I Feel That As Much As I

History Is About Life. It's Awful When The Life Is Squeezed Out Of It And There's No Flavor Left, No Uncertainties, No Horsing Around. It Always Disturbed Me How Many Biographers Never Gave Their Subjects A Chance To Eat. You Can Tell A Lot About People By How They Eat, What They Eat, And What Kind Of Table Manners They Have.

My Shorthand Answer Is That I Try To Write The Kind Of Book That I Would Like To Read. If I Can Make It Clear And Interesting And Compelling To Me, Then I Hope Maybe It Will Be For The Reader.

On Christmas Morning When I Was A Child, My Mother Would Leave A Book Wrapped At The Foot Of The Bed, Which Was A Hint That Santa Had Come. It Was Also Her Way Of Keeping Us In Bed A Little Longer Before We Went Downstairs. So I've Always Associated Books With Happiness And Gifts. And They Are. I Can't Get Enough Of Them.

You Can Make The Argument That There's No Such Thing As The Past. Nobody Lived In The Past. They Lived In The Present. It Is Their Present, Not Our Present, And They Don't Know How It's Going To Come Out. They Weren't Just Like We Are Because They Lived In That Very Different Time. You Can't Understand Them If You Don't Understand How They Perceived Reality.

Every Book Is A New Journey. I Never Felt I Was An Expert On A Subject As I Embarked On A Project.