Quotes from Erik Larson

Churchill saw the relationship in succinct terms. "Some take drugs," he said. "I take Max.

There are some things I must try to say before the still watches come again in which the things unsaid hurt so and cry out in the heart to be uttered.

She and a friend joked about what to do if the ship were attacked. "Our stewardess laughed," Mrs. Lines recalled, "and said we would not go down, but up, as we were well loaded with munitions.

I don't see how in the course of having to make endless decisions one can avoid some mistakes.

my between-books strategy of reading voraciously and promiscuously. What

Oh tais-toi mon coeur." ("Be quiet, my heart.")

It could be done, because it had to be done

The Fringes of Power; the work

Such peaceful intervals never lasted long.

Her place already was luxurious, with a bowling alley where the pins were bottles of chilled champagne

Mayor Harrison warned that the ranks of the unemployed had swollen to an alarming degree. "If Congress does not give us money we will have riots that will shake this country," he said. Two weeks later workers scuffled with police outside City Hall. It was a minor confrontation, but the Tribune called it a riot.

Isaac, at this point, still considered Moore a personal friend. It hurt him, no doubt, that Moore had distorted the story of his experience in the storm. Isaac had lost his wife and home, and had nearly lost a daughter, but Moore could not be bothered with the actual details.

look as if they had been plucked from the Palace of Versailles or a Jacobean mansion—that you were aboard a ship being propelled far into the bluest reaches of the ocean.

No other British city experienced such losses, but throughout the United Kingdom the total of civilian deaths in 1940 and 1941, including those in London, reached 44,652, with another 52,370 injured. Of the dead, 5,626 were children.

Holmes explained that he had been doing some dissection but now had completed his research. He offered Chappell thirty-six dollars to cleanse the bones and skull and return to him a fully articulated skeleton. Chappell agreed. Holmes and Chappell placed the body in a trunk lined with duckcloth. An express company delivered it to Chappell's house.

In Calumet a thousand ornate streetlamps stood in a swamp, where they did nothing but ignite the fog and summon auras of mosquitoes.

William Manchester and Paul Reid's Defender of the Realm, Roy Jenkins's Churchill, and Martin Gilbert's Finest Hour—but then to plunge

fair. Washington laid claim to the honor on grounds it was the center of government, New York because it was the center of everything. No one cared what St. Louis thought, although the city got a wink for pluck.

Burnham's frequent admonition: "Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood." Burnham

After noting that Germany's submarine campaign had sharply reduced traffic from America, Churchill told Runciman: "For our part, we want the traffic—the more the better; and if some of it gets into trouble, better

Recognizing that confidence and fearlessness were attitudes that could be adopted and taught by example, Churchill issued a directive to all ministers to put on a strong, positive front.

My between-books strategy was reading voraciously and on a whim.

New York's perennial attraction was shopping.

What could a Prime Minister at that time and in such desperate conditions say that was not pathetically inadequate—or even downright dangerous?" To Battersby, it typified "the uniquely unpredictable magic that was Churchill"—his ability to transform "the despondent misery of disaster into a grimly certain stepping stone to ultimate victory.