"William Raymond Manchester" was an American author, biographer, and historian. He was the author of 18 books which have been translated into over 20 languages. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal and the Abraham Lincoln Literary Award.

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Japanese naval officers in dress whites are frequent guests at [Pearl Harbor's] officers' mess [and] are very polite. They always were. Except, of course, for that little interval there between 1941 and 1945.

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Actors who have tried to play Churchill and MacArthur have failed abysmally because each of those men was a great actor playing himself.

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It would be inaccurate to say that Churchill and I conversed. Like Gladstone speaking to Victoria, he addressed me as though I were a one-man House of Commons. It was superb.

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Abruptly the poker of memory stirs the ashes of recollection and uncovers a forgotten ember, still smoldering down there, still hot, still glowing, still red as red.

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The coconut trees, lithe and graceful, crowd the beach like a minuet of slender elderly virgins adopting flippant poses.

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And if you came through this ordeal, you would age with dignity.

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Its view, however, was magnificent.

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Our Boeing 747 has been fleeing westward from darkened California, racing across the Pacific toward the sun, the incandescent eye of God, but slowly, three hours later than West Coast time, twilight gathers outside, veil upon lilac veil.

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The destruction of Manila was one of the greatest tragedies of World War II. Of all the allied capitals only Warsaw suffered more.

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