“When downed American pilots were first taken prisoner in North Vietnam...” — Rick Perlstein Quote

“When downed American pilots were first taken prisoner in North Vietnam in 1964, U.S. policy became pretty much to ignore them - part and parcel of President Lyndon B. Johnson's determination to keep the costs of his increasingly futile military escalation in Southeast Asia from the public.”

“I'm a historian. The act of predicting the future discomfits me, in any event - and the bigger the prediction, the more distrusting I am.”

“Presidents are always also storytellers, purveyors of useful national mythologies. And surprisingly enough, Richard Nixon, this awkward man who didn't even really like people, had not been so bad at this duty - at least in the first four years of his presidency.”

“If Australia wants to be a friend of Asia, it should stop behaving as if it is there to teach us how to run our country.”

“Hopefully I can do well and I hope tennis can get bigger in Japan and Asia. That's my goal.”

“Every time we had a hot war going on in Asia, it was difficult for Asian Americans here.”