When a president was elected with foreign policy experience, it was usually less about his foreign policy experience than other things. H. W. Brands Read Quote
I had this grand plan for writing the history of the United States in six volumes. This was in the mid-1990s; I was fairly young and very ambitious. I pitched it to a publisher, who just laughed at me. H. W. Brands Read Quote
People are interested in people. They buy biographies; they don’t buy studies of presidencies. H. W. Brands Read Quote
When you look at the development of the American presidency, you see that the presidents who have had the greatest impact are the ones who fit their times most successfully. H. W. Brands Read Quote
Politics is not something most people have to do every day. Their daily lives are much more influenced by job opportunities, whether the country is in a recession or a boom period. If you really want to understand what drives American history, look at the economic… side. H. W. Brands Read Quote
The race question in America has often been about race, but it has equally often been about power. H. W. Brands Read Quote
Everything that happens today is like something in the past, but it’s also unlike things in the past. We never know until an event happens if it’s the similarities or differences that matter more. H. W. Brands Read Quote
There has always been interest in certain phases and aspects of history – military history is a perennial bestseller, the Civil War, that sort of thing. But I think that there is a lot of interest in historical biography and what’s generally called narrative history: history as story-telling. H. W. Brands Read Quote
Every year, I have my graduate students read the great works of history, from classical times to the present. They gamely tackle Tacitus, ponder Plutarch, plow through Gibbon. Then they get to Thomas Carlyle and feel like Dorothy when she touched down in Technicolor Oz. H. W. Brands Read Quote
I was raised in, and presumably to, the cutlery business. I really didn’t think that that’s what I wanted to do for a career. But I felt a certain obligation to give it a try. H. W. Brands Read Quote
