First Of All, You Can Make The

History Is About Life. It's Awful When The Life Is Squeezed Out Of It And There's No Flavor Left, No Uncertainties, No Horsing Around. It Always Disturbed Me How Many Biographers Never Gave Their Subjects A Chance To Eat. You Can Tell A Lot About People By How They Eat, What They Eat, And What Kind Of Table Manners They Have.

With The Truman Book, I Wrote The Entire Account Of His Experiences In World War I Before Going Over To Europe To Follow His Tracks In The War. When I Got There, There Was A Certain Satisfaction In Finding I Had It Right - It Does Look Like That.

The Truth Isn't Just The Facts. You Can Have All The Facts Imaginable And Miss The Truth, Just As You Can Have Facts Missing Or Some Wrong, And Reach The Larger Truth.

The Year 1776, Celebrated As The Birth Year Of The Nation And For The Signing Of The Declaration Of Independence, Was For Those Who Carried The Fight For Independence Forward A Year Of All-too-few Victories, Of Sustained Suffering, Disease, Hunger, Desertion, Cowardice, Disillusionment, Defeat, Terrible Discouragement, And Fear, As They Would Never Forget, But Also Of Phenomenal Courage And Bedrock Devotion To Country, And That, Too They Would Never Forget.

To Hold The Reader's Attention, You Have To Bring The Person Who's Reading The Book Inside The Experience Of The Time: What Was It Like To Have Been Alive Then? What Were These People Like As Human Beings?