By the age of nine or ten, I knew that I loved history and writing. It got hold of me and never turned loose. Hampton Sides Read Quote
I find there’s a thin, permeable membrane between journalism and history, and though some academic historians take a dim view of it, I gather a lot of strength and professional inspiration from passing back and forth across it. Hampton Sides Read Quote
I majored in Southern history in college, and much of my early work at my first job – as a staff writer at ‘Memphis’ magazine – focused on race relations. Hampton Sides Read Quote
The Tea Party has very close affinities with independent third-party movements like the George Wallace movement. The Tea Party is still inchoate, still trying to figure out what it’s going to become. Hampton Sides Read Quote
I am not one of those people who believe that MLK achieved more in martyrdom than he could have if he’d lived: imagine what a guiding influence he could have on the world were he still among us. Hampton Sides Read Quote
The forties are the time when you begin to take notice of certain aches and pains. Your body and brain behave in inexplicable ways: Less hair on your head, more in your ears and nostrils. More memories in the bank, less synaptic firepower with which to access them. Gravity has started to show its inexorable pull. Hampton Sides Read Quote
I don’t concentrate on any one period of history; I like to locate my stories in wildly different eras and places. I seem to be drawn to large, sprawling, uncomfortable swaths of American history, finding embedded within them a tight narrative that involves strife, heroism, and survival under difficult circumstances. Hampton Sides Read Quote
I’ve sort of been an anthropologist of modern America, in a non-academic way. Whether it’s Marines or Tupperware salesladies, high end audiophiles or bike couriers, I’m fascinated by the hallmarks of the American tribe. Hampton Sides Read Quote
