When a president was elected with foreign policy experience, it was usually less about his foreign policy experience than other things.

If it's a good story, it's a good story, and it draws readers in.

I've been writing big stories of history, but there are a lot of fascinating little stories.

I've been writing American history for a long time, and I've had a hard time finding strong, interesting female characters. There are women, of course, in American history, but they're hard to write about because they don't leave much of a historical trace, and they're not usually involved in high-profile public events.

Reagan gave essentially the same speech from the beginning to the end of his political career, which was always, 'The American people are great, the government always screws things up, let's get the government out of the way.' On the foreign policy side it was, 'Communism is bad, and we're going to defeat it.'

The Republican Party has moved substantially to the right of where Reagan was.

Reagan has been deified by the Republican Party, which is odd. The Reagan that modern Republicans revere is not the real Reagan.

I had long known the story of Aaron Burr, but when I heard about his remarkable daughter, Theodosia, about the relationship between the two and about her tragic disappearance, I knew I wanted to tell their story.

The Tea Party loves Reagan because he said exactly what they want to hear.

I'm trying to tell the story of the evolution of America. Each biography is a life in time, and I can see there's a particular task for each generation that I write about.