Hello and welcome to another edition of Getting Hammered.

I'm your co-host, Victor Mattis, along with Mary Catherine Hamm, who is still under the weather,

and we didn't want to subject our listeners to 45 minutes of a very scratchy, smoky voice,

Mary Catherine, although that would be a very popular podcast as well.

But we have a very special guest host today.

This time, it is the one and only Matthew Contonetti, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute,

founding editor of the Washington Free Beacon, and author of the hot new book, The Right,

The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism, which I read, cover to cover, that's a big deal.

That's because I paid you to.

I read it from cover to cover, whereas I'm still in the middle, by the way, of Bonfire of the Vanities.

Well, it's a long book.

It is a long book, but I'm seeing how people, why people would call it like a masterful novel or one of the great novels of all time.

Because it's a slow burn and then it all comes together.

And what I'm seeing right now, Matt, is all these forces are raided against Sherman McCoy.

Right. And how they all have different from the very first chapter with the mayor and thinking, what does he have to do with anything, saying they all have a motive and he's going to be the top. I see what's happening. Bonfire, I always think of it as kind of one of those big C-130 transport planes.

It takes a little bit of time to get off the runway, but once they're in the air, they kind of soar.

And so the plot of that novel takes a bunch of chapters, kind of rev-up momentum.

But by the time you're going to get to a chapter called Death, New York style.

Oh, yeah.

And when you do, I think you're going to enjoy that.

It's one of my favorite chapters in all of literature.

I can't wait because I just finished a chapter last of the Great Smokers.

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