Ronald Reagan made me a conservative. This is of little historical note compared to destroying the Soviet Union, uplifting the economy, and restoring American optimism from malaise, but Reagan changed my life for the better. My political transformation occurred on…
One of the cool things about being a biographer with special expertise on a specific subject — in my case, Ronald Reagan — is that readers come to you with all sorts of neat revelations. I’ve published eight books on…
The publication of a new biography of Paul Nitze, who served in national security posts in Democrat and Republican administrations between 1940 and 1989, is a good moment to reflect on the need for knowledgeable, informed, and courageous experts to…
Several commentators have compared the recent assassination attempt on candidate and former president Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, to the attempted assassination of candidate and former president Theodore Roosevelt in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during the 1912 presidential election campaign. Trump was…
Donald Trump promised an end to the long era of clandestine Deep State power that began with the assassination of JFK, an event that happened 60 years ago and is still shrouded in mystery. The July 13 attack on Trump’s…
One is tempted to say Donald J. Trump became the 47th President of the United States at 18:11 EDT on 13 July 2024. The image of him fist-pumping the air in bloodied defiance after the failed assassination attempt in Butler,…
What a difference a century makes. One hundred years ago, America was entering into its quadrennial presidential election campaign under circumstances quite different from those facing us today. Republican incumbent President Calvin Coolidge was facing Democratic challenger John W. Davis….
It’s the middle of the summer, and once more our thoughts turn to that special place in our consciousness we reserve for July 4. We will again celebrate what we have and how we got it. We may even argue…
The Declaration of Independence was, of course, just that. It was an official declaration of independence by the “United Colonies” (upper case), as they were thus described by Thomas Jefferson, his editors John Adams and Ben Franklin, and the Congress…
