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In Conversation with Terry Shepherd
In Conversation with Terry Shepherd, award-winning broadcaster and author of the Jessica Ramirez Thrillers. A deep dive into the people and support systems behind the stories we love.
In Conversation with Terry Shepherd
Molly Guptill Manning - A Librarian's War
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Wars are typically fought with bullets and bombs, but one unsung hero believed a good book was just as essential.
In this episode, Terry Shepherd sits down with author and law professor Molly Guptill Manning to uncover the extraordinary, largely forgotten story of Ray Trautman. As the chief librarian of the United States Army during World War II, Trautman built the largest military library system in history and ultimately placed nearly half a billion pieces of reading material into the hands of American troops.
Manning discusses her new book, A Librarian's War: The Man Who Fought World War II with Books and Brought the Joy of Reading to Millions, detailing how a kid from a book-starved town in rural Ohio fundamentally changed the American publishing landscape. From battling skeptical generals and fighting censorship to a near-death encounter at the Battle of the Bulge, Trautman's mission was singular: give people the books they want to read.
In this episode, we cover:
- The Birth of the Pocket Paperback: Discover how Trautman convinced reluctant publishers to print 123 million wallet-sized "Armed Services Editions" for soldiers who couldn't carry heavy hardcovers.
- Fighting Book Bans: Hear the incredible story of how Trautman defied a general's order to destroy copies of Ernest Hemingway's short stories in the European Theater.
- The Battle of the Bulge: Learn how this unarmed librarian drove directly into a secret German counteroffensive, took command of stranded soldiers, and fought tanks with improvised weaponry.
- A Post-War Reading Boom: Find out how returning veterans fueled a massive expansion in the paperback industry and civilian library usage.
- Pioneering Audiobooks: Explore Trautman’s later crusade to improve braille books and his push to hire professional voice actors to record high-quality audiobooks for the visually impaired.
To learn more about Ray Trautman's legacy, pick up a copy of A Librarian's War and visit Molly Guptill Manning's website at mollymanning.com.
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In conversation with Terry Shepard, award-winning broadcaster, narrator, and author. A deep dive into the writer's craft with the artists and support systems who create the stories we love.
SPEAKER_01Wars are fought with bullets, bombs, and armies, but during World War II, one largely forgotten man believed another weapon was just as essential. A good book. Ray Troutman grew up in rural America, where books were scarce and libraries were often out of reach. That experience inspired a lifelong mission to make reading available to everyone. As chief librarian of the United States Army, he battled skeptical generals, challenged censorship, and built the largest military library system the world had ever seen. He helped create the Armed Services editions, pocket-sized books soldiers could carry into battle. He distributed magazines and comic books, survived a near-death experience during the Battle of the Bulge, and ultimately placed nearly half a billion pieces of reading material into the hands of American troops. But his campaign did not end when the war was over. Troutman returned home and continued fighting for rural libraries, prison libraries, books for the visually impaired, and illiteracy programs for adults. In her remarkable new book, A Librarian's War, The Man Who Fought World War II with books and brought the joy of reading to millions, author and law professor Molly Guptil Manning restores Ray Troutman to his rightful place in history. Molly, it's great to have you in conversation. Thanks for joining me.
SPEAKER_02Thanks so much for inviting me. I'm really looking forward to talking to you about this.
SPEAKER_01Who was Ray Troutman and why has someone who influenced the reading lives of millions remained largely unknown?
SPEAKER_02Ray Troutman was probably one of the most influential librarians and really figures in the entire book and magazine industry in the 20th century. And yet, yeah, he's been lost to time. And I think it's because he always approached everything so humbly and he was always trying to make sure that he could maximize the number of books in magazines, comic books, whatever people wanted to read, he wanted to give it to them. And he, if other people wanted to take credit for it, and that made his job easier, so be it. But I think that's why he has been largely forgotten, hopefully until now.
SPEAKER_01How did you discover him and when did you realize it deserved a book?
SPEAKER_02So I wrote an earlier book called When Books Went to War, and I went through the publishers' archives about what they did during World War II, and Ray Trotman's name popped up a few times, and I thought this man sounds very interesting, but there's no archives about him. There is no records I could really find that helped develop who he was. And that book really focused on the publishers. But after that was published, his family reached out to me and said, Hey, you mentioned our father a few times in your book. And if you want, we can make available to you all of the records he kept. And luckily, as a librarian, he kept everything. And so it has been such a treat going through all of these records for the first time and unpacking this whole story and seeing what an extraordinary life and what an amazing contribution one person can make to the lives of millions of people.
