Within Easy Company they had made the best friends they had ever had, or would ever have. They were prepared to die for each other; more important, they were prepared to kill for each other.

World War II, the atomic bomb, the Cold War, made it hard for Americans to continue their optimism.

In 1945, there were more people killed, more buildings destroyed, more high explosives set off, more fires burning than before or since.

It is through history that we learn who we are and how we got that way, why and how we changed, why the good sometimes prevailed and sometimes did not.

During the Second World War, the Germans took four years to build the Atlantic Wall. On four beaches it held up the Allies for about an hour; at Omaha it held up the U.S. for less than one day. The Atlantic Wall must therefore be regarded as one of the greatest blunders in military history.

Winning the Revolutionary War, or the Civil War, or World War II were the turning points in our history, the sine qua non of our forward progress.

I was taught by professors who had done their schooling in the 1930s. Most of them were scornful of, even hated, big business.