I don't like to write history as viewed from the mountaintop. If I can't try to make what happened as real and compelling as a made-up what happened, then I don't want to write it. And if critics are bothered by it, that's fine, don't bother me. What pleases me most is when, on the one hand, somebody educated or well-read praises what I've written, and then a guy jumps out of a Brink's truck on Michigan Avenue in Chicago on a sunny morning and tells me he loves m books. I don't history ought to be reserved for the high priests of academe.
