Working 14 hours a day until you're 55 and missing your kids growing up is not what I would consider a recipe for happiness.

One gains a double benefit in writing about the past, conjuring up how things might have been, and at the same time acquiring a different perspective on the present.

My literary career was a fluke. Utterly unexpected.

I was a political journalist; I came to writing novels through an interest in politics and power.

And how the government communicates about homeland security is central to how the public responds.

I supported Barack Obama. I wasn't very quiet about my support. I thought he was going to be a refreshing change to George Bush. But what has happened is that we have an election that's become a single-issue election, and that issue is Barack Obama. And he's an icon to both sides.

Pergamon, a prosperous city in western Anatolia, was fabled to have been founded by Hercules' son. Like many Hellenistic cities populated by Greeks who intermarried with indigenous people, Pergamon after Alexander the Great's death (323 B.C.) had evolved a hybrid of democracy and Persian-influenced monarchy.

I believe the Republicans have never thought that democracy was anything but a tribal myth.