SPEAKER_01How did Ray Tropman's childhood in rural America shape his belief that access to books should be available to everyone?
SPEAKER_02So he grew up in Morristown, Ohio, population of about 200 people. There was no library, the local school, there was one building, and that served everybody. And they didn't have that many books there either. And so he grew up really without, largely without books, but the few he could get his hands on to, I think he just had readers would understand this, like that experience that you have sometimes with a book where it just speaks to you and it just does something really magical and resonates. And I think he must have had that experience because he just developed this insatiable appetite for books. Every time he could get his hands on one, he would read it. And it made him set his sights on pursuing a college education, which no one really could do in that community, to go to college. That was like $700 a year on average in the 1920s. He had four other siblings too. So there was just no way. And so he really had this inner determination and drive to do whatever it would take to get himself to college, to pursue learning. He just loved information. He loved figuring out how the world worked. And I think books were these vessels that allowed him to do that.
SPEAKER_01I found it fascinating that he worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps. What do you think he learned there about libraries, literacy, and public service?
SPEAKER_02So he graduated from college in 1930s. So the Great Depression is in full force. There's no one really hiring anybody. And so he took advantage of one of FDR's, they call them the Alphabet Soup Agencies, but this was the Civilian Conservation Corps. And it was an opportunity to the work that they did was developing the national park, sometimes building fences, building fire roads, preventing soil erosion. It was all this environmental stuff that really helped improve the land of America and the quality of the parks in America. I think he loved being outdoors. I think that he grew up on a farm. So I think that part appealed to him. He was a geology major in college, and I think he did a lot of field trips during that time. And he just enjoyed going on these treks and discovering what the earth, how it was formed, and just looking at rock formations and stuff. He just liked being outdoors. So I think that appealed to him. But being college educated, he also saw the opportunity to become what they called an educational advisor. And that allowed him to work on programs in CCC camps. He was in Kentucky at the time, towards providing library resources to the men. And what he discovered though is most couldn't read. And he didn't judge them because he grew up in a neighborhood around small farmers where you pulled your kids out of school a lot of the time when it was time to harvest crops and things like that. That's what you did. And so it wasn't, he had no judgment. He just understood that's why you wouldn't know how to read. And so he had literacy programs so that he could teach these CCC recruits how to read. And he got all sorts of books and reading materials that would be appealing to anyone, no matter what your reading proficiency was. But he really made it so that books and reading materials were available and accessible. He had a lifelong passion for connecting people to books and magazines that he thought were tailored to their tastes or that were the type of book that they personally would enjoy. He never forced books onto people or thought you should read this. It was always connecting the book to a reader who would really enjoy it. And he just excelled at that. And so he did such an amazing job as this educational advisor in the CCC that when he had to report his activities to the Department of Education, they wrote a letter saying your inspired ideas are just so useful and effective that we are going to employ some of these tactics at CCC training facilities across the country. So millions of people could have benefited from these ideas.
SPEAKER_01Talking with Molly Gupto Manning. The book is A Librarian's War, the man who fought World War II with books and brought the joy of reading to millions. Her website is Molly Manning, M-A-N-N-I-N-G, Molly Manning.com. When Ray Trumpman became chief librarian of the army, how seriously did military leaders take the idea of providing books to soldiers?
