Some people, such as the unemployed coal miners and steelworkers of the Rust Belt, have been left behind by growing prosperity.

There is no evidence that Republican leaders have been demonstrably dumber than their Democratic counterparts.

Even getting a college degree does not guarantee a minimal knowledge of U.S. history.

Often the process of writing can feel like spitting into the ocean.

People who sit for hours in a beach chair or an airplane seat without any reading material simply baffle me: What is going on between their ears, I wonder?

Every four years since 1988, I have voted for the Republican presidential candidate.

Yet another reason to be angry at President Trump: He is forcing me - and every other American who is not a racist - to defend the most left-wing members of Congress.

Upon closer examination, it's obvious that the history of modern conservative is permeated with racism, extremism, conspiracy-mongering, isolationism and know-nothingism.

Before Donald Trump, the Republican Party was a majority conservative party with a white nationalist fringe. Now it's a white nationalist party with a conservative fringe.

The 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, has not so far provoked the kind of anguished debate that accompanied the 50th anniversary. The lack of controversy is fitting because there wasn't much soul-searching at the time.

We have a long, ugly history of white supremacy in this country, ranging from Jim Crow laws to keep African Americans down to the 1924 Immigration Act to keep non-Europeans out.

I find myself increasingly forced to think of my ethnic identity instead of the national identity I adopted as a boy in 1976. That is discomfiting for me, and a tragedy for America.

I am certain that my family - my grandmother, mother and myself - had a credit score of zero when we arrived in 1976. There were no credit cards in the Soviet Union, and we didn't have any money.

I have not given up my faith in democracy - it remains the worst form of government except for all the others - but I have given up my youthful expectation that it would inevitably triumph.

And I think the only way you're going to improve US foreign policy and set a sound course for the future is if you're willing to look back at what went wrong before.

The crisis of the old order in Europe produced nearly 80 years of often bloody conflict between democracy and its foes from 1914 to 1991.

At Mom's funeral, mourner after mourner spoke about what a wonderful teacher she was. She was certainly devoted to her students.

History has been my primary intellectual passion ever since, as a boy in Southern California, I began reading books on World War II and the life of Winston Churchill.

For years, as a seller of real estate and star of reality TV, Donald Trump made a living wooing customers and viewers. His selling skills were good enough that he even convinced voters to elect him as president in spite of his near-total lack of qualifications.

Olga E. Kagan was the strongest woman I knew - and probably the reason I've spent my life with other strong women.

At the University of California at Berkeley, my interests broadened from military history to diplomatic history and other disciplines.

Americans are in vital need of the instruction that historians can provide.

The spread of communications technologies - social media, TV news channels - aggravates societal divisions and discord. All that online snarling is making us jittery.

Increasingly I feel like a Jew, an immigrant, a Russian - anything but a normal, mainstream American.

Republicans used to bash President Barack Obama for alienating American allies, but Trump is turning off our partners like no one ever has.

History suggests that economic upheavals such as the Industrial and Information Revolutions eventually play themselves out and leave the entire world better off.

When Democrats aren't being fiscally reckless, they are economically irresponsible. Democrats bemoan corporate greed and have not a positive word to say about the entrepreneurs that have made our economy the envy of the world.

I have been a Republican as long as I can remember.

I love what I do and realize I am supremely lucky to be able to make my living by writing and speaking about the news of the day.

No President can achieve everything or please everyone.

In 1964, the GOP ceased to be the party of Lincoln and became the party of Southern whites.

The history of the modern Republican Party is the story of moderates being driven out and conservatives taking over - and then of those conservatives in turn being ousted by those even further to the right.

Diplomatic eminences often natter on about preventive action, making the obvious point that it's better to cure festering ills before they metastasize into something much worse.

Having emigrated to the United States as a small boy from the Soviet Union, I am instinctively suspicious of socialism and inveterately opposed to communism.

Political paralysis and partisanship are sabotaging American power.

Protests are the very essence of America! It is a country founded in protest.

Everyone from Silesians to Sicilians to Scots seems to want autonomy or independence. The British voted to leave the European Union, and hostility to the superstate is rising across the continent.

Freedom will not prevail because of historical forces; it will only win, if it does, because of historical actors. In other words, us. Those like me who came of age around 1989 used to take democracy for granted.

Only 36 percent of Americans could pass a multiple-choice civics test of the kind that is administered to immigrants seeking to become citizens.

There is little doubt that our society is changing rapidly, but one thing will never change as long as we remain a democracy: the need for voters to know the essentials of our history and government.

History education in schools is so poor that students often enter college ignorant of the past - and leave just as unenlightened.

You simply can't understand the present if you don't understand the past. There is no more alarming case study of the consequences of historical ignorance than President Trump.

There has been an unspoken assumption among establishment Republicans that all they have to do is wait out Hurricane Trump and then return to 'normal' conservatism.

What would I do now, at age 48, if I were deported to a country that I have not seen in more than 40 years and whose language I no longer speak? How would I work? How would I survive?

My mother and I were alike in one crucial respect: We may have been Russian by birth, but we were English in spirit. She was intensely reserved and private, and seldom showed what she was feeling.

Soliciting anything of value from a foreign national to help a U.S. campaign is not just illegal; it is the Founding Fathers' nightmare.

Analogies, in particular, can illuminate, but they can also obscure and confuse. They need to be handled carefully, like rhetorical high explosives.

Trump doesn't need his own agenda if he can terrify independent voters in swing states about what would happen if the Democratic agenda is implemented.

I yearn for intellectual sustenance on vacation but want, of course, to avoid tedium or boredom. I want to read something that will entertain me but also help me appreciate what I am seeing.

The Immigration Act of 1924 closed our doors to virtually all non-European immigrants - a great wrong that was not rectified for decades.