Never before or since, ... has the world been brought so close to nuclear war.

War has been more common than peace, and extended periods of peace have been rare in a world divided into multiple states

All comparisons between America's current place in the world and anything legitimately called an empire in the past reveal ignorance and confusion about any reasonable meaning of the concept empire, especially the comparison with the Roman Empire.

Hopefully WorldCom will not use its debt-free status to start a price war.

History had its own way of explaining things. The way historians explain things is by telling a story.

Painters, especially American painters since the Second World War, have been much more troubled, beset by formal perplexity, than American writers. They've been a laboratory for everybody.