SPEAKER_02So most military leaders really did not think that books had a place in the military. And we have to put ourselves in the position that they were in, I think, to understand this. The United States was not prepared to go to war when World War II began in 1939 in Europe. Throughout 1939 into 1940, the United States really didn't want anything to do with the war. FDR campaigned on a ticket saying, I want to stay out of war, he would say, I hate war. I'm not going to send America's sons to fight a foreign war. But the fact of the matter was this was a war on democracy, and the United States was a prime example of that form of government. So the idea that we wouldn't get dragged into the war one way or another, as much as he was saying that, it was quite likely we were going to become part of this war. And as everyone knows, with Pearl Harbor being attacked in December 1941, we joined the war. But the military politicians had been so reluctant to enter World War II that what defensive preparations were made before Pearl Harbor weren't that significant. There was the first peacetime draft in U.S. history that took effect a few months ahead of time, but there weren't supplies that were ordered. So people didn't have uniforms, even though they were drafted into the military. There wasn't sufficient weaponry. And so soldiers were given broomsticks and told to pretend that they were rifles, and it was just a disaster, and morale sank. And so one of the only reasons why books gained any traction to begin with was that the U.S. military had a huge morale problem because they were drafting people into the military without sufficient materials to clothe them, to arm them. There weren't even barracks in a lot of places. So troops had to sleep in tents and it would be cold, it would be wintertime. So to try to combat this morale problem, the military wanted to provide some form of entertainment. But if you don't have barracks, you can't exactly build a movie theater. And there were USO shows, but those didn't really take off till later. And even if something like that came through, that's one night for a few hours. You needed some form of entertainment that was available every night. And books ended up being a really convenient thing to provide because they're small, they're portable. You don't even necessarily have to have a library building for them. You could put boxes of books in a tent and anyone could go grab one. But during those empty hours at night after training, if people wanted to escape into a story or just pretend that they weren't in the military for a few hours, books did a great job of doing that.
SPEAKER_01What were armed services additions and why were their design and portability so revolutionary?
SPEAKER_02So initially, mostly hardcover books were provided to people in the military. And that's because the U.S. publishing industry hadn't turned to paperbacks really yet. There's only two paperback companies that existed, and I think around 1942, they printed about 200,000 paperbacks total. The military had seven, eight million people in it in 1942, and 200,000 paperbacks was not going to state their need for small, the smallest possible, most portable books that there were. And as troops went overseas, the need for these teeny tiny books, it really became urgent because they were carrying 50 or 60 pound packs everywhere that they went. The idea of carrying a two-pound hardcover book was out of that was not going to happen. They couldn't afford that. They also took up a bit of space that they also couldn't afford to yield. And so what really pushed, and it was Ray Trotman who came up with this idea. He did this worldwide tour 1942 where he got to go to different fronts, talk to different soldiers, ask what they wanted. And he didn't even say, What books do you want? He just wanted to know what would make your life better in all of these different locations where they were stationed. And really the most portable reading material possible was something that they really wanted. If you are in the middle of nowhere, or if you're fighting, you don't really want to play sports after you had a tiring day. You just want to relax into something. And if movies aren't arriving, if no USO shows are coming through, books and reading materials would help fill that void, that gap, and give them something to think about other than the war. And so as Trotman went through this worldwide tour, he decided that he was going to have to push publishers to print small paperbacks, even though all the traditional publishers in the United States wanted nothing to do with them. Paperback would sold for 25 cents. A hardcover could sell for 250 to $4. You don't have to be a marketing expert to realize the profit margin on a hardcover is just a lot more than a paperback. So they had no desire to print paperbacks. And yet here was this captive audience of millions of people that desperately wanted them. And so Trotman used some of the ingenuity available to him. There was really savvy people that had joined the military, and they were all part of something called the Special Services Division, which was supposed to give entertainment to troops. And so he chatted with people, he picked people's brains, he tried to figure out how can I possibly shrink a book so it is truly pocket-sized. And he came up with a prototype. He had to approach these publishers who didn't want to publish paperbacks. And basically, he gave the sales pitch of a lifetime and explained to them here are millions of people who want to read, but they can't read your hardcovers. They can't carry them, they can't bring these books with them. They want paperbacks. And you could potentially open a whole new market of book buyers who never bought books before in their civilian lives if you would provide them paperbacks while they are at war. And it just made financial sense. Trotman didn't have much rank. He didn't have clout, but he was right. And Norton did have clout. He did basically have rank in the publishing industry, and people listened to him. And so that combination of Trotman's great idea and then Norton's insistence that everybody get on the bandwagon and take part led to this production of these miniature paperbacks. They're they're the size of a wallet, if you can to try to give you an example of what it would be like today. You could just carry them in your back pocket. You could carry them in your breast pocket. They weighed ounces. And at the end of the day, 123 million of these were printed during World War II, so troops would have books to read.
SPEAKER_01We're talking about the life of Ray Troutman, the star of a librarian's war, written by our special guest, Molly Guptil Manning. Mollymanning.com is her website. How did they decide which books would be selected, be sent to the soldiers?
