruz by a most original and creative person, Hamid Rahmanian, who is being ably helped by his wife, Melissa, and their 13-month-old baby who is part of this work, and I mean, [Inaudible] so I would like now to have Heradin Navari [Phonetic] a Persian specialist talk a little bit about the Nowruz and to introduce the speaker and the work. And again, welcome to the African Middle East division of the library. >> Thank you very much, Mary-Jane. I personally want to thank each and every one of you for coming, especially to those of you who celebrate Nowruz. I know that today is the day you stay home with family and friends, around it's really hard for you to get away. It's a very auspicious day, usually we have Nowruz events every year, I try to do cultural events every year to celebrate this age-old tradition. This year it has happened to fall on Nowruz itself, 7:03 this a.m. the Vernal equinox happened, and we now have the first play of spring. So happy Nowruz, and happy spring to you all. A small note on the Shahnameh. As you know, it's the most seminal of Persian works in the 10th century. It was crucial in shaping the literary trends, both poetic and also we can argue historiography in the Persian tradition that then followed beyond the -- Iran itself into the larger Iranian world and in addition to that, Nowruz is another wonderful day to be celebrating this, it's a tradition is celebrated as far west as the Balkans and as far west as [Inaudible] of China. Specifically, Iranians, Afghans, [Inaudible] Tarket peoples of central Asia, the Kurds, Azerbaijanis, really celebrate this. And it really is an honor to be having this event on this day, and to speak and present an amazing work that celebrates in English an amazing, you know, crucial work of Persian literature that goes back to the 10th century. I'm going to take a minute to introduce our speaker, Hamid Rahmanian. His bio is pretty distinguished, and the list is long, so I'll try to keep it short. Hamid Rahmanian is a film maker and graphic artist. He holds an a BFA from the University of Tehran in graphic design and earned an MFA in computer animation in 1997 from the Pratt Institute in New York City. He received the First Place College Award, a student Emmy, from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and was nominated for a student academy award for his animation. The Seventh Day, among other awards in 1997, he -- which he received several. His first 35 millimeter film, a 19-minute short, An I Within, received Kodak's best cinematography award, and Best American Short from the LA International Short Film Festival. Mr. Rahmanian then went to make on to make three documentaries on video, Breaking Bread in 2000, is Sir Alfred of Charles de Gaulle Airport in 2001, and Shahrbanoo in 2002. All of which have been well received by the media and world-wide audiences. In 2003, Mr. Rahmanian co-founded and was the president of Art East, an organization committed to promoting the arts and culture of the Middle East in the United States and abroad. In 2005, he completed his first feature length narrative film entitled Day Break, which previewed at the Toronto International Film Festival, and was the recipient of several prestigious awards. He completed the feature length documentary, the Glass House in the fall of 2008 that premiered at IDFA and Sundance Film Festival. It was the winner of the Organization For Security and Cooperation in Europe's human rights award, and best documentary from Spain's Urban TV. He was recent -- he has recently completed illustrating a new edition of the Persian poet Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, published by Quantum Lain President, entitled "Shahnameh, the Epic of the Persian Kings," to be released this month in 2013. The list goes on, I will end here and ask Hamid to please join us and start his presentation. I also want to say behind every powerful man there is a powerful woman. This wouldn't be happening without Melissa Hibbard and her hard work. She is a mom, and I know she's busy with Sophie right now somewhere in the halls. So if you see a young lady with a kid you'll see Melissa, go up to her and say hello. Thank you. [Applause] >> Thank you, and happy Nowruz. It is [Inaudible] thank you, [Inaudible] thank you Mary-Jane for the kind introduction. And it's such an honor to be in this space, in the memory of Mr. Thomas Jefferson who built -- established this entity. Okay, so I am going to very briefly talk about Shahnameh, very briefly, and then I am going to go to the presentation because it's fun and it also is a lot of slides. Around 1003 years ago, to be exact, Ferdowsi [Inaudible] collected a millennium-old oral tradition of the Iranian plateaus into heroic verses, 60,000 of them, and made Shahnameh. This is arguably is the longest poem written by a single poet, 60,000 verses. It was a tradition of illustrating Shahnameh even before Ferdowsi put this oral tradition into Shahnameh the way that we see it today. And this tradition reached its climax and zenith around 17th century, and it also died out mid-19th century. And since