“Thoughtlessness is the new manners, and I’ve got to say I don’t like it… Somehow, so many little pieces of courtesy have gone by the wayside. People in your face, in your business, not caring if they are being disrespectfully loud…

So over the last year there were days when I remembered to write things down that struck me. Many are written here. They cover the map of my mind, unleashed on you the way they appear in my head.
Little things, the way I can comment on them in a book but not on TV. In no particular order—oh, and I don’t necessarily have any answers guaranteed to work for anyone.
-- Excerpted from The Foreword (pgs. xiii-xiv)

All over the country nowadays, we’re witnessing a frightening decline in civility, whether it’s teens being bullied to the point of suicide, tourists being subjected to searches at airports that look more like foreplay than pat downs, or simply people talking loudly on cell phones in places where it’s rude or illegal to do so. In the political realm, we’ve heard mudslinging candidates refer to opponents as a “witch,” “whore” or “degenerate idiot,” a Republican interrupt the President’s State of the Union speech to call him a liar, and even a fellow Democrat tell Obama to “shove it.”

“There are many possible interpretations of what it means to create dangerously, and Albert Camus… suggests that it is creating as a revolt against silence, creating when both the creation and the reception, the writing and the reading, are dangerous undertakings, disobedience as a directive…

Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. This is always what I’ve thought it meant to be a writer. Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.

Coming from where I come from, with the history I have—having spent the first twelve years of my life under both dictatorships of Papa Doc and his son, Jean-Claude—this is what I’ve always seen as the unifying principle among all writers."
-- Excerpted from Chapter One (pgs. 10-11)

“During my four years in the White House, I kept a personal diary by dictating my thoughts and observations several times each day… When dictating entries to my diary… I intertwined my personal opinions and activities with a brief description of the official duties I performed.

Readers should remember that I seldom exercised any restraint on what I dictated, because I did not contemplate the more personal entries ever being made public… Despite a temptation to conceal my errors, misjudgments of people, or lack of foresight, I decided when preparing this book not to revise the original transcript…

Throughout this book, I wrote explanatory notes to help the reader understand the context of the entries, bring to life the duties of a president, offer insights into a number of the people I worked with, and point out how many of the important challenges remain the same… In presenting this annotated diary, my intention is not to defend or excuse my own actions or to criticize others, but simply to provide, based on current knowledge, an objective analysis.”
-- Excerpted from the Preface (pgs. xiii-xv)

“John and Angelena Rice were extraordinary, ordinary people. They were middle-class folks who loved God, family, and their country. I don’t think they ever read a book on parenting. They were just good at it… They built a world together that wove the fibers of our life into a seamless tapestry of high expectations and unconditional love. And somehow they raised their little girl in Jim Crow Birmingham to believe that even if she couldn’t have a hamburger at the Woolworth’s lunch counter, she could be President of the United States… Good parents are a blessing. Mine were determined to give me a chance to live a unique and happy life. In that they succeeded, and that is why every night I begin my prayers saying, ‘Lord, I can never thank you enough for the parents you gave me.’” - Excerpted from the Author’s Note (pg. x)