Quotes from Fred Kaplan

Can a great artist be mean-spirited, grasping, harsh to his family, violent in his emotions, vindictive in his hatreds, an all-purpose scoundrel? If our test cases are the likes of Wagner, Picasso, and, let me say, Dickens, the answer is a resounding yes.

Gore Vidal was a man of immense literary talent, some of which he used well, some of which he wasted.

Is there really any relationship between artists' personal conduct and their art? Certainly not.

I got to know Gore Vidal quite well, up front and personal: his magnificent strengths and his appalling, almost other-worldly weaknesses.

Political history is not the only way to approach historical figures.

I want to contribute to the culture and keep great writers alive by telling the stories of their lives.

'Colonel Roosevelt' is compelling reading, and Morris a brilliant biographer who practices his art at the highest level.

In his life, Charles Dickens was like the rest of us, but maybe more so: another poor and wonderful soul attempting to deal with his and the world's pain and confusion in the best way he knew how.

We do ourselves a disservice when we self-servingly massage the record.

I'm not a Lincoln expert, rather a biographer who has had the pleasure of reading much of what has been written about him from his lifetime to this year of his bicentennial. Some advice: Don't try that unless you have at least five years available.

Words about Lincoln fill a small but ever-growing library.

Myth and mythology often serve constructive and aspirational purposes. But they also do harm.

natural right of the individual to personal freedom overrode man-made laws.

Writing—the art of communicating thoughts to the mind, through the eye," which, he had no doubt, "is the great invention of the world.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wouldn't acknowledge that there was an insurgency. (Rumsfeld was old enough to know, from Vietnam days, that defeating an insurgency required a counterinsurgency strategy, which in turn would leave tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq for years, maybe decades—whereas he just wanted to get in, get out, and move on to oust the next tyrant standing in the way of America's post–Cold War dominance.) Out

called counter command-control warfare: just knowing that you'd been hacked, regardless of its tangible effects, was disorienting, disrupting. Meanwhile

His own deism allowed for a God who, having made the world, did not participate in the working out of its ends, whose management of human destiny only inherited in his allowing the patterns and values established by His will to work themselves out in human affairs. Lincoln's response to his own question is to change his tone and focus.

I cannot ask of heaven success, even for my country, in a cause where she should be in the wrong. My toast would be, may our country be always successful, but whether successful or otherwise always right. I disclaim as unsound all patriotism incompatible with the principles of eternal justice.

As for a plan of action, the group fell back on the usual punt by panels of this sort when they don't know what else to do: it recommended the creation of a presidential commission.

The conduct of men," John Adams noted, "is much more governed by their passions than by their interests;

Joint Chiefs of Staff, called an emergency meeting

Instead of a single, monolithic system that tried to do everything, Turbulence consisted of nine smaller systems. In part, the various systems served as backups or alternative approaches, in case the others failed or the global technology shifted.

allowed the government to conduct electronic surveillance inside the United States—"with the assistance of a communications service provider," in the words of that law—as long as the people communicating were "reasonably believed" to be outside the United States. The

six thousand NSA officials were deployed to Iraq and, later, Afghanistan;