Broadcast radio was entering its own golden age during the Depression, with live programming on stations all through the day. Local stations needed singers, musicians, announcers, and whipcord personalities, along with Christian clergy to give prayers and pundits to speak on world affairs.

The world of high-stakes international diplomacy can be rough and tumble, but it's more often than not a procession of suits and summits, protocol sessions and photo ops.

New Orleans is just a microcosm of Newark and Detroit and hundreds of other troubled urban locales.

Administration policies seem to tacitly encourage those who live below sea level in New Orleans to relocate permanently, to leave the dangerous water's edge for more prosperous inland cities such as Shreveport or Baton Rouge.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest misperceptions the American public harbors is that Katrina was a week-long catastrophe. In truth, it's better to view it as an era.

The very fact that Barack Obama - an African-American - was twice elected to the presidency will always be the lead line in that hard-to-meld, gold-plated paragraph.

History chalks up Mr. McKinley's War as a U.S. win, and he also polls favorably as a 'near great' president.

Some presidents, such as Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy, are political sailors - they tack with the wind, reaching difficult policy objectives through bipartisan maneuvering and pulse-taking.

Nixon was always willing to be bipartisan, so there are a lot of surprises in the man.

Now I'm the father of three children; I'm not able to go live on a bus and do semesters around the country like I did when I was young.

While the scars of the monstrous Civil War still remain, the wounds have closed since 1865, in large part, because of the civility of Grant and Lee.

While the old spiritual 'Slavery Chain Done Broke at Last' was sung by blacks in the hours following the Appomattox surrender, racism sadly continues to be a crippling national scourge.

The myth-making about Appomattox started from the moment Lee left the courthouse on his horse to travel to Richmond.

President Abraham Lincoln never lost his ardor for the United States to remain united during the Civil War.

In 2012, the city of Austin erected an eight-foot-tall bronze statue of Willie Nelson in the heart of the business district. Schoolchildren, churchgoers, tourists, slackers, conventioneers, tech geeks - everybody, it seems - now congregate around this ponytailed shrine to outlaw country.

In Austin, the eco-capital of Texas, residents tend to favor native plants and wildflowers to the sculpted lawns of the Palm Springs variety.

In 1971, near the middle of Nixon's first term, he approved a plan to install a White House taping system as a way of preserving an accurate chronicle of important discussions and decisions. Except for Nixon, three aides, and the Secret Service, no one knew about the listening devices.

As a composer, Dylan now fits comfortably alongside George Gershwin or Irving Berlin, though he grumpily refuses to wear any man's collar.

For Dylan, it seems, life is always the next gig. Changing pace and location are essential to his survival as an artist.

How one deals with the death of a loved one is a highly personalized affair. Some people weep for days; others take a hike in the woods or count rosary beads.

February was always the cruelest month for Hunter S. Thompson. An avid NFL fan, Hunter traditionally embraced the Super Bowl in January as the high-water mark of his year.

Reagan never cottoned to dictators. He was pure in this notion in a true belief that democracy was the best solution in the world because it spoke to people's hopes and dreams and aspirations, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of speech.

If Reagan had intelligence information that showed that the upheaval in Egypt is actually Democratic in spirit, then he would have, I believe, turned his back on Mubarak, even though there's a long friendship between the United States and Egypt.

One of the things I learned in editing 'The Reagan Diaries' is to never say what Reagan would do, because he surprised people.