Washington and Lincoln could not have come from more different backgrounds. And yet, in spite of vast differences, both men not only attained the highest office in the land, but the admiration and respect of generations. Both consistently rank as the top two presidents by most scholars. While Lincoln was born dirt poor in Kentucky, Washington was born to a...

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,...

On August 6, 1945, at 8:15 a.m., U.S. forces destroyed the city of Hiroshima, Japan with the first atomic bomb used in warfare directly killing an estimated 80,000 people. Injury and radiation increased that total to 90,000 to 140,000. Three days later, a second A-bomb was used to destroy Nagasaki directly killing another 60,000 to 80,000 men, women and children....

In the hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan, Franklin Roosevelt had to make a number of critical decisions for the country; not the least of which was standing before Congress and the American people to clearly explain what had happened and what America’s response would be. While Roosevelt was responsible for a number of significant decisions in...

In November of 1963, I was a High School freshman in New York. It was just after lunch and we’d only been back in class a short time when our Algebra teacher, Mr. Freeman was called into the hallway by the vice-principal. The door remained open and my desk had a perfect view of the hallway. That’s when I noticed...

England’s finest Prime Minister and Statesman Winston Churchill famously said, “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” Considering the ticking clock deadline for Congress’s bipartisan supercommittee to find a path to cut at minimum $1.2 trillion from the budget over ten years, Churchill’s words seem sadly prophetic. “It wasn’t so much of a...

That’s the deadline facing the bipartisan Congressional committee on a plan to reduce the country’s deficit by at least $1.2 trillion over the next ten years. “I am worried you’re going to fail – fail the country.” That’s what Erskine Bowles recently said to the committee. Bowles was one of the co-chairs of the president’s fiscal commission originally set-up to...

Writers are, for the most part, invisible to the public. Sure there are those exceptions who have used their talent to stand in the spotlight, but Norman Corwin was more focused on his craft than the attention. Corwin was not just extraordinary with words; he was master of radio, stage and screen. Such a master of radio drama, that Orson...

“Gerald R. Ford became President not because he was popular with the American public, not because he campaigned for the job, but because of his character,” writes James Cannon inCharacter Above All, a collection of essays about presidential character and courage. “More than any other president of this century,” Cannon says, “Ford was chosen for his integrity and trustworthiness; his...

“I’ll tell you,” Franklin Roosevelt once told a friend during the toughest years of his presidency, “at night when I lay my head on my pillow, and it is often pretty late, and I think of the things that have come before me during the day and the decisions that I have made, I say to myself — well, I...