“When you tell a story, there are imperatives of structure, of style, of pacing and all of this, that are there simply because you want to make it a good story. When do you introduce your characters? When do you put them onstage, when do you take them off the stage? How do you weave the different threads of the narrative together?”

American historian and author

H. W. Brands is an American historian and author. He holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin, and earned his PhD there in 1985. He has written more than thirty books on U.S. history. His work has twice been named a Pulitzer Prize finalist, reflecting a career focused on American political and historical writing.