You can learn as much about the history from reading about the present as you can vice versa, that is learning about the present through history, which is what I do for a living.

You can learn as much about the history from reading about the present as you can vice versa, that is learning about the present through history, which is what I do for a living.

It is the great arrogance of the present to forget the intelligence of the past

In a sense I've made the same film over and over again. In all of them I've asked, 'Who are we as Americans?

You don't work on something for six years and be blind to the myriad of other approaches.

History isn't really about the past - settling old scores. It's about defining the present and who we are.

No one was more important to the game of baseball in the last half of the 20th century than Henry Aaron and no one writes about that supremely talented man, that tumultuous time and this treasure of a game better than Howard Bryant. Together, they are an extraordinary combination, and the book Bryant has written gets to the heart of the complicated and dignified, patient and consistent genuine hero that is Henry Aaron.