then except for a few sporadic manuscript -- sporadic folios, it's never been illustrated. Never been illustrated since then. And so my goal was to revive this tradition, to actually to start recreating and illustrating Shahnameh, an also give the new audience a chance to become familiar with these stories and also give the opportunity to give the English speaker audience to not only learn about the epic and the mythology of the Iranian plateaus, but also learn about 500 years of visual history of that area. Because this visual -- there is visual element I am going to show you, it's not been explored in the western world unless you go to the museum or some corner of a gallery somewhere in some museum you will never expose to this visuals. So because America is my second home I thought, because I have a responsibility to build a culture, and I like to do that, it give me a lot of fun and pleasure to involve with these kind of endeavors. So I feel my life is not just satisfy my ego as an artist, to create something, so I actually give back something to the society. This book that I created for the last almost close to four years has some unique attributes. One of them is -- this book has over 500 pages of illustrations. And also these illustrations are called together from the thousands and thousands of miniatures from 15th century to mid 19th century, any illustration, any painting that influenced by Persian or Iranian school of painting, from Mongol India, central Asia, and all the territory of the Ottoman empires the translation of this edition is also very special. We focus on the first two-thirds of the Shahnameh from the mythology part to the end of the epic part, which is the end of the family of Zal and the death of Rostam. We create -- because we have a cinema, you know, I made film, I have a very cinematic approach to the translation, which we wanted to make the translation is a character-based story, not an event-based story. Very important, this, because you don't lose track of any characters in this edition. It's -- and it's very easy to navigate through the story. And also what I -- what we did also for ground, the narrator of the story, which is Ferdowsi, this is something that never happened in other translation before, because in the original text Ferdowsi -- it's not like Homer, that muse is coming and telling all the story. Ferdowsi is a human, a real human being, is there, tell his own dilemma of, like, he's getting old, he has back pain , or he has no money or his child is sick. Or he sort of interject in the middle of the story and say oh, look at what's happening in the story, see what the father and the son is fighting together without knowing it. So the narrator very much exist in the story. So we foreground this into our translation. So I'm going to show you a few works. This is the passage of Ferdowsi from the Avandruid. This image you see is created from over 78 images put together from various different styles. I work like a DJ, like DJ collect sound and music that has already been existed before and recombine and recompose a new piece of work. I did this with the miniature and lithographs from specific timeframe and a specific geographical place. This is -- for instance, this [Inaudible] is actually created from three other [Inaudible], and in this edition also there is -- nothing is repeating from page to page except the natural elements, such as rocks, flowers, trees, clouds. Each character when it comes sits in the page, it's for that specific page. The next page I have to search for another piece. Even as you can see here, these layout elements are around -- mean to be exact -- 460 layout elements to make the book give some sort of traditional look. This is the image of [Inaudible] from the [Inaudible] Ox River, this is the one of the stories, actually, is skipped through other translation in English, which we actually read, spend a little time. It's a very fun story that Give [Phonetic] goes to Tehran and find a new king, [Inaudible] and bring him back to Iran. This is the story of Zal and Rudabeh, which is very lovely and fun stories. This is -- this is the first battle of Rostam, [Inaudible] this is as you can see is like 400 years of paintings, is fits together. Like the face of Rostam you see here is -- came from, like, four different pieces, even a [Inaudible] it came from one folio, and the face is from another, the helmet is from another folio. And this is another one of those examples that have a very cinematic feeling into it. This is the night attack of the Tehran, Iranian, after the tragedy of [Inaudible] this is as you can see, if the audience was sitting in the back stage and see this silhouette and see what's happening inside the plot. This construction that you see here is built from five other constructions. What I did also, it's kind of like I unraveled the fabric of the visual history of the Iranian plateau. And without [Inaudible] much and be respectful to the art of the old masters, I reweaved it together to create, like, these kind of images. So every image, pieces that you see in this book