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" I had long known the story of Aaron Burr, but when I heard about his remarkable daughter, Theodosia, about the relationship between the two and about her tragic disappearance, I knew I wanted to tell their story. "

H. W. Brands

Daughter

Two

Story

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" In modern times, the American military has become more bureaucratised. "

H. W. Brands

Modern

American

" I certainly don't think that the heirs of the American Revolution were a particularly noble class. "

" The shelf life of a seventh-year State of the Union address is about five minutes. Presidents can propose stuff. They're probably not likely to get it done. "

" The president is the one person who potentially could be the unifying figure in the country. And if the president or a presidential candidate basically writes off 40 states, then how in the world do the people in those 40 states feel like they have a stake in that person or that election? "

" When you look at the development of the American presidency, you see that the presidents who have had the greatest impact are the ones who fit their times most successfully. "

" I cannot think of a president or administration that has taken seriously the 100 days. "

" President Trump is doing what he can to act decisively. And if there's one thing most people have in mind in distinguishing the business world from the political world is that the CEO of a business can act decisively. "

" Reagan refused to demonize his foes. Instead he charmed them, with a few exceptions, including Tip O'Neill, the Democratic Speaker of the House and the embodiment of the liberalism Reagan sought to reverse. "

" I'm trying to tell the story of the evolution of America. Each biography is a life in time, and I can see there's a particular task for each generation that I write about. "

" In the academic world, biographies of these great figures of the past fell out of favor in the 1960s, when there was a turn toward social history, which meant the history of the voiceless and faceless. But the public at large never embraced the idea that these dead white guys should be abandoned. "

" Members of Congress are somewhat reluctant to tangle with a president who seems to have the backing of the American people. "

" People who teach American history survey classes have a lot of ground to cover and tend to focus on landmarks. You get through the Civil War and Reconstruction, and you have to get to the beginning of the 20th century fast. It's pretty easy to go lightly on the Gilded Age. "

" If the incumbent or his party has been discredited sufficiently, the challenger can run a successful, content-free campaign. "

" Every work of history is a combination of argument and narrative. The longer I write, the more I emphasize the narrative, the story, and the less attention I give to the argument. Arguments come and go. "

H. W. Brands

History

Work

" Love makes the most careful man wreckless. "

" I had this grand plan for writing the history of the United States in six volumes. This was in the mid-1990s; I was fairly young and very ambitious. I pitched it to a publisher, who just laughed at me. "

H. W. Brands

History

Just

" When people think of the oil industry, they think of Rockefeller, much like when people think of the software industry, they think of Bill Gates. "

" In the early days of the republic, the secretary of state was the heir apparent to the president. Presidents could easily hand-pick their party's next candidate. The party caucuses formally selected the candidates, but presidents guided the process. "

" Our love for the Founders leads us to abandon, and even to betray, the very principles they fought for. "

H. W. Brands

Abandon

Our Love

" With my first few books, I was aiming at an academic audience, basically, to get tenure. You can presuppose a certain amount of knowledge; you can expect that there is this common background. "

" Politics is not something most people have to do every day. Their daily lives are much more influenced by job opportunities, whether the country is in a recession or a boom period. If you really want to understand what drives American history, look at the economic... side. "

" There has always been interest in certain phases and aspects of history - military history is a perennial bestseller, the Civil War, that sort of thing. But I think that there is a lot of interest in historical biography and what's generally called narrative history: history as story-telling. "

" The stories that I tell, the topics that I choose to write about, usually are suggested by something that I've done before. "

" Every year, I have my graduate students read the great works of history, from classical times to the present. They gamely tackle Tacitus, ponder Plutarch, plow through Gibbon. Then they get to Thomas Carlyle and feel like Dorothy when she touched down in Technicolor Oz. "

" Reagan's enduring value as a conservative icon stems from his resolute preaching of the conservative gospel, in words that still warm the hearts of the most zealous conservatives. Yet Reagan's value as a conservative model must begin with recognition of his flexibility in the pursuit of his conservative goals. "

" Booker Washington was essentially the head Republican boss in the South. He was a power broker. "

H. W. Brands

Republican

Power

" To me, the puzzle of Ronald Reagan is how a comparatively ordinary man, someone with not extraordinary talent, accomplished such extraordinary results. At the age of 50, no one expected that this was going to be the guy who would become, at least in my interpretation, one of the two most important presidents of the 20th century. "

" In revering the Founders, we undervalue ourselves and sabotage our own efforts to make improvements - necessary improvements - in the republican experiment they began. "

" The Republican Party has moved substantially to the right of where Reagan was. "

" With my students, I always have to sell my subject because I know when you're 19, 20 years old, you've got other things on your mind besides American history. What I have to do is make this as compelling as possible. "