The typical white American woman in 1800 gave birth seven times; by 1900, the average was down to 3.5.
The 'American Idol' and 'X Factor' shows, they're great shows. But I think I need to make a show like that, directed straight to the hood, to the artists that don't get the attention, that don't have the money to make themselves representable.
Ever since the 1860s when photographers travelled the American West and brought photographs of scenic wonders back to the people on the East Coast of America we have had a North American tradition of landscape photography used for the environment.
In 1975 I was among a group of blacks who formed the Black Americans in Support of Israel Committee.
President Obama is the most successful food stamp president in American history. I would like to be the most successful paycheck president in American history.
It's easy for Americans to forget that the food they eat doesn't magically appear on a supermarket shelf.
I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now.
The injustices endured by black Americans at the hands of their own government have no parallel in our history, not only during the period of slavery but also in the Jim Crow era that followed.
I worked for the Cuban American National Foundation for years.
A national carbon tax would devastate an already struggling American economy, force the cost of gas at the pump to jump even higher, and kill millions more jobs here at home.
Americans get it. They're ready for some opportunities to have greener communities, to have cleaner communities, and to have transportation options that perhaps they haven't had in the past.
As the eldest son of an Alabama sharecropper family, I was constantly troubled by a collage of North American southern behaviors and notions in reference to the inhumanity of people. There were questions that I did not know how to ask but could, in my young, unsophisticated way, articulate a series of answers.
'American Idol' is sometimes lumped with reality shows and it has that element - folks-next-door battling it out in a contest. But instead of fighting leeches, bugs, parasites and each other, as on CBS's 'Survivor' and other shows that imitate it, the 'American Idol' contestants, of course, sing.
Protecting Americans from nuclear terrorism rises above politics.
In American religious history, theological qualms tend to get pushed aside when politics intervenes.
I wish it were simply a nightmare, but I think that any reasonable person watching American politics would come to the conclusion that a second Bush administration would in fact incorporate a more radicalized version of what we've seen in the first administration.
The American formula things are out there but they don't have any stories to tell - we have all the stories to tell - but they're all formula.
After Big Media, U.S. colleges and universities are the biggest enemies of the values of red-state Americans.
We are now in the Me Decade - seeing the upward roll of the third great religious wave in American history.
The down side of Americans being obsessed with pop culture is that they kind of like it light.
I am convinced that this approach, a mainstream Democratic approach, commands the strong support of the American people, and presents a sharp and compassionate contrast to the Republican abortion position which offers no real hope or commitment to mother or child.
If you ask the average person on the street about U.S. energy and U.S. oil in particular, our situation, most Americans would say, 'Oh, we're energy poor; we don't have enough oil; we don't have enough natural gas.'
Americans are pretty next level with snowboarding. We have the best training facilities, the best coaches that push us to the next level.
There was always a lot of American music in England until, obviously when the Beatles came around, then there was a shift towards English music, but before then American music was the main thing.
The core of the American public, their hearts and their minds are in the right place. And that gives me hope.
Modern Americans suffer from a fear of judging. Passing judgment on the behavior of fellow human beings is considered an act of medieval, undemocratic intolerance.
In addition to the decline in competition, American politics today is characterized by a growing ideological polarization between the two major political parties.
I hated the lost colony; in second grade, we were doing American History, and they said, We don't know what happened to them. That drove me nuts. That lost colony drove me crazy.
I feel bound to respect Ronald Reagan, as every American should - not least because he chose a career of public service when he could have made a lot more money doing something else, and not least because he took genuine risks for peace.
I've said before that the Ryder Cup is not the European Tour versus the American Tour. It's Europe's best golfers against the US.
My biggest, you know, regret is what happened in Benghazi. It was a terrible tragedy losing four Americans - two diplomats and, now it's public so I can say, two CIA operatives.
The cultural decoding that many American writers require has become an even harder task in the age of globalisation. The experience they describe has grown more private; its essential background, the busy larger world, has receded.
Species conversation is beyond a doubt an issue that truly matters to the American public.
'Smart power' is the use of American power in ways that would help prevent and resolve conflict - not just send our military in.
I know only two words of American slang, 'swell' and 'lousy'. I think 'swell' is lousy, but 'lousy' is swell.
Americans, who make more of marrying for love than any other people, also break up more of their marriages, but the figure reflects not so much the failure of love as the determination of people not to live without it.