is actually existed before, but it -- none of the pieces existed the way it existed in this book. Also I depict, illustrate images, the plots that have never been illustrated before. For instance, the occultation of king Hoso. It's based on my research, this folio, these plots, somehow it's never illustrated before. Or for instance, the inner dialogue or the dialogue of the character here, [Inaudible] sitting with the [Inaudible] and he's predicting his doomed future, about the war and his beheading, and all sort of unfortunate events that are going to be unfolding in the story. And here is the birth of Sohrab, the step brother of Rostam, which eventually destroy the clan of Zal and kill Rostam. And also one thing is very exciting here, and I had so much fun with it when I found out, the nightmares and dreams in Shahnameh, it's never been illustrated before and I don't know why, because there are so many of them. It's up for research for academics to why the last 1,000 years no one illustrated dreams and nightmares in Shahnameh. This is the [Inaudible] 61 images, and -- and this is the nightmare of Siyavush. He woke up in the middle of the night, the night before he got murdered, and his wife Farangis is there, and he explained his nightmare, and what you see, his nightmare that she's explaining. This is after the death of Siyavush, Siyavush comes to the dream of Peeran, and he's telling to Peeran that the [Inaudible] is born. This is the -- the angels come to the [Inaudible] and tell him that, you know, send your son to bring [Inaudible] back from Tehran. There is a very cool nightmare in Shahnameh, it's the nightmare of Afrasiab, the villain of the story, the king of Tehran. This happened twice in the story, so he has a dream that he's -- he's -- the standard is broken and the army of [Inaudible] is coming and destroying -- and there is a prince coming and beheading him. He wake up from the pain of beheading. So he sees which event twice. These are all the elements you see here, is actually comes here. But I sort of trying to give if a different kind of look. Because I want to have every page of this book have its own surprise so you can actually predict what the next page will be. This is also the lie that Bijan tells to Afrasiab in the story of Bijan and Manijeh This is a very beautiful love story. So this plot that Bijan is caught by the [Inaudible] to the court of Afrasiab, and Afrasiab says what are you doing in my court with my daughter? And he said I don't know, [Inaudible] hunting the boars and the genii came and took me into this -- on top of the elephant, I open my eyes and I was next to this beautiful woman, and next one, next I was parting in your court, was like 200 women and consort. So I don't know what happened. So he's telling that lie. Now I'm going tell you about the process of making these images. These are really fun parts. This is the nightmare of [Inaudible] I don't know this -- I think the background that looks [Inaudible] here is kind of pixelated. So here as you saw is 61 images here. The story is that in the tragedy of Frood [Phonetic], the middle of the tragedy, the story when it's unfolding, the [Inaudible] mother of Frood had a nightmare that his castle is burning on fire and all the people are committing suicide. So pay attention to the castle in the background. I'm going to come back to it, but now I'm going to show you how I built this part. So this part, when I read the story I felt okay, I need a lady sleeping in the middle of the mattress and having this dream. So the only thing I found among my collections is -- was this piece from Shahnameh [Inaudible] so I'm going to show you how I sort of make it one person. So I cut down the main characters out, and on the right as you can see, this is all the layers, part of the layers that you see of the images. And then I recreate the mattress, because she's going to sit -- sleep in the middle of the mattress. So I have to have the rest of the mattress really, and then bring back the image of the character, and then bring the rest of the blanket, getting rid of the guy, and then we've seen -- we've seen [Inaudible] before, one of the things about this Shahnameh, you don't lose track of the facial characteristic of all of the characters. So we've seen [Inaudible] in a previous chapter, had they got married with the Siyavush. So I bring the face to here, and then because she's dreaming, I close the eyes. So see? So -- and then -- then -- now go back to the castle. This castle is also from Shahnameh. This castle I [Inaudible] and became this castle. So the entirety of this castle is actually built from this castle. And this castle is repeated in a different part of the story, because the whole story is happening around this location in the book. Now I'm just concentrating in this plot. And then it comes sit in the back, and then you have these people sort of adjusting in the background. But some of them are not very -- their faces are not very attractive, more face, make it more -- sort of people who -- you know, familiar with the comic books and familiar with the 21st