Those who knew Lincoln described him as an extraordinarily funny man. Humor was an essential aspect of his temperament. He laughed, he explained, so he did not weep.

Roosevelt's strength was that he understood he would never get anything through the Republican old guard, his party, unless the public pressured Congress.

'The bully pulpit' is somewhat diminished in our age of fragmented attention and fragmented media.

I shall always be grateful for this curious love of history, allowing me to spend a lifetime looking back into the past, allowing me to learn from these large figures about the struggle for meaning for life.

'The bully pulpit' is somewhat diminished in our age of fragmented attention and fragmented media.

That is what leadership is all about: staking your ground ahead of where opinion is and convincing people, not simply following the popular opinion of the moment.

Taft was Roosevelt's handpicked successor. I didn't know how deep the friendship was between the two men until I read their almost four hundred letters, stretching back the to early '30s. It made me realize the heartbreak when they ruptured was much more than a political division.