Richard Norton Smith
Richard Norton Smith
Richard Norton Smithis an American historian and author specializing in U.S. presidents and other political figures. In the past, he worked as a freelance writer for The Washington Post, and worked with U.S. Senators Edward Brooke and Bob Dole...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionHistorian
CountryUnited States of America
august convention delegation earned floor guest money tickets
I was 14 years old in August of 1968 and had earned the money and had managed to get tickets as a guest of the Massachusetts delegation to the Republican convention in Miami and where I was on the floor in the Rockefeller demonstrations.
america civil comparing country era given hung justified later lincoln nixon portrait power richard seen vietnam war
Richard Nixon as a 12-year-old was given a portrait of Lincoln that he hung over his bed. Nixon also justified what would later be seen as abuses of power by comparing America in the Vietnam era to the country during the Civil War.
lincoln mount patron presidents saint unpopular
Presidents in wartime, embattled presidents, unpopular presidents, they all look to Lincoln. He's their patron saint because no president was more embattled or more unpopular than Lincoln was during his presidency. We think he was born on Mount Rushmore. Not so.
hardest historian relative
One of hardest for any historian or a biographer to do is to capture convincingly on paper something as ethereal as charisma. It's a relative term, and different generations define it differently.
I'm very old-fashioned - I don't operate with an agenda. If you're a biographer, you want to be passionate about what you're doing but dispassionate about how you do it.
government talking disaster
When we're talking about the "American response" to any disaster, it's not just a government response, an official response, it's a popular response.
country organization overwhelming-desire
The American people are not uniquely, but characteristically the most spontaneously generous in the world and you're seeing that all over this country in Web sites of charitable organizations that are crashing because of the overwhelming desire on the part of ordinary people to help out.
real past gripping
David Pietrusza has a gift for making the past both real and dramatically gripping.