SPEAKER_02Troutman learned from the CCC days that he wanted to give people the books they wanted to read. And this caused some problems from time to time because the publishers thought they understood what people should read. And Trotman wanted to give troops what they wanted to read. And that didn't always align. And so Trotman, he actually issued questionnaires. He would personally speak to as many soldiers as he could. And soldiers started writing letters to the military saying, send this title, send that title. I love this author. And so he got a lot of data on what troop reading preferences were. They loved fiction. They're at war, so they want escapist stuff. They want stuff that's going to be generally easy to read, not too taxing. They've already had a taxing day. So they loved mysteries and westerns and adventure stories. They loved short stories because if they were in between action or if they were going from place to place, a short story, you could get through it and you'd know how it turned out. Whereas a longer book, if you had more time, that would be okay. But they really loved a little bit of everything. Some wanted nonfiction, some wanted even poetry books, because you could copy the poem and put it in a letter and send it home. You could have a love poem for your significant other that you just copied from a book. Just about any type of book was wanted, but he really strove to give troops what they wanted. And he did have a bit of a tussle with publishers at one point because they were saying, What do you know about reading? You are a librarian, a newly minted librarian. We are publishers who have worked in this industry for years and years. We have all of this expertise. And they wanted to send books that they believed people should read. And Tropman ended up writing this letter to them after they insisted that he justify why certain titles needed to go. And he cited the fact that we have people that have all different reading levels. The army required a fourth grade reading level of all people in the military. And if they didn't have that, the military taught them to read at least on a fourth grade reading level. Trotman knew this, and so he wanted to make sure there were books for people who just learned how to read. He wanted books for savvy people that had college degrees. He wanted books for everyone in between, and he wanted all subject matters. And so what he ended up doing is he sent the publishers some of the letters that troops had written, asking for fiction, asking for really lightweight books that weren't going to be demanding of their minds and that they could just enjoy. And then publishers got off his back and started listening to what the chief librarian was telling them that troops really wanted.
SPEAKER_01You write that Ray Trumpman fought book bands during the war. What kinds of books were considered controversial and who wanted them removed?
SPEAKER_02He faced a lot of resistance. For example, I tell in the book a story about a general in the European theater. It was not Eisenhower, but somebody who got his hands on a copy of the short stories of Ernest Hemingway. And this was an armed services edition. He didn't cite a particular story that he had a problem with, but it's Hemingway. There's some there's some racy things here and there. Hardly is it obscene from beginning to end, but there's things that he mentions that might be objectionable to some very sensitive people. And this general must have been one of those people. So he wrote a letter to the Army Library Service to Trotman, saying this is an indecent book and it should not be handed out, and he wanted to destroy every copy in the European theater. And then he handed it over to the chaplain. And then he said the chaplain agrees with me. So there we go. The thing is though, Trotman got other letters about the short stories of Ernest Hemingway. And there was one man who wrote about how he got so severely injured that he was in a hospital and he found out his leg was going to be amputated. And he happened to be reading a copy of Hemingway's short stories. And there was a book where one of the characters described how he had been very upset about something. And so he put the bed sheets over his head and cried, and he felt better afterwards. And so this man facing this amputation put the sheets over his head in the hospital and cried a little bit. And he said, I felt better too. And so Trotman knew it might be indecent in one person's eyes, but this was a lifesaver for someone else. And so you can't take these books away from people. You don't know what they're going to get out of it. And so he resisted the book ban. He had a letter written. It was funneled up the chain of command until some general would sign off on it because a general's not going to be appeased from a letter from someone with a lower rank. And so, general to general, this person was told you cannot destroy books. But there was moral societies. Congress ended up causing all sorts of problems. He had to become really adept at fighting book bands. He's in the military. He has to follow orders. But as a librarian, he has certain tenets that he's trying to abide by, professional ones. Providing people with the books they want to read was just so central to everything he stood for. That the idea that people could be told you can't read that because someone thinks it's harmful, he just couldn't understand that. If you think it's harmful, then you don't have to read it. But you can't say that someone else can't.
SPEAKER_01Our special guest is Molly Gupto Manning. We're talking about a librarian's war. It's the story of a relatively unknown librarian by the name of Ray Troutman, who literally changed the way that a generation thought about books. What was Ray's special assignment for General Dwight Eisenhower?
