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That's kind of conversation between your soul.

That's conversation between soul and the night. Hello, American Prestige listeners.

I'm joined, as always, by my friend and comrade Danny Bessner, and we are very

lucky to welcome to the program today, Abigail Mullen. She is an assistant professor at the U.S. Naval Academy.

More importantly, for our purposes, she is the author of a new book to fix a national character,

the United States in the First Barbary War, 1800 to 1805.

She has also contributed to a board game about the Barbary War, which we may get a chance to

ask her about the Shore of Tripoli that was published by Fort Circle Games.

So we, as I say, we may come back to that toward the end of the interview.

But, Abby, thank you so much for

coming on the program. Thank you for having me. So let's start basically with what drew you to the

first Barbary War and what you found when you started researching it in terms of what wasn't there,

what you aimed to kind of the gap you aim to

kind of fill in doing this project. Sure. So I think my interest in the war actually goes back

quite a long way. I first learned about it in eighth grade, actually, but I sort of kept coming back to it over the course

of my high school college and then even sort of early graduate school career. And I don't

really know exactly what drew me to this subject, except that it just felt like such a compelling

story. And yet, I would read sources and think,

that's not really how I've seen the story told in the past. So that sparked an interest

...