Nixon did not anticipate the extent to which Kissinger, whom he barely knew when he appointed him national-security adviser in 1969, would be envious and high-strung - a maintenance project of the first order.

For those of us who cry out for gun control, our fears cannot be eliminated as long as the country remains an armed camp in which the most troubled among us can find ways to appropriate one of the easily available weapons in all our communities.

During Grover Cleveland's second term, in the 1890s, the White House deceived the public by dismissing allegations that surgeons had removed a cancerous growth from the President's mouth; a vulcanized-rubber prosthesis disguised the absence of much of Cleveland's upper left jaw and part of his palate.

Success in past U.S. conflicts has not been strictly the result of military leadership but rather the judgment of the president in choosing generals and setting broad strategy.

In his State of the Union speech in January 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt declared America's commitment to Four Freedoms in the struggle against Nazi totalitarianism. Among them was the freedom from fear.

Despite an unqualified understanding that U.S. national security was inextricably bound up with Britain's survival, F.D.R. knew that his reelection in part rested on the hope that he would keep the country out of war.

During the 1937 congressional election campaign, Johnson's group probably paid $5,000 to Elliott Roosevelt, one of Franklin Roosevelt's sons, for a telegram in which Elliott suggested that the Roosevelt family favored Lyndon Johnson.

F.D.R. had an economic crisis of unprecedented proportions in 1933 when he drove 15 major bills through the Congress, and super majorities in the House and the Senate in 1935 when he won passage of Social Security.

Once the public loses confidence in a president's leadership at a time of war, once they don't trust him anymore, once his credibility is sharply diminished, how does he get it back?

Henry Kissinger never wanted the 20,000 pages of his telephone transcripts made public - not while he was alive, at any rate.

Despite its flaws, the American electoral system has produced Lincoln, the two Roosevelts, and Harry Truman.

When President Obama first unveiled his gun control proposals recommending a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and better background checks, there seemed to be momentum behind the effort. But then the proposals ran into a wall.

Coming out of WWII, there was the assumption, the hope, the vision of a world at peace, of a kind of Wilsonian universalism, that we and the Soviets would get along, we'd have a kind of lovefest for as far into the future as anyone could see.

Theodore Roosevelt had drawn public attention to his attractive family in order to create a bond with ordinary Americans. Eleanor Roosevelt had successfully broached the idea that a First Lady could be nearly as much a public figure as her husband.

Flattery was one of Kissinger's principal tools in winning over Nixon, and a tool he employed shamelessly.

The 1890s was an intensely patriotic decade for Americans. It was a time of neo-imperialism, when the European powers and the United States were establishing their flags around the globe.

From the moment he took office in January of 1961, Kennedy had been eager to settle the Cuban problem without overt military action by the United States.

McGeorge Bundy was a brilliant man who'd had a meteoric academic career and was the youngest man ever to be dean of the Harvard faculty. But he was also arrogant and looked upon all sorts of people and politicians as not to be taken all that seriously.

George Washington sets the nation on its democratic path. Abraham Lincoln preserves it. Franklin Roosevelt sees the nation through depression and war.

As for Vietnam, what matters is that Kennedy successfully resisted pressure to send anything more than military advisers, a stance that was a likely prelude to complete withdrawal from the conflict. There is solid evidence of his eagerness to end America's military role in that country's civil war.

John F. Kennedy went to bed at 3:30 in the morning on November 9, 1960, uncertain whether he had defeated Richard Nixon for the presidency. He thought he had won, but six states hung in the balance, and after months of exhaustive campaigning, he was too tired to stay awake any longer.

Don't be intimidated by people who seem to be experts. Hear their points of view and get their judgements. But at the end of day, you've got to make a judgement because it's not their life that's going to be affected so much as your future.

Nixon's deep antipathy toward Jews is well known, and he took a strange satisfaction in having Kissinger in his inner circle, where he could periodically taunt him.

As someone who has more than a passing acquaintance with most of the 20th century presidents, I have often thought that their accomplishments have little staying power in shaping popular views of their leadership.