Fred Kaplan

“Obama is a very fine writer with an excellent command of language. His memoir 'Dreams From My Father' is a fine book, but it will not rank as one of the great autobiographies.”

“With all due respect to re-enactors, I consider the Civil War too tragic a subject to make a game of.”

“It should be quite clear that it is possible for unpleasant people who are small in various ways other than in their artistic genius to produce great art. Art and morality have no necessary connection.”

“Gore Vidal was a man of immense literary talent, some of which he used well, some of which he wasted.”

“Serious biographies need to have a historical base in facts.”

“We do ourselves a disservice when we self-servingly massage the record.”

“Reading Edmund Morris's 'Colonel Roosevelt' is a rewarding journey, as it must also have been for its author, who concludes his three-volume saga begun in 1980 with publication of 'The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt.'”

“Lincoln was the Twain of our politics.”

“In his life, Charles Dickens was like the rest of us, but maybe more so: another poor and wonderful soul attempting to deal with his and the world's pain and confusion in the best way he knew how.”

“'Colonel Roosevelt' is compelling reading, and Morris a brilliant biographer who practices his art at the highest level.”

“Myth and mythology often serve constructive and aspirational purposes. But they also do harm.”

“I'm not a Lincoln expert, rather a biographer who has had the pleasure of reading much of what has been written about him from his lifetime to this year of his bicentennial. Some advice: Don't try that unless you have at least five years available.”

“He had entered another imaginative world, one connected to the beginning of his life as a writer, to the Napoleonic world that had been a lifelong metaphor for the power of art, for the empire of his own creation He began to dictate notes for a new novel, "fragments of the book he imagines himself to be writing." As if he were now writing a novel of which his own altered consciousness was the dramatic center, he dictated a vision of himself as Napoleon and his own family as the Imperial Bonapartes....William and Alice he grasped with his regent hand, addressing his 'dear and most esteemed brother and sister.' To them, to whom he had granted countries, he now gave the responsibility of supervising the detailed plans he had created for 'the decoration of certain apartments, here of the Louvre and Tuileries, which you will find addressed in detail to artists and workment who take them in hand.' He was himself the 'imperial e”

“I want to contribute to the culture and keep great writers alive by telling the stories of their lives.”

“I first wrote a biography of Thomas Carlyle, and it turned out I loved writing biographies and had a talent for it. I believed I had a contribution to make.”

“The post-assassination Lincoln took on a greatly amplified importance to much of the American public, probably the president most deeply reviled in his lifetime and mostly highly regarded after his death.”

“As became a young sinner, Sam [Mark Twain] had a special interest in Satan. He asked his Sunday school teacher questions about Eve in the garden, wondering "if he had ever heard of another woman who, being approached by a serpent, would not excuse herself and break for the nearest timber." Twain recalled, "He did not answer my question, but rebuked me for inquiring into matters above my age and comprehension.”

“The challenge of a president himself struggling to find the conjunction between the right words and honest expression, a use of language that respects intellect, truth, and sincerity, has largely been abandoned.”

“Lincoln is distinguished from every other president, with the exception of Jefferson, in that we can be certain that he wrote every word to which his name is attached.”

“Political history is not the only way to approach historical figures.”