Anyone who experienced World War I close-hand was grossed out by it forever. It just was so awful.

There's something unsettling about the education of a child who comfortably enumerates the rules for surviving zombie apocalypse but finds it uncomfortable to enumerate the rules of his grandparents' faith, if he knows them.

Coolidge really hated government being in the power business. He thought it was wrong. He saw the potential for growth in the power business. He didn't want the federal government in it.

The difference between recession and depression is simple. Recession, goes the saying, is when you lose your job; depression is when I lose mine.

Coolidge showed that the best government was the one that got out of the way. When he refrained, the economy grew, the Ku Klux Klan faded, and Americans got Model A's and automobiles.

Coolidge thought budgets were virtuous. He had his econ straight. He didn't just cut taxes, he also cut the budget.

The lucky biographers find themselves drawn into a sort of friendship with their subject.