Most Writers Are Secretly Worried That They're

There Was A Lot Of Maneuvering On The Part Of The Roosevelt Administration To Get The Stars Aligned So That That Attack Would Happen. There's Just No Question About That; You Don't Even Have To Look At The Decoding Of Diplomatic Cables Or Anything Else. Fdr's Own Admiral Thought It Was A Bad Idea To Have The Fleet Confined In One Place Way Out In The Middle Of The Pacific.

Just As The People Who Lived Through The Second World War Thought Different Things On Different Days, I Think Everybody Who Goes Through That Period Carefully Now Thinks Different Things On Different Days.

I'm Suspicious Of Full-replacement Programs - That Is, Pronouncements That One Way Of Doing Something Will Entirely Supplant Another, And That In Fact We Have To Hurry The Replacement Along.

Writing Has To Do With Truth-telling. When You're Writing, Let's Say, An Essay For A Magazine, You Try To Tell The Truth At Every Moment. You Do Your Best To Quote People Accurately And Get Everything Right. Writing A Novel Is A Break From That: Freedom. When You're Writing A Novel, You Are In Charge; You Can Beef Things Up.

History Isn't A Seesaw. If You Have A Really Bad Regime On One Side, The Actions On The Other Side Don't Automatically Become Good. It Doesn't Work That Way.