Quotes from Erik Larson

Night is the magician of the fair.

The article called Dodd a "small, dry, nervous, pedantic man Ã¢â'¬Â¦ whose appearance at diplomatic and social functions inevitably called forth yawning boredom.

one may safely say that it would be no sin if statesmen learned enough of history to realize that no system which implies control of society by privilege seekers has ever ended in any other way than collapse.

But Burnham also created an office culture that anticipated that of businesses that would not appear for another century. He installed a gym. During lunch hour employees played handball. Burnham gave fencing lessons. Root played impromptu recitals on a rented piano. "The office was full of a rush of work," Starrett said, "but the spirit of the place was delightfully free and easy and human in comparison with other offices I had worked in." Burnham

He died in his bed at his farm on February 9, 1940, at 3:10 p.m., with Martha and Bill Jr. at his side, his life work—his Old South—anything but finished.

installed in Europe. Berlin had only 120,000 cars, but at any given moment all of them seemed to collect here, like bees to a hive. One could watch the whirl of cars and people from an outdoor

But I had at least hoped to find some decent people around Hitler. I am horrified to discover that the whole gang is nothing but a horde of criminals and cowards." Fromm

At the first of the funerals the bishop of Coventry said, "Let us vow before God to be better friends and neighbors in the future, because we have suffered this together and have stood here today.

Five years later, during the final assault on Berlin, a Russian shell scored a direct hit on a stable at the western end of the Tiergarten. The adjacent Kurfürstendamm, once one of Berlin's prime shopping and entertainment streets, now became a stage for the utterly macabre—horses, those happiest creatures of Nazi Germany, tearing wildly down the street with manes and tails aflame.

He was a creature of the last turning of the centuries when sleep seemed to come more easily. Things were clear to him. He was loyal, a believer in dignity, honor, and effort.

Responsibility has already changed the primary leaders of the Party very considerably," he wrote. "There is every evidence that they are becoming constantly more moderate.

It was because I had seen so much of injustice and domineering little groups, as well as heard the complaints of so many of the best people of the country, that I ventured as far as my position would allow and by historical analogy warned men as solemnly as possible against half-educated leaders being permitted to lead nations into war.

one may safely say that it would be no sin if statesmen learned enough of history to realize that no system which implies control of society by privilege seekers has ever ended in any other way than collapse." To fail to learn from such "blunders of the past," he said, was to end up on a course toward "another war and chaos.

The disaster had an important secondary effect: because two of the cruisers had stopped to help survivors of the initial attack and thus made themselves easy targets, the Admiralty issued orders forbidding large British warships from going to the aid of U-boat victims.

A battle followed, fought in true Gilded Age fashion with oblique snubs and poisonous courtesy.

I had no delusions about Hitler when I was appointed to my post in Berlin," he answered. "But I had at least hoped to find some decent people around Hitler. I am horrified to discover that the whole gang is nothing but a horde of criminals and cowards.

Ferris had created more than simply an engineering novelty. Like the inventors of the elevator, he had conjured an entirely new physical sensation.

In his memoir-like history The World Crisis, 1916–1918, he said of Wilson, "What he did in April, 1917, could have been done in May, 1915. And if done then what abridgment of the slaughter; what sparing of the agony; what ruin, what catastrophes would have been prevented; in how many million homes would an empty chair be occupied today; how different would be the shattered world in which victors and vanquished alike are condemned to live!

She saw Hitler as "a clown who looked like Charlie Chaplin." Like many others in America at this time and elsewhere in the world, she could not imagine him lasting very long or being taken seriously.

Even the language used by Hitler and party officials was weirdly inverted. The term "fanatical" became a positive trait. Suddenly

But Roosevelt understood that the political costs of any public condemnation of Nazi persecution or any obvious effort to ease the entry of Jews into America were likely to be immense, because American political discourse had framed the Jewish problem as an immigration problem.

This, she found, was typical of a certain kind of German. "Whenever they come up against someone who will not stand for their arrogance, they climb down from their perch and behave," she wrote.

If someone asks me why we did not use the regular courts I would reply: at the moment I was responsible for the German nation; consequently

septentrional;