Nathaniel Philbrick

“XTC is my favorite band; I'm a huge Neil Young fan, Jayhawks, all that type of stuff. I like Death Cab for Cutie, also Ryan Adams. I try to impress my children: 'Have you listened to such-and-such?' They're not impressed.”

“I'm not one of these people who want to tear down our heroes and that kind of thing.”

“Unfortunately, we have a tendency to see figures from the past as caricatures - either all good or all bad - when the truth is always much more complex.”

“One of the questions I face when working on a book about a historical event is whether I should visit the actual place that I'm writing about. No matter how scrupulously maintained a historic house or battlefield may be, it is nothing like it was in the long-ago past.”

“You know, if you're at home with children, you lose twenty-five IQ points.”

“I hated the fact that I had to read 'Moby-Dick' as a senior in high school.”

“What's been largely forgotten is that Washington was highly passionate and aggressive, and it was only after losing Philadelphia to the British after a string of disastrous battlefield performances that he finally resigned himself to the more conservative approach with which he has since become associated.”

“Whatever you read, there's no better place to read than the cockpit or the berth of a boat. It's kind of like being in a womb.”

“How much of assumed national and personal character comes from the fact that we have never truly known need to the point of having our character tested? Willing conscientious objectors underwent controlled starvation and confirmed how quickly it impacts the initiative and generosity we like to think of as "American" characteristics.”

“You cannot underestimate the influence of Shakespeare.”

“History is obviously dependent on the evidence, and it's always amazing to me how much evidence there is.”

“Reading 'Moby-Dick' helps you discover how to live.”

“As an author of narrative history, I read a lot of history books.”

“Joseph Warren, like a lot of revolutionary leaders, was into Enlightenment literature.”

“I watch a lot of bad TV. I spend my entire day reading and writing, and after dinner my idea of fun is just to watch a lot of bad TV. That's how I relax and stay in touch with modern culture.”

“By 1760, the Nantucketers had virtually exterminated the local whale population.”

“As a former English major, I have always been fascinated by the connections between literature and history.”

“There's an ugly civil war side to revolutionary Boston that we don't often talk about and a lot of thuggish, vigilante behavior by groups like the Sons of Liberty.”

“The irony is that Washington was, in reality, very much like Benedict Arnold. The big difference was that Washington was ultimately able to control his emotions, something Arnold never learned to do.”

“Most Americans have no clue that before there were highways, there were only waterways to get through the wilderness. If you weren't on a lake or a river, you were in a jungle.”