Since I was a kid. I had this series by Ballantine Books about the history of World Wars I and II. In my 20s, it was the Vietnam War literature of novelists like Tim O'Brien, Philip Caputo, and Tobias Wolff, and then nonfiction such as "A Bright Shining Lie" by Neil Sheehan and "The Best and Brightest" by David Halberstam . Those are the two best histories of Vietnam.

Globalization looked like it was going to answer all the economic questions of class. Turned out not to be the case.

Gingrich was a far more volatile and aggressive individual than Boehner, but the institutional norms of self-restraint, and perhaps even self-interest, have broken down under the pressure of an increasingly abnormal Republican Party.

Like an odorless gas, [inequality] pervades every corner of the United States and saps the strength of the country's democracy. But it seems impossible to find the source and shut it off.

At the heart of the matter is a battle between wish and fear. Fear generally proves stronger than a wish, but it leaves a taste of disappointment on the tongue.

This is what Newt Gingrich has wrought - is a politics in which it's very easy to destroy and very hard to build.

You don`t have to be foreign policy expert to succeed as president, but you have to have ice water for blood.