To hold the reader's attention, you have to bring the person who's reading the book inside the experience of the time: What was it like to have been alive then? What were these people like as human beings?

A nation that forgets its past can function no better than an individual with amnesia.

You have overburdened your argument with ostentatious erudition.

He had kept his head, kept his health and his strength, bearing up under a weight of work and worry that only a few could have carried.

There's an awful temptation to just keep on researching. There comes a point where you just have to stop, and start writing.

They must be cool but determined...he threatened instant death to any man who showed cowardice.

I just thank my father and mother, my lucky stars, that I had the advantage of an education in the humanities.