I feel that as much as I enjoy loafing, there is something higher for which to live.

I think that we need history as much as we need bread or water or love.

You can make the argument that there's no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past. They lived in the present. It is their present, not our present, and they don't know how it's going to come out. They weren't just like we are because they lived in that very different time. You can't understand them if you don't understand how they perceived reality.

Exercise free will and creative, independent thought not for the satisfactions they will bring you, but for the good they will do others, the rest of the 6.8 billion–and those who will follow them. And then you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself. The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you’re not special. Because everyone is.

I could not do what I do without the kindness, consideration, resourcefulness and work of librarians, particularly in public libraries... What started me writing history happened because of some curiosity that I had about some photographs I'd seen in the Library of Congress.

History isn't just what happened, but what happened to whom and why and what would have been different if the cast of characters had been different.

Each generation, we peel back biases that have blinded those before us. The more we know about the past enables us to ask richer and more provocative questions about who we are today.