My biography of Frank Sinatra is not paean to his music but rather an illumination of the man behind the music, who once described himself as 'an 18-karat manic-depressive who lived a life of violent emotional contradictions with an over-acute capacity for sadness as well as happiness.'

Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to ensure fair pay for women in the workplace. In addition, he succeeded in getting a measure passed to end discrimination against gays in the military.

Shortly after Senator Eugene J. McCarthy died in 2005 the age of 89, I became an honorary member of the committee starting a fellowship in McCarthy's name at his alma mater, Saint John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota.

The authorized biographers - the ones hand-picked to write the sanitized version of a subject's life - sit up front with the swells while the unauthorized biographer who writes without access or approval gets elbowed to the back of the bus.

The rumors of Frank Sinatra's violence and his ties to organized crime were such that journalists joked in print about me ending up in concrete boots and sleeping with the fishes if I proceeded to write his biography.

When Caroline Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 as her father's rightful heir, she laid upon him the mantle of Camelot and the enduring mystique of John F. Kennedy, who, according to polls, continues to be America's most beloved president.

A hero is someone we can admire without apology.

There's still time for redemption if I live long enough, don't you think?

Gay marriage has jumped out of the closet on to the front page. Everyone from the president of the U.S. to retired four-star general Colin Powell is embracing the issue, now supported by most Americans. Still, a few people, like former First Lady Laura Bush appear to be conflicted.

I am what is known as a benched Catholic and disillusioned by the church doctrine. I believe in things the Catholic Church does not believe in: divorce being one, and a women's right to choose being another.

Most historians agree that Abraham Lincoln was the most important man to ever occupy the White House because he abolished slavery and kept the states united through a bloody civil war.

He ordered killings as easily as he ordered linguine.

I have believed in the biographies I have written. I truly can tell you that they have influenced our society politically, culturally, socially.

I tend to place my own value in spirituality rather than religiosity.

I would love to do an unauthorized biography about Congress... It's like a secret society up there.

JFK used to say the bishops and the cardinals were all Republicans, but the nuns were Democrats! I sort of believe that too.

Once I decide to do something, I can't have people telling me I can't. If there's a roadblock, you jump over it, walk around it, crawl under it.

People forget that unauthorized does not mean untrue and authorized does not mean authentic.

Presidents often disappoint, but first ladies rarely do.

Studies have been done showing that there really are gender differences, that women do bring more congeniality and compromise to the table.