de gaulle said to a friend, i am stunned they are crying all over france. it was as if he was a frenchman, a member of their own family. elaine koenig -- elaine de kooning said it was a personal loss. she threw down her brush and did not paint for an entire year. now, because americans and foreigners felt they knew him, and given almost a family member, they wanted a moral close at hand that they could visit. and so we get the roads, bridges, highways, buildings named for him creating this grief stricken empire of asphalt and mortar and brick and bronze. more named for him and lincoln and washington. and as i say in the book, an empire so extensive that if you could extinguish every light on earth except those eliminating something named for john f. kennedy, nuts launched from the kennedy space center could look down and see a web of flights stretching across europe and north america. and they would see more if west virginia changed its name to -- or if massachusetts had stamped land of candidate on its license plate. george orwell once wrote that it was impossible to prove definitively that shakespeare had been a great author. and said there is no test