SPEAKER_02In nineteen forty four, he got special orders to proceed to Paris. And they were secrecy was enshrouded with these. He wasn't sure what he was going to do. He didn't know what exactly was going on, but he was told to report to Eisenhower once he got there. And so off he went. And Eisenhower was actually a huge fan of providing books to troops. He personally read Westerns to relax. And so he knew he found books a source of relaxation in the middle of a war. The troops on the ground deserved no less. And if they could relax by having a book and take some of the stress off of them, then so be it. So he asked Trotman to go to Europe and he gave them an assignment to tour all different countries in Europe to see what the book needs were, where American troops were stationed, and then to come up with a plan to provide books to every nook and cranny of the area. And so Trotman was given a car and a driver, and he was sent, he was supposed to go to Belgium. Unfortunately, the timing of this trip coincided with the German secret mission to launch a giant counteroffensive against the Allies, known as the Battle of the Bulge now. And so the point that Trautmann was supposed to go to was exactly the point that the German army was secretly planning to go to. And the thing was, Germany had prepared for this for so long. And they had, I think, three to one the number of troops. They had brought in a tremendous amount of weaponry. They were really poised to succeed in this battle. And the days leading up to it, they cut all of the communication lines so that American positions wouldn't be able to communicate with one another. And so Trauman is just going towards Belgium, driving through France, stopping at different points to talk to soldiers about what they wanted to read. And there was really no information that was trickling in that this battle was going to happen. And so he literally drove into it. And he noticed a few signs that there were problems because along the side of some roads, there would be wires that would connect, telephone wires that would be connecting different American positions to one another. And he noticed they were torn up, and that's usually a signal of sabotage. And then his driver was getting lost because all the road signs had been removed. And so they didn't really know where they were. And then as they're driving down a road, all of a sudden he noticed there's these silhouettes in the forest for human figures. And then they started to come out and surround his car. When it turned out that it was American soldiers that had gotten caught up in the Battle of the Bulge as well, they ran for the woods to escape being killed. And now they needed a new commander. And they needed to get reconnected really with their units and get back to American lines. And so Tropman was the highest ranking official in the group. And so he had to take command. But unfortunately, being the librarian that he was, his job responsibilities did not entail preparing people for battle or leading troops into battle. And so initially the troops were really upset because out of anyone that could lead them, they have someone with no experience and they also had no weapons. That's the big problem if you're fighting a war, because they had run for the wood so fast they left everything behind. And how do you fight some of the best German troops in the war when you don't have any weapons and you have a commanding officer who doesn't really know a whole lot about combat?
SPEAKER_01What happened?
SPEAKER_02I should probably say you should really read the book to find out. But I guess not to spoil it much. The thing is, Trotman being a librarian, he was well read. And a lot of books that are about the Battle of the Bold say that those who survived it tended to be think outside the box. You ended up having to figure out really novel ways to deal with the situation because it was such a fluid situation. You couldn't just apply textbook knowledge. You had to get creative with what you had before you. And Trottman was really good at that. And so, even though they had no weapons, he taught his troops how to make some. And they actually got cornered by a column of German tanks, and they ended up fighting the German tanks with this improvised weaponry. And Trottman, being the librarian that he was, maybe as a way to provide the men a little bit of an initiative or motivation to do their best, he promised them books if they survived.
SPEAKER_01Did returning veterans help create the post-war expansion of American reading education and library use?
