And in the absence of facts, myth rushes in, the kudzu of history.

Motherhood is always an act of courage.

My next book is on the Salem witch trials. As a small-town Massachusetts girl, this makes me very happy. So does the reunion with documents!

No one in the modern world controls the wealth or territory that Cleopatra did.

An interesting thing about book groups, it seems to me, is that there is no correlation between a brilliant book and a brilliant discussion. The first seems sometimes even to undermine the second.

No one sits on the stoop when she's a kid and thinks, 'I want to be a biographer when I grow up,'

Women enjoyed rights in Egypt they would not again enjoy for more than 2,000 years. They owned ships, ran vineyards, filed lawsuits, practiced medicine. Their husbands supported them after divorce. Their power was unprecedented.