 So it's really hard to introduce a person like David Sanders. And I thought about this a lot over the past few days, and I decided that the best way to do it would be to start with a brief anecdote. And you might remember this, Woody, so tell me if you do. I first met Dr. Sanders five years ago, almost five years ago to today, a couple months from now, when I was a very nervous job applicant, interviewing in the midst of a severe economic recession for an assistant professor of position here at UTSA. Now, of course, I come across his work as a graduate student, his work on convention centers and urban politics. So I was a little bit awestruck, I should say, when I first interacted with it. Unfortunately, though, at least for me at least, that first interaction occurred during my so-called job talk in front of the department faculty. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with this term, the job talk for academic positions is really sort of the make or break moment in the interview process, the point at which you can either win or lose the job. So I was already pretty nervous to be in that situation. Well, after delivering my presentation, Dr. Sanders, as only he can do, asked me a series of extremely probing questions about my research that all of it left me crumpled in a ball on the floor. Now, I can laugh about it because I got the job, but I honestly left that job talk feeling like I needed to go back to the drawing board with my research, feeling like my most significant weaknesses had been exposed. So, needless to say, it wasn't really my finest hour. Never got a chance to thank you for that, but thanks a lot. Since then, I've actually come to realize that my experience with Dr. Sanders really wasn't atypical. In fact, I've come to know that that dogged commitment to getting right to the heart of things that was surely in evidence at my job talk is really one of Dr. Sanders' hallmarks as a teacher and a scholar, something that is certainly on display in his new book. However, since then, I've also come to know a much kinder and gentler, a person that is deeply committed not only to his research and teaching, but also to engaging robustly in public affairs and mentoring and supporting students and beginning professors like me. I've also come to know a lot more about Dr. Sanders' impressive career in academia. Although he rarely mentions it, Dr. Sanders trained at two of the finest academic institutions in the world, Johns Hopkins and Harvard University. After receiving his PhD in government, don't worry, Woody, I'm not going to tell him of the year. After receiving his degree at Harvard, he held positions at Brown University, the University of Illinois, the Brookings Institute, and Trinity University here in San Antonio before accepting a full professorship here at UTSA in 2001. Over the years, Dr. Sanders has developed an outstanding reputation as both a teacher, a researcher, and an uncompromising public intellectual. As the students and alumni here can attest, his jaw-dropping course on San Antonio politics and policy is one of the most popular classes that we offer here at UTSA. And his research credentials are just as impressive, if not more so. If you take a look, and I did this last night, if you take a look at his very, very long CV, you'll see that he has co-edited several major books on urban politics and policy, along with more articles that I can even begin to count on issues such as urban economic development, infrastructure, and the rough and troubled world of urban politics. More recently, of course, Dr. Sanders has taken an interest in the politics of convention centers in urban America, and that's what led him to write this book, Convention Center Politics. Now, I don't want to give away too much of this, because Dr. Sanders is going to speak to you next. Let me just give you a very brief overview of the book and some of its many accomplishments. Published this past June by the University of Pennsylvania Press, which I would add is one of the world's leading academic presses, Convention Center Follies exposes the often shadowy people, institutions, and forces behind Convention Center development in the United States since the 1950s. At the core of the book is an argument about how political dealmaking and unhealthy obsession with downtown development and land values and a revolution in the world of local government finance led to the privileging of convention centers over more pressing public investments in things such as schools and infrastructure. Through proven case studies of Chicago, Atlanta, St. Louis, and other urban centers, Dr. Sanders reveals how public officials have pursued a narrow development strategy centered on downtown over economic development projects that will provide greater benefits to the public at large. As historian Roger Biles said of the book, Sanders describes in rich detail how policymakers have made convention centers key elements in their efforts to revitalize ailing central business districts and why the billions of dollars spent on the enterprises have yielded such meager results. Dr. Sanders, the publication of this book is truly an outstanding accomplishment, one that I hope will reshape the politics of public investment for years to come. So congratulations on the accomplishment. And now in recognition of this major achievement and in honor of his continuing contributions to the areas of urban development, public policy, and public administration, I'd like to welcome Dr. Haywood Sanders to say a few words. I had no idea I'd like to. Oh, you did. Thank you, Andrew, and colleagues and students and friends. Thank you all for coming here today. It means a great deal to me. It's feeling like a retirement party, but it's not. They have to come back on another occasion while I'm still alive. Thank you very much. It's a big book. It's got a lot of pages. Don't expect to read it all in any period of time, but if you want to subject yourself to it, I think it has an interesting story to tell. But I can't look around this room individually and collectively without recognizing the debt I owe to pretty much all of you. There's a lengthy acknowledgement at the beginning of the book, and I appropriately thank all the librarians and archivists and folks who provided the resource material that this book is based on. And I think those colleagues of mine who suffered through it and gave me some feedback and pressed me to be better and clearer and indeed, briefer difficulties than maybe. But I look around here and I realize in a great many ways that this book could not have happened without here and this place. And by here, I mean in many ways this building, the environment that Chris Reddick and Joe Reyes and Karen Metz and all of my colleagues have created here that makes this a place that is warm and supportive and genuine. And that's really important. And seeing the number of former students and current students who are here today just warms the difference out of me because it means in some peculiar way exit papers notwithstanding for doing something right. But there's a larger message here as well and it's a message that I never learned, I mean despite all those lovely names, it's a message I never learned in grad school and that I don't think many of my colleagues ultimately learn about how things are out and looking at the world. And it's a message, it's a set of lessons that I don't think I could have learned any place other than San Antonio. And those are lessons about how things really work in a city because they work here and I'm willing to argue work in a great many other places in ways that are fundamentally difficult to understand and frustrating and peculiar. I can't help but look at Sister Gabriela and think back to the days when the most important thing we needed to secure this community's future was a multi-purpose convention and sports ability. And that would be Henry Cisnero Salomo Dome. And we got that. And I would never have embarked on this effort were it not foreseeing how that dome was sold to us and what it ended up meaning in the end. And that lesson and the lesson of who's here in this community and what they need and the distance between what we need to do for folks here, everybody here. And what we end up doing in a lot of ways is what really propelled this research effort forward and kept me at it for unfortunately a great many years and far too many pages. So for that I thank all of you. I really do. Because it's you who taught me these lessons. And every day from what I see here and the folks I interact with here and what I do with our students that teaches me even more that same set of lessons. So really, I mean this means an enormous amount to me. It's really grand and it's just great to see you. So come and drink and be pleased. And I won't lecture you about the dumbness of convention centers especially not when we're spending 325 million down the street. Yet again. So again, thank you very, very much. It means a great deal.