Letters to the Editor – The New York Times
BERNARD F. DICK
TEANECK, N.J.
The writer is professor emeritus of communication and English at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
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To the Editor:
Bernard-Henri Lévy (By the Book, Jan. 1) cites Philip Roth’s “The Plot Against America” as illuminating the current political situation in the United States. It is interesting to note that in a lengthy 2004 review published in The Atlantic, Clive James was somewhat dismissive of the work. He found that many of the plot points strained credibility.
Sadly we now know that Roth was remarkably, frighteningly prescient.
JON ELBAUM
TROY, N.Y.
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‘Bill Clinton’
To the Editor:
As the editor of the series in which Michael Tomasky’s “Bill Clinton” (Jan. 22) appears, I am grateful for Jim Kelly’s positive review. However, two matters need clarification.
Chiding Tomasky for criticizing Howell Raines’s and other Times writers’ attacks on Clinton over the Lewinsky scandal, Kelly says the book doesn’t mention that the paper rejected impeachment. But Tomasky allows that The Times “stopped short of demanding the president’s resignation,” which was well short of supporting impeachment.
Kelly then scolds Tomasky for omitting the press trashing of Lewinsky, which Kelly links to what he calls “an alleged campaign” by a Clinton aide to defame her. No responsible historian would credit allegations that even the House Republican impeachment managers ignored. Tomasky might have cited, for example, the Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s trashing of Lewinsky, but it would not have affected his argument.
SEAN WILENTZ
PRINCETON, N.J.
The writer is a professor of history at Princeton University.
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Giving Humboldt His Due
To the Editor:
Eric Foner’s review of “The Book That Changed America,” by Randall Fuller (Jan. 22), mentions Charles Darwin’s influence on Henry David Thoreau, specifically his “portrait of a ‘teeming, pulsating, natural world.’ ” In fact, both Darwin and Thoreau were strongly influenced by the German scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt.
According to Andrea Wulf’s fine biography (“The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World,” 2015) Darwin first encountered Humboldt’s writing, “Personal Narrative,” while a student at Cambridge and “modeled his own writing on Humboldt’s.”
Thoreau, too, was an avid reader of Humboldt’s books and, according to Wulf, “Humboldt’s name appeared regularly in Thoreau’s journals and notebooks.”
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It would be a shame to overlook the contributions of this lost hero of science once again.
PATIENCE KRAMER
WILMETTE, ILL.
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More on Thoreau’s Reading
To the Editor:
The probing review of Kevin Dann’s book on Henry Thoreau, “Expect Great Things” (Jan. 15), reminds us that Thoreau is held by many to be our “first environmental guru.”
Though she is not as well known and perhaps not as uniformly “transcendental,” I would suggest that Susan Fenimore Cooper also deserves to be considered among those writers who valued nature over scientism — surely as needed today as it was then. Her “Rural Hours,” which preceded “Walden” by four years, was known by, and may have influenced, Thoreau.
DAVID SOHMER SVAHN
DOYLESTOWN, PA.
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