The Tea Party has very close affinities with independent third-party movements like the George Wallace movement. The Tea Party is still inchoate, still trying to figure out what it's going to become.

I don't concentrate on any one period of history; I like to locate my stories in wildly different eras and places. I seem to be drawn to large, sprawling, uncomfortable swaths of American history, finding embedded within them a tight narrative that involves strife, heroism, and survival under difficult circumstances.

I majored in Southern history in college, and much of my early work at my first job - as a staff writer at 'Memphis' magazine - focused on race relations.

Hampton Sides Quotes