We were very poor and my family lost everything during the war - our home and our identity. But I'm a believer in luck and think the social conditions you're born into provide the opportunity for you to prove your luck. And I suppose I've been lucky.
I want to start my own airplane business. I'm going to buy two Dakotas, paint them up in war colours and do, er, nostalgia trips to Arnhem - you know, where the old paratroopers used to go - and charge them about 20 quid a time.
Business is war. I go out there, I want to kill the competitors. I want to make their lives miserable. I want to steal their market share. I want them to fear me and I want everyone on my team thinking we're going to win.
We've been in the nation-building business since World War I, and especially since WWII. The goal is not a Jeffersonian Democracy in Afghanistan, but a representative government that respects human rights, protects its own people, and is a friend of ...
When our mothers are alive and healthy, they do extraordinary things... like the mothers of Plaza de Mayo, who marched in Argentinean plazas, defying the military junta dictatorship and demanding the whereabouts of their abducted children... or the L...
We determine whether a book is for boys or girls long before the reader gets a chance to decide: we package them with soldiers and ballet slippers on their covers, war machines and glittering gowns.
We often don't think of them, we think of the great wars and the great battles, but what about losing a son or a daughter, or a girl losing her husband or vice versa? I think of the people who never got the chance to have the opportunities I had.
There was a bidding war between Epic Records and Jive - now RCA - which was bittersweet. Just having labels bid over me was really cool, but I ended up going with Jive because it felt better over there, and they have my favorite artists like Usher, C...
At the same time the folk boom was happening, the civil rights movement was happening, the anti-war movement was happening, the ban the bomb movement was happening, the environmental movement was happening. There was suddenly a generation ready to ch...
It was a mistake. On the information we had, we shouldn't have prosecuted the war. We shouldn't have changed our argument from international law to regime change in a non-transparent way. It was an error for which we as a country paid a heavy price, ...
What creates freedom? A revolution in the streets? Mass protest? Civil war? A change of government? The ousting of the old guard and its replacement by the new? History, more often than not, shows that hopes raised by such events are often dashed, so...
The question is: how bad do things have to get before you will do something about it? Where is your line in the sand? If you don't enforce the constitutional limitations on your government very soon, you are likely to find out what World War III will...
Raising taxes is the last thing we should do amid the weakest economic recovery since World War II. Unfortunately, even if we avoid the full 'Taxmageddon' scenario, President Obama's health care law also contains a new surtax on investment that will ...
The United States has made a massive effort since the end of the Second World War to secure the dominance of its films in foreign markets - an achievement generally pushed home politically, by writing clauses into various treaties and aid packages.
My father took me back home, back to Greenwich Village, and he thought by taking me out of the orphanage he'd be out of the World War too. But no way - they got him anyway. He went in the Navy and then I lived on the streets.
I took Beetle home thinking that after the Korean War was over, I would have to take him out of the Army. I thought, well, what am I going to do with him?
Most fathers don't see the war within the daughter, her struggles with conflicting images of the idealized and flawed father, her temptation both to retreat to Daddy's lap and protection and to push out of his embrace to that of beau and the world be...
Religion is a complex and often contradictory force in our world. It fosters hope and comfort but also doubt and guilt. It creates both community and exclusion. It brings societies together around shared belief and tears them apart through war. Howev...
As an economic historian, I appreciate what manufacturing has contributed to the United States. It was the engine of growth that allowed us to win two world wars and provided millions of families with a ticket to the middle class. But public policy n...
Part of what I loved - and love - about being around older people is the tangible sense of history they embody. I'm interested in military history, for instance, because both my grandfathers fought in World War II. I'm interested in writing because o...
The script was always the most important thing to me and I loved the script. For one thing, I've always admired trees. I just worship them. Think what trees have witnessed, what history, such as living through the Civil War, yet they still survive.
