In an age when all that was old seems new again, Bernard DeVoto's The Hour couldn't have made a more timely reappearance. This book reminds me of one of the joys of being an adult-cocktail hour!

People think they have to be ambitious. But at a certain age, all you want is to be around nice, decent people.

Everything I love about America is fragile.

Life is all about seating and lighting.

Memory is often - perhaps usually - a distorting lens: what we think we remember isn't the way it was at all. It's what we'd like to remember.

Branding experts believe that just because they have rethought a company's image or name, the rest of us will automatically fall in line.

Former vice president Al Gore has devoted his post-administration years to a mission to tell the world about global warming. It's funny, but in his civilian life Gore has discovered the voice that voters had trouble hearing when he ran for president in 2000. The voice he has found is clear, impassioned, and moving.