"Some of our best journalists take themselves even more seriously than the politicians they write about."

"Success in war underpins the claims to greatness of many presidents."

"Mr. Reagan spent World War II, the global conflict fought and won by his generation, making training films in Hollywood."

"The product of extraordinary wealth allied to a taste for the sumptuous."

"The sense of national catastrophe is inevitably heightened in a television age, when the whole country participates in it."

"Maimed but still magnificent... Europe's mightiest medieval cathedral."