Good history is good story-telling. And good story-telling demands empathy; it requires understanding different actors, differing motivations, competing goals.

The Chinese Communist Party and the American people are locked in conflict.

Before becoming a college president, I helped over a dozen organizations find strategies to get through some very ugly crises.

Obamacare has eliminated choices for millions of families, suffocated patient-centered medical innovation, and moved the United States closer to European-style centralized planning.

I'm very sad 'Life' wasn't a big hit, But it was undone by politics at NBC. It was intense. I moved my wife, and we had two children back to back. So working those hours and living abroad in L.A. was a handful. But it was a great experience.

I believe, for a long time, protracted wars test the will of any democracy, to be sure, and people will underwrite a protracted war if they see some progress. But if they don't see progress, and it appears to be futile and useless, then that political support begins to evaporate rather quickly.

A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way.

We want our president to be a president and not threaten to shut down the government over a wall. To change the oppression that happens in this country, it has no place in the world, let alone America.