“I learned long ago on the battlefields of Vietnam that in a crisis, there is no …” — Jim Webb

I walk fast. I have an aversion to wasting time. My sense of constant motion is one of the reasons that my eldest daughter, Amy, nicknamed me 'the Tasmanian Devil' when she was in her teens.

There is nothing that's been in any of my novels that, in my view, hasn't been either illuminating surroundings or defining a character or moving a plot.

Contrary to assumptions in the law, white America is hardly a monolith.

Affirmative action was designed to recognize the uniquely difficult journey of African-Americans. This policy was justifiable and understandable, even to those who came from white cultural groups that had also suffered in socio-economic terms from the Civil War and its aftermath.