century aesthetics sort of have more fun with it. And then the rest of the sort of pieces put together became this one. This one is another story, the army of Zaog [Phonetic]. This whole panel is built from only three pieces. One is this part , which came from the lithograph, but [Inaudible] 1985, and then this one from [Inaudible] later on, almost 1860's, and then these two put together plus these banners from Shahnameh [Inaudible] and became this. So the entire -- these is happening from only these three pieces. And this is my last presentation, this is -- it's very complicated piece, the story of Manijeh and Tur. Tur was the uncle of Manijeh, he kills [Inaudible] and start all the wars. And the story is this way, that the man in the middle of the battle field managed to saw his uncle, Tur, and slay him with his lance. So in order to create this crescendo of him chasing, going through the battle field, I need to create this sort of crescendo that you see here. These things never existed before, I had to sort of chop up from four different lithographs to create only this bottom part. So here the first one, which is the bottom part of the lithograph, I cut it out, plus the top, and put it together. And sort of stitch it together and go piece by piece, clean them so you don't see where it's actually cut together. And the third one comes here, again, on the parts below. I cut it out, and sometimes they have extra pieces. So I have to go and find another piece to color and to make sure that everything is spotless. An entire 600 pages I am sure you cannot find any flaws of production, because I felt I'm responsible for, like, 5-600 years of paintings and traditions, so I had to be very careful in how I'm manipulating this tradition and this culture. So I'm playing with the colors and putting back the silhouette. The silhouette in the background is very complicated, it's 91 pieces that you see here, which is actually the cover of the regular edition. So what you see here is over 100 pieces that are put together just for this one page. This is another fun part, is this map is built in 17th century, but not like this. It was four latitudes towards the west. I dismantled the pieces of the map and recreated -- bring four latitudes towards west, so you have the map of the Shahnameh the way I want. This is over 140 pieces that you see, created this map. Each page actually has from seven -- except this map, illustration from 7 to 120 pieces made this. Another interesting part about this edition of Shahnameh, I create the genealogy of the characters so you don't lose track of each character. Because when you start reading Shahnameh, there's so many stories, so many characters, and so many times even as a native speaker it's hard to keep track of the characters. So I create all of these guides to make Shahnameh as friendly as possible so you don't -- you read it, you enjoy it, and it's also [Inaudible] to the oral or culture of the American society of western art, western society. Oh, in terms of layout, also the way I select the font, the font is Jansen, but we manipulate the font to create, like, change the dots and F's and Q's, and R's to have a feeling of actually scripted. And also I -- over the 48 pieces of the original text I included, so people -- the original speaker, they can read it, or they can read it for their children so they understand the music of Ferdowsi's poems. This is also a treatment of the letters in the book. There is a lot of letters, the people, characters send to each other in the Shahnameh, so I have a different treatment of that in the layout so you have a friendly way to connect. There is 460 pieces of this kind of layout that I explained before, it comes in the book. Oh, every chapter, there's 15 chapters in the book, every chapter start with the voice of Ferdowsi. The translator, what he did, when Ferdowsi talks we put it in the poem. So when the story tells is just the -- it's prose. So you know where Ferdowsi actually start talking. This is the beginning of the -- each chapters, and the end. Sometimes as Ferdowsi comes and sits and talks about his state of being. This is the end of the book that he comes and says, you know, I spent 30 years and 60,000 verses, and I finished this. And this epic -- this work that I created is going to last for a millennium. He actually predicted this is going to be a massive [Inaudible] never going to die. Imagine how many books after a thousand years still get this much attention? I don't know any. And still a person actually can read the original language and understand it. You know, if you read Homer in the original language you would not understand it, or the Shakespeare, before 500 years the English is so complicated. But in Shahnameh you can read it and understand it. This is another example of the treatment of the text, and the Shahnameh, and Ferdowsi. And this is the end of my presentation. This -- I choose this because of the event that we have today, the Persian new year. This is the day actually called the new year, this is the day that after 500 years of kingdom of the magnificent King