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" Some presidents, such as Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy, are political sailors - they tack with the wind, reaching difficult policy objectives through bipartisan maneuvering and pulse-taking. "

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" The myth-making about Appomattox started from the moment Lee left the courthouse on his horse to travel to Richmond. "

Douglas Brinkley

Left

Travel

Horse

" When we settled our country, the dark forest was considered in some ways evil and something that you needed to plow or, later, bulldoze. We now have a new understanding of the interconnectedness of ecosystems and the need for bird flyways and why all species matter. "

" While the scars of the monstrous Civil War still remain, the wounds have closed since 1865, in large part, because of the civility of Grant and Lee. "

" The superhighway of celebrity and showmanship is filled with debris. "

" John Kerry wants to be the hero in his own drama. He likes King Arthur and the Round Table. He likes the young swashbuckling Churchill, and he loved the early antics of Theodore Roosevelt. "

" I was stunned to find out there had never been a serious, scholarly biography ever written on Rosa Parks. "

" John Kerry only went to prep schools because he had an aunt who had the money to pay for his way into those prep schools. "

" The Edmund Pettus Bridge - which in 2013 was declared a National Historic Landmark - isn't symbolic of the Civil War in a meaningful way. It is, however, the modern-day battlefield where the voting rights movement was born. "

" Knievel seemed braver and more brazen - and more unhinged - than any other athlete-cum-thrill-seeker of his era. "

" Broadcast radio was entering its own golden age during the Depression, with live programming on stations all through the day. Local stations needed singers, musicians, announcers, and whipcord personalities, along with Christian clergy to give prayers and pundits to speak on world affairs. "

" Animals interest me more than anything else. "

Douglas Brinkley

Anything

Animals

" What makes 'American Pie' so unusual is that it isn't a relic from the counterculture but a talisman, which, like a sacred river, keeps bringing joy to listeners everywhere. When 'American Pie' suddenly is played on a jukebox or radio, it's almost impossible not to sing along. "

" With the newspapers cheering, Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt chose a top-notch regiment of more than 1,250 men. They were first called Teddy's Texas Tarantulas and went through three or four other monikers until Roosevelt's Rough Riders stuck. "

" The world of high-stakes international diplomacy can be rough and tumble, but it's more often than not a procession of suits and summits, protocol sessions and photo ops. "

Douglas Brinkley

Diplomacy

World

" For years, I longed to hear Armstrong describe what it was like to contemplate Earth from 238,900 miles away. Former Space Center director George Abbey once told me that many NASA astronauts felt that looking at Earth was akin to a religious experience. "

Douglas Brinkley

Space

Looking

" In 1971, near the middle of Nixon's first term, he approved a plan to install a White House taping system as a way of preserving an accurate chronicle of important discussions and decisions. Except for Nixon, three aides, and the Secret Service, no one knew about the listening devices. "

" Nobody has trusted the Iranian government from day one, but the idea of just refusing to have any kind of talks is dangerous in the extreme. Every administration says at least that we're trying to have talks between Israel and Palestine and solve the Middle East peace problem. "

" John Kerry had a very vivid imagination as a young person. I mean, he actually did go and take his bicycle from Norway to go camp in Sherwood Forest to be around the ghost of Robin Hood. "

" To Armstrong, constantly speaking about 'Apollo 11' only diminished the magic. That's why he worked overtime to avoid notice, living a quiet life in Indian Hill, Ohio. "

" Reagan was a pure liberation, free-and-fair election American. "

" Influenced by Pete Seeger and the Weavers, McLean proudly wore the mantle of troubadour in the early 1970s, when 'American Pie' topped the Billboard charts, and has never shed the cape. "

" Politicians wanted to mine the Grand Canyon for zinc and copper, and Theodore Roosevelt said, 'No.' "

" How one deals with the death of a loved one is a highly personalized affair. Some people weep for days; others take a hike in the woods or count rosary beads. "

" The very fact that Barack Obama - an African-American - was twice elected to the presidency will always be the lead line in that hard-to-meld, gold-plated paragraph. "

" What I was most curious about was why Armstrong, a top U.S. Navy test pilot, flying the most advanced aircraft in the world, would want to join the astronaut corps in 1962, which included chimpanzees and monkeys. "

" It is a long revisionist road up from the bottom for George W. Bush. He is ranked toward the bottom rung of presidents. "

Douglas Brinkley

Long

Bottom

" I'm not a partisan. "

Douglas Brinkley

Partisan

" Although Cronkite had once crash landed in a Dutch potato field under enemy fire, he chose instead to focus on celebrating the liberation of the Netherlands at the hands of the Free Dutch. "

" Truman has become the patron saint of failed presidents because he left office with a 27 percent approval rating, and people were saying, 'To err is Truman,' yet look at what he did: the Marshall Plan, the creation of NATO, the Truman Doctrine. "

" The D-Day moniker wasn't invented for the Allied invasion. The same name had been attached to the date of every planned offensive of World War II. It was first coined during World War I, at the U.S. attack at the Battle of Saint-Mihiel, in France in 1918. "