My inspiration. After I read “Modern Times,” I decided I could—I HAD TO-—write such a history of the United States.
Paul Johnson in many ways was the inspiration for “A Patriot’s History of the United States,” and certainly was the model for my subsequent book, “A Patriot’s History of the Modern World.”
His ability to capture a man’s character in just 2-3 lines was unmatched anywhere.
When he was going to school in England, they didn’t teach American history past the revolution. He had to come here to learn the history in order to write, remarkably well, about it.