Jamshid, he ordered men and the fairies to built this throne adorned with a lot of beautiful jewelries and gold, and took the throne to the sky and people celebrated, and he called this day a new day, so the Nowruz. So we have two edition of this book, one is luxurious limited edition and one regular edition, and there's only 299 limited edition, and plenty of regular editions. And you can also go -- I don't know why this became green, it was not part of the static look, I think there was an error in the computer. You can go on Facebook, like the page, and also you can go to the [Inaudible] Persiankings.com. You can actually flip through the book, 43 pages, and also go through the process the way I built the page. Please share with your friends, your family. I think -- I work over 10,000 hours of work and I feel this is a gift to the culture and I have so much fun creating this, truly, and I had also a mantra created, because I worked 17 hours a day every day for three years. And I had a mantra, because after a while it's getting to you, I had a mantra every day, I say Hamid, shut up and work, don't think about anything else. So that's how I created this book. And thank you for your attention and your -- [ Applause ] >> I'm going to enter a 15 minute period for questions. I also want to say we have a lovely reception afterwards in our conference room, and to have [Inaudible] Persian new year is set up there, a small version I brought from home. I personally want to start the questions myself with one for Hamid, but I also want to say you're being filmed for our webcast, future webcast, on the library site. By asking questions and participating you're consenting with being filmed and then broadcasted later. So be aware of that. Hamid, I have a question for you. How many of the Shahnameh is in this English translation? Is it the entire work or is it selections of? Thank you. >> Thank you, this is the entire two-third of Shahnameh, from the beginning of the mythology era, which is the first chapter of Shahnameh. The end of the epic part of Shahnameh, which is the end of the family of Zal and the death of Rostam. The entire stories and plots are translated there. This -- this one is actually as I said, has more stories than other English translations that exist on the market, and also we wanted to people who are familiar with the language of cinema to read this story and connect with it. So people who read Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter or Star Wars read these stories and connect with it. The way that translator translate it, it's very beautifully written. As they say it's very [Inaudible] the text, but it's not -- it's not very archaic, it's not very academic. So we wanted to lay back people, regular people can connect to this. Not just scholars. >> Questions? [ Inaudible audience comments ] >> 1392. Yeah. Yeah. It's -- you know, it's some -- the calculation is 2500-something. But the official is 1392. Yes. Go ahead? [ Inaudible audience comment ] >> There's a table in the Iranian sort of world, in the region. There's a number of ceremonial tables or items that are produced for Persian new year with the symbolic letter, number of 7, half seen as the way Iranians do a table of items with seven things starting with the Persian letters S. They all symbolically have something to do with rebirth, renewal, and the coming of spring. The [Inaudible] do have [Inaudible] which is seven fruits, fruits and nuts that have been soaked and what have you. So you have symbolism like this throughout the region, and sprouts, essentially, lentil, barley, or wheat sprouts tend to be a tradition that the entire region seems to embrace. >> This number of 7 has been repeated throughout different occasions. Like in Shahnameh, they have seven continents or seven heaven, or have seen -- actually, a link to the Arabic that you have in the Quran, the topic of the conversation, but the 7 has a lot of significance. In the modern, though, the story of -- what is it, is it HBO series, Game of Thrones, they have seven continents also. They're all borrowed from this tradition. [ Inaudible audience comment ] >> This question is going to put me into tears, Mary-Jane, because it's a very difficult process to find right. I don't have that much -- I have only 83 books I collected, and everything comes here is from the 83 books. And nothing is repeating, as I said. So sometimes I go through -- I'm not exaggerating, 12, 15 hours to just find one element. For instance, I remember there was a snake in the story of [Inaudible] I went through like, nine hours, I count, just find one snake to make that snake actually work in that environment. And today's -- I'm still looking at my work and just, oh my God, I should have used this image and I forget. There's so many beautiful pieces there. And sometimes when you start you get lost in the beauty of these images. And you forget actually you have a bigger task to accomplish. You know, I try to make it as crazy as possible, to put things as -- try to see how far I can push it, bring like a lithograph from the 19th century with