The more you read about a subject, he advised me, the more interesting it will seem.
The ambition to establish a reputation worthy of the esteem of his fellows so that his story could be told after his death had carried Lincoln through his bleak childhood, his laborious efforts to edu...
THE SUMMER OF 1863 marked a crucial transformation in the Union war effort—the organization and deployment of black regiments that would eventually amount to 180,000 soldiers, a substantial proportion...
Such men of towering egos, in whom ambition is divorced from the people’s best interests, were not men to lead a democracy; they were despots.
Spring had come to Washington. The cherry blossoms were in bloom. Yet the glacial mood of the capital refused to melt. Accusations
Simon Cameron: I loved my brother, as only the poor and lonely can love those with whom they have toiled and struggled up the rugged hill of life’s success—but he died bravely in the discharge of his...
She could be affectionate, generous, and optimistic one day; vengeful, depressed, and irritable the next. In the colloquial language of her friends, she was either in the garret or cellar. In either m...
Scholars who have studied the development of leaders have situated resilience, the ability to sustain ambition in the face of frustration, at the heart of potential leadership growth.
Roosevelt repeatedly brought his clenched fist down on the palm of his other hand.
Roosevelt had predicted during his final meeting with the press corps, but not one who will interest you more.
One evening, Lincoln listened as Stanton worked himself into a fury against one of the generals. I would like to tell him what I think of him, Stanton stormed. Why don’t you, suggested Lincoln. Write...
On the morning of June 20, at a hastily arranged conference at New York’s Gramercy Park Hotel, a new umbrella organization was born with Eleanor as honorary chair—the U.S. Committee for the Care of Eu...
Of Teddy Roosevelt and his siblings, the author writes they were, armed with an innate curiosity and discipline fostered by his remarkable father.
Moreover, Lincoln possessed an uncanny understanding of his shifting moods, a profound self-awareness that enabled him to find constructive ways to alleviate sadness and stress. Indeed, when he is com...
Momentum is not a mysterious mistress, Johnson liked to say. It is a controllable fact of political life that depends on nothing more exotic than preparation.
Modernizing the postal service was particularly important for the soldiers, who relied on letters, newspapers, and magazines from home to sustain morale.
Lincoln was as calm and unruffled as the summer sea in moments of the gravest peril;
Johnson saw preoccupation with principle and procedure as a sign of impotence. Such men were troublemakers, more concerned with appearing forceful than in exercising the real strengths that led to tan...
Johnson insisted, I don’t want this symposium to come here and spend two days talking about what we have done, the progress has been much too small. We haven’t done nearly enough. I’m kind of ashamed...
It is not until one visits old, oppressed, suffering Europe, that he can appreciate his own government, he observed, that he realizes the fearful responsibility of the American people to the nations o...