My next book is also set in the eighteenth century. It's about the Revolution, with the focus on the year 1776. It's about Washington and the army and the war. It's the nadir, the low point of the United States of America.

I'm reasonably optimistic about the future, especially the future of the United States - for the century, at least.

The United States condoned dictatorships in Latin America for much of the 20th century.

What is true is that if we do not change the culture of Washington, D.C., the United States of America will cease.

There's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America.

To his own children he was at once the ultimate voice of authority and, when time allowed, their most exuberant companion. He never fired their imaginations or made them laugh as their mother could, but he was unfailingly interested in them, sympathetic, confiding, entering into their lives in ways few fathers ever do. It was a though he was in league with them.