After Emancipation, black women married earlier and more often because they were legally free to do so for the first time, and that was true until after World War II. But middle-class white women married less and later.

My father was in the First World War.

I had the first integrated Army band in World War II.

Culturally, the First World War is the war that stands in for other wars.

Just when you think this war has taken everything you loved, you meet someone and realize that somehow you still have more to give.

A not-too-distant explosion shakes the house, the windows rattle in their sockets, and in the next room the class of 1964 wakes up and lets out a yell or two. Each time this happens I find myself thinking, "Is it possible that human beings can continue with this lunacy very much longer?" You know the answer, of course.