conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Unborn, Don't with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'The Center'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first paragraph for this book
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Center
  Johnson, Lyndon Baines, xii, , , , , , , , 32–61, , , , , , , , , , , , , , 197–98, 199–206, , , , , , , , , , , , , , 297–98, , , , , 345–46
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: five more paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Kennedy, John F., , , 17–19, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 121–22, , , , 146–48, , 150–51, , , , , , , , 198–99, 207–8, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 277–78, , , , , ,
  Vietnam war, , , 41–43, 58–61, , 122–23, 149–50, , 156–58, 160–61, , , 167–68, 175–76, , , , , , , , , , ,
  I was passing the National Gallery on my left, and I noticed on my right an imposing building in vaguely classic style, flanked by two muscular rearing horses. What was it? I peered out of the taxi, and made out a sign over a doorway: "FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION." I'd never set foot in the building, and I had only a very vague notion of what the Federal Trade Commission was supposed to do. For that matter, although Johnnie Walker, the director of the National Gallery, is an old friend, and I've been in the place many times, it occurred to me that I am not really at all qualified to write about the National Gallery.
  It was a dreary, drizzly day, and it was rush hour. As the taxi made its way slowly up the avenue my gloom deepened. There were a lot of buildings I had never been in, and I had hardly a clue to what went on inside them. The Smithsonian—Dillon Ripley, the secretary of the Smithsonian, was another old friend, but I know no more about the place than any tourist. The FBI—well, I'd been investigated by the Bureau several times, for writing what I wasn't supposed to write, but unlike millions of school-age children, I'd never even seen the famous pistol range or the exhibit that shows how John Dillinger got his comeuppance.
  We passed the White House, and I cheered up a bit—I knew a good deal about the White House. Then there were the ugly World War I Navy "tempos" on the left. The first time I'd been in them was back in 1946, when I started reporting in Washington. I'd surprised the late Admiral Forrest Sherman, then Chief of Naval Operations, by asking him whether we really needed a navy, now that we had the bomb—I'll never forget the look of honest amazement on his face. Since then, the Navy high command has moved to the Pentagon, and I had never been back.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last four paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Until rather recently, Washington was the true center of political power in this country only very rarely and intermittently. It was "" during the Civil War, to be sure. But during the long prewar political doldrums, the era of the doughface Presidents, it was no true center of power. Nor was it in the decades between Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. The Washington Henry Adams knew, in that era of the robber barons and the conquest of the West, was a sideshow, sometimes fascinating, more often dull.
  Theodore Roosevelt (the great-uncle who foisted Civil Service on the government) and Woodrow Wilson, who hated each other, together made Washington a genuine national capital, and the First War accelerated the process. There followed another era of the doldrums. Nobody would have thought of calling the sleepy, rather inconsequential Southern town that Washington was in Calvin Coolidge's day the center of anything very important. It was only during the depression and the New Deal that Washington again became, this time for good, the true center of American power.
  This power shift largely explains the almost lunatic hatred which the rich and respectable, above all in the Wall Street financial community, felt for Franklin Roosevelt. The hatred was surely irrational in economic terms—in the New Deal era the rich got steadily richer. But power as well as money was at stake, and, more even than the loss of money, men instinctively resent, and bitterly resist, the loss of power.
  The Wall Street financial community is still powerful, of course, and there are other major power centers in the United States. But the ultimate power lies in Washington. (This is one reason why Wall Street lawyers and financiers who have exercised power, Washington style, and then returned to Manhattan almost always feel a certain nostalgia: having dealt in billions, the symbol of Washington's power, they find it hard to reconcile themselves again to mere millions.) Washington's power is economic and financial as well as political—it is Washington that must choose between easy money and hard money, between applying the brakes or the accelerator to the economy. But Washington's essential power is political. It is in Washington that the great domestic crises must be dealt with, and the great crises of foreign policy too, up to and including the ultimate choice between peace and war.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: It is in Washington that the great domestic crises must be dealt with, and the great crises of foreign policy too, up to and including the ultimate choice between peace and war. It was "" during the Civil War, to be sure. But during the long prewar political doldrums, the era of the doughface Presidents, it was no true center of power. Nor was it in the decades between Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. The Washington Henry Adams knew, in that era of the robber barons and the conquest of the West, was a sideshow, sometimes fascinating, more often dull.
  Theodore Roosevelt (the great-uncle who foisted Civil Service on the government) and Woodrow Wilson, who hated each other, together made Washington a genuine national capital, and the First War accelerated the process. There followed another era of the doldrums. Nobody would have thought of calling the sleepy, rather inconsequential Southern town that Washington was in Calvin Coolidge's day the center of anything very important. It was only during the depression and the New Deal that Washington again became, this time for good, the true center of American power.
  This power shift largely explains the almost lunatic hatred which the rich and respectable, above all in the Wall Street financial community, felt for Franklin Roosevelt. The hatred was surely irrational in economic terms—in the New Deal era the rich got steadily richer. But power as well as money was at stake, and, more even than the loss of money, men instinctively resent, and bitterly resist, the loss of power.
  The Wall Street financial community is still powerful, of course, and there are other major power centers in the United States. But the ultimate power lies in Washington. (This is one reason why Wall Street lawyers and financiers who have exercised power, Washington style, and then returned to Manhattan almost always feel a certain nostalgia: having dealt in billions, the symbol of Washington's power, they find it hard to reconcile themselves again to mere millions.) Washington's power is economic and financial as well as political—it is Washington that must choose between easy money and hard money, between applying the brakes or the accelerator to the economy. But Washington's essential power is political.Until rather recently, Washington was the true center of political power in this country only very rarely and intermittently.