the image from the early 15th century, see how it works. Went through a lot of test, you know, every page that you see I spent average of 30 to 200 hours of just creating one page. So these all came from finding the images, scanning the images, cutting the images, cleaning the images, and then start composing it to see if it works or not. Sometimes it doesn't work and I have to start with the beginning, it's really painful project -- process to just ask me to come up with the -- for instance, here, you have an India, a [Inaudible] and a [Inaudible] and you have from Shahnameh, [Inaudible] and the flowers, just the different pieces put together in this. [ Inaudible audience comment ] >> All above. All above. Yeah, but mostly, you know, it's a lot of concentration. I mean, the way I work, I cut off the Internet, didn't have Internet to even check the e-mail and everything, really thanks to Melissa to really create this environment so I can actually work without interruption. Because it's not like you sit down and you create it. You go like, five, six, seven, eight hours, then you start actually seeing something is going to come out. Yeah. [ Inaudible audience comment ] >> For one reason, first of all, the historical part which is according to the actual real event and real characters, and real characters often are boring, and so the -- the second -- we wanted to create a narrative character-based story, so from the beginning to the end, we did. You're following all the characters, who's the father, who's the son, who's the grandson, all related to together. When you go to the historical part, it's every page -- every chapter is its own story and doesn't relate to back and forth. And it was very cumbersome and create so many confusion, we had a lot of debates with Melissa and the translator whether we just actually maybe introduce a few parts or not. We decided just not to do it because we want to create, first of all, I think the strength of Shahnameh in the first two-third. And second, people read this and became, like appetizer. So if they enjoy it, they can go read the rest of the story. So what we brought here is actually a teaser, an appetizer for generation to go and find more stories of Shahnameh. And as I said before, I'm going to repeat this, the last one-third of the story of Shahnameh which is the historical part, it makes this book very cumbersome and it became, like, other translation, that not regular people would follow, became very unaccessible, too complicated. [ Inaudible audience comment ] >> No, I couldn't. I did this project on my own money, and I had a certain amount -- I spent, our -- $12,000 to making these 83 books. The first two-and-a-half years of this project I had no help, zero. And just last year because the birth of my child I had basically no money. So I find a good friend, an angel in Los Angeles, and he went among his family, brought some money, so I could actually survive, finish the book. So I only could offer 83 books, and these are the 83 books, actually, that -- it was a good encompassing all the collection around that's been printed. There's so many other pieces for you I had no access or never been actually in a book. And finding those, getting permission and going through all the bureaucracy to find those folio to use one piece, flower in one piece, would be impossible to do that. So these are the books I found in the market I could afford to buy. [ Inaudible audience comment ] >> Yes, good question. I create a foundation here that I can do a lot of things out of this. Animation is one of them, performance, which I'm really thinking about. You know, bring Shahnameh to sort of a -- a Broadway show, you know, like a Lion King. Not just one night event in some university and people cheering and leaving and forget about it. Something that can actually [Inaudible] to travel this. Animation, pop-up books, many different things. You know, as I said, I have over 8,000 pieces that I can do a lot of magic with this. So this is just the beginning, you know. Yeah? >> Okay, I quickly wanted to say that the books will be downstairs in the bookstore after this program, if you feel you need to look at it or buy it, you can go down there and look. Hamid has kindly brought the special edition of the book which is leather and just a beauty, and he has it on the table over there for people to look at. Don't forget the reception and the [Inaudible] also we have these little sign-in sheets, I noticed a number of people are interested in being added to our near east, Hebraic or African e-mail list serve for events, upcoming events, if you're interested please fill one out so I can add your name to our upcoming events list. Thank you. >> Also, one more thing, you know, you can -- the limited edition is only one and is going to be ready in May. So if you're interested as a gift, it's a perfect gift. Please spread the word, go on my Facebook and tell your family and friends to basically buy the book. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much for coming. [Applause] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.