Beginning in 1981, when government policies began to undermine the liberal consensus of the previous generation, wealth began to diverge. It is more unevenly distributed than ever before.
The Teapot Dome scandal seemed to epitomize the administration of the president at the time, Warren G. Harding, although Harding himself was not implicated in that particular scandal.
Producing 1,200 words every day, when you're already working a full-time job is a lot.
The Middle Way included the largest public works project in American history: the Interstate Highway system, which updated American roads for a driving generation with leisure time on their hands, but expanded the federal government's purview.
Trump brings rhetoric and reality together in a cartoon caricature of a Republican politician that anyone can understand. That gives him a vital role in history. He is the perfect exorcist to drive a stake through the heart of the modern Republican Party.
Undermining the rule of law is an assault on the government of the United States.
I have always been a letter writer, and I found when my numbers got over half a million, I couldn't think about how many people there were out there. I had to think as if I were writing a letter to my brothers and sisters, to my good friends with whom I have had a correspondence since I could hold a pen.
The only thing that's really hard for me is when I go to bed after everybody else in my house gets up. And that - you just feel stale. It just feels awful to be still finishing your day when everybody else is starting theirs.
One of the things historians do is we look for patterns. And in many ways, Donald Trump is a very easy read, because he operates in certain ways. And he is the king of distraction.
The number of states in the union has been fixed at 50 for so long, few Americans realize that throughout most of our history, the addition of new states from time to time was a normal part of political life.
New states were supposed to join the union when they reached a certain population, but in the late 19th century, population mattered a great deal less than partisanship.
Nixon clearly broke laws. He clearly believed he needed to stay in power to protect the country. But he recognized that he was breaking the law, and he tried to cover it up.
The question of impeaching Donald Trump is about replacing the toxic partisanship of today's Republican party with America's traditional rule of law. It has become a constitutional imperative.
Today, the District of Columbia has more residents than at least two other states; Puerto Rico has more than 20. With numbers like that, admitting either or both to the union is less a political power play on the Democrats' part than the late-19th-century partisan move that still warps American politics.
When Ronald Reagan's administration was exposed for having illegally sold arms to Iran to raise money covertly for the Contra rebels fighting the Nicaraguan government, Reagan acknowledged that the evidence was damning - yet defended the principle behind the scheme.
Republicans are a shrinking minority ruling an increasingly angry majority that not only wants to change the Republican policies that are moving wealth upward, but also threatens to hold Republican leaders accountable to the law.
In the mid 19th century, it had taken a generation of political rhetoric to induce southern soldiers to fight for the interests of a small ruling class in the name of democracy.
When a president, as Trump does, demonises opponents as an un-American mob trying to destroy the country, it is not a lunatic who tries to harm them, it is a patriot.
Roosevelt's New Deal regulated business, protected social welfare and promoted national infrastructure on the principle that the role of government was not simply to protect the property of the wealthy, but rather was to promote equality of opportunity for all.
In short, Republicans under Trump have finally destroyed the New Deal, turning the government over to a small cadre of wealthy businessmen, unhampered, to run the country as they see fit.
