Three years ago I spent my summer vacation trying to find a new way to help persuade the students in my class at Haverhill High School in Haverhill, Massachusetts, that history is not a dead subject but a vital one valued by many people today. I got an idea when I was leafing through an old copy of American Heritage and saw an article by a history teacher who had written to various politicians, military leaders, and authors asking them what he should teach his students about the Vietnam War. He had received many wonderful responses.

I very much liked the idea of writing well-known people to solicit their aid in teaching history. But how would I involve the students? I decided I would let them devise a question, choose the recipients, and each write to his or her own choice directly.

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