SPEAKER_02They absolutely did. You know, what's interesting is that a lot of these soldiers, when they were asked about the reading habits before the war, they would brag about never touching a book before, that they were not readers, they didn't go to the library. And the thing is, while they were at war, I think a lot of them, and this is backed up by some of the letters that I quote in the book from troops, they discovered how books just improved their lives, how a story could really help their mindset. They had this therapeutic value. They learned that they actually really loved to read. Towards the end of the war, they subsisted on these armed services editions. Each month, by the way, a fresh batch of books would arrive. And so they had a monthly selection of 30 to 40 new titles every single for years. And so they became bona fide bookworms. They really loved reading. And towards the end of the war, they started to panic because they would write to the publishers. They would write to the army saying, How do I keep getting these books once I'm discharged? And they couldn't. These were for the army, they were for people in the army, and they were really for people overseas. And so a lot of them stashed some extras and took them home. But what they wanted were paperbacks. And so this gave a lot of publishers that shot of courage to start printing these paperbacks because just as Trotman had told them, and just as Norton had agreed, this was a new cohort of readers that never bought a book before, but they wanted to buy paperbacks. And so if publishers started producing paperbacks as well as the hardcovers, they would double their sales. And this ended up showing just statistically, the numbers prove the number of books bought after World War II exponentially climbed year after year, actually for decades. It's really extraordinary. And also library use, right? Troops were used to getting free books from the military. The armed services editions were free for them. And so if they weren't too keen on buying books, they became card-carrying library users. Library use increased significantly after World War II. And I'll also know even magazines, like you'd think during World War II, everybody wants to know what's going on. Like nothing sells news like a big event happening. And so you'd think after World War II, the war is over, there's no more breaking war stories that were coming out. And yet magazine subscriptions climbed, they doubled, they tripled. Everybody, even those on the home front, seemed to get this urge to continue to read. And I think veterans set an example for their families about reading books, and they passed on this love of reading to their spouses, to their children. And I think that if you are a reader today, you may be able to trace this reading habit if you go back and you had someone who fought in World War II.
SPEAKER_01When readers close the final page of a librarian's war, what do you hope they will remember most about Ray Trautman?
SPEAKER_02There's so many things, but I think that this shows what a huge positive difference one person can make in millions of people's lives. For him, it was everything to do with books and reading. He felt if you can give someone the gifts of literacy and access to books, you can improve their entire life. I think he really wanted to do that for other people. And we talked about his childhood. He struggled to get his hands on books when he was younger. And I think that he felt no one should have to struggle the way that he did. And so he spent his whole life trying to figure out ways to make books more accessible and to make sure that people had literacy. And if you were an adult and you didn't learn how to read or you didn't learn how to read well, just like he did with the CCC, there's no judgment there. You just didn't have the opportunity. And so he wanted to give it to people, no matter what their age was. And I really think that no person did more for the book, magazine, even library institutions than Ray Trotman because he showed people what books can do, and then he helped them see the value of libraries, the value of reading, and to never stop.
SPEAKER_01Is there a question that I haven't asked you that you wish that I had?
SPEAKER_02Maybe post-war, just to touch on that, with the basically how he became anywhere he could find a need where there weren't enough books, or there weren't good books, or people didn't have the literacy skills. He just constantly was on quest after quest to find the next reading frontier.
SPEAKER_01And he was a great advocate for reading for the blind.
SPEAKER_02He did. He went to a conference by the American Library Association and he listened to a speaker that was before he was doing a speak. He was going to be speaking about institutional libraries and prison libraries. But the panel before him talked about the need for more accessible books for the blind and the visually impaired. And he became so outraged when he heard how few books were available in Braille and there wasn't a diverse amount of books, and bestsellers weren't made into Braille. And he just got so upset because here's this man who, you know, to give troops books that they could read while at war, he did everything he could just to give them books for a few years. And here are people who need books for the rest of their lives. And he was outraged that so little had been done for them. And so he engaged in a two-year intensive study to find out what was the best paper to print books, braille books. Do you want thick paper? Do you want thin paper? How deep should the impressions on the paper be for the visually impaired, for large font books? What's the best font? What's the best font size? What type of paper is the most readable if you have low vision? And then he actually, I think he actually started out audiobooks, what we know as audiobooks today, because then there had been volunteers who would record books on tape for those who were visually impaired and they wanted to listen to books. He said, You need to get professionals. You need professional voice actors basically to read these books because volunteers will have a boring kind of drone-on monotone effect. They mispronounce words. It's just, it's not high quality, it's not enjoyable to listen for the most part to volunteers. And so he said you have to get professional professional actors who can provide outstanding quality audiobooks. And I do wonder if these ideas that he came up with in the 1960s and that took effect into the 1970s, if that helped launch the audio that we know today.
SPEAKER_01The book is a librarian's war, the man who fought World War II with books and brought the joy of reading to millions, written by our special guest, Molly Guptil Manning, a fascinating piece of history that very few of us knew about until you told the story, Molly Manning. Thank you very much for joining us.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much for having me. In Conversation with Terry Shepard is a copyrighted presentation. All rights reserved. I'm Lisa Davis. Join Terry Shepherd next time in Conversation.