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“... Washington bridge and create traffic jams as a form of revenge against the disloyal mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey. Feelings about John Kasich were neutral, and no one seemed much aware of his work for Lehman Brothers at the time of the financial crisis or his role as Newt Gingrich’s sidekick in the House during the 1990s. Mention of Hillary Clinton induced ...”

“... superheroes under assumed names: it’s a room full of Clark Kents. The Marvel powerhouse Stan Lee, who created or co-created such dynamos as Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, The X-Men and Doctor Strange, was born Stanley Martin Lieber. And the first issue of Superman was published, in 1938, by two young American Jews, Jerry Siegel and ...”

“... and cultural models to be imitated across the globe. ‘The true test of a good government,’ Alexander Hamilton wrote, ‘is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration.’ It is a test the United States and Britain have failed ruinously during the current crisis. Both countries had weeks of warnings about the coronavirus outbreak in ...”

“... saying he hoped they could begin talks towards a ‘lasting peace’. His secretary of state, Alexander Haig, insisted that his department be allowed to append a formal letter denouncing a Soviet arms build-up. Only the confrontational part of the message was clear in Moscow. The Cold War rift widened.While Reagan advocated an approach towards the Soviets ...”

“... also oriented us when we were lost. A small image has remained with me: debris over the grave of Alexander Hamilton, the great champion of New York, in the old cemetery of Trinity Church near the WTC. While Thomas Jefferson waxed pastoral about an agrarian America, Hamilton insisted on the cosmopolitanism of the city as the wellspring of the nation. To see ...”

“... of human lives and relationships, and also the most pleasurable. ‘Biography,’ as Hermione Lee says, ‘has so much to do with blame.’ Biographers deal in the back and forth of accusations. I could sniff the mud clinging to them, and if I somehow knew they might bore or disgust me, it may be that I feared they might excite me too. But most of all I ...”

“... brown brogue boots. He was 47 but looked about 29. There was something studied about him – the Alexander McQueen scarf, the lawyerly punctilio – and I’d never met anyone who spoke so easily about such large sums of money. When I asked him the point of the whole exercise he said it was simple: ‘Buy in, sell out, make some zeroes.’ MacGregor ...”