January 2011

Your article on General Sherman in the July/August 1987 issue was fascinating. I am General Sherman’s great-great-grandson and have been studying his life for several years. I have collected dozens of books, articles, and other memorabilia on him and his impact on this country.

At the end of your article, you mentioned that the last major biography of Sherman was by Lloyd Lewis in 1932. Actually, a first-rate biography, William Tecumseh Sherman , by James M. Merrill, was published in 1971 by Rand McNally.

The credit on the silver punch bowl on page 25 of the December 1987 issue should have read Peter T. Kassai and Sons, Manhattan Arts & Antiques Center, Shop No. 1.

by Joyce Jurnovoy and David Jenness: Facts On File: 280 pages.

Well, sure, if you come to New York, you know to go to the Metropolitan, and if you visit Washington, you’re not likely to forget about the Smithsonian. But chances are you could pass through Marion, Ohio, and never know you’d missed the Wyandot Popcorn Museum and its collection of gleaming turn-of-the-century poppers, each with an elegant little steam engine spinning the drum. America on Display will keep you from overlooking many of the nation’s most engaging and occasionally unlikely (The Museum of Ancient Brick) curatorial efforts. The more than two hundred entries range from the elegant and various collections in the Forbes Galleries beneath our editorial offices to the Streitwieser Trumpet Museum in Pottstown, Pennsylvania; from San Francisco’s Tattoo Art Museum to the National Bowling Hall of Fame in St. Louis.

Bernard Weisberger replies: I don’t accept Mr. Bradley’s generous view of Samuel Insull. Bradley rightly notes that Insull’s control came to rest on “pyramided holding companies”—organizations that owned no productive capital but merely the stocks of other corporations, which in turn owned the stocks of still others, until somewhere down the line one finally reached companies that were actually generating and selling gas and electricity. By speculating in holding company securities, a few men, many steps removed from actual production and responsibility, could manipulate the economic fate of thousands of utilities customers and investors. Therefore, such companies were properly outlawed in the utilities business in 1935.

Sure, Insull was not solely to blame for the collapse of the 1930s, and as my article explicitly mentioned, he had some positive achievements. But for these he was amply rewarded, during most of his life, with money and flattery. There is no reason historians should not take a tougher look at the overall performance.

It is not easy to hear Fred Allen’s voice these days. A video tape of one 1945 movie— It’s in the Bag , with Jack Benny—is spottily available in video stores. Five albums of Allen broadcast excerpts have appeared over the years, and some libraries with extensive record collections have them. Many libraries also have the two books Allen wrote as well as a collection of his letters, all of which are out of print.

Among recently published books that fall within our bailiwick, the editors of American Heritage have selected some outstanding titles.

To the Inland Empire Sophie du Pont: A Young Lady in America The Building of Manhattan The Mask of Command America on Display: A Guide to Unusual Museums and Collections in the United States and Canada Close Cover Before Striking

In the course of an admirably passionate piece of work about “the Indomitable Churchill” (February/March), William Manchester gives a misleading impression of Frederick A. Lindemann’s role in the development of radar. The struggle between Lindemann and his rival scientist Sir Henry Tizard should be a settled controversy, and Mr. Manchester’s remarks seem to revive it.

Manchester notes that Lindemann had been keeping his eye on the problem from the beginning, and that RDF (Radio Direction Finder, the initial British name for radar) became “Lindemann’s great mission in the 1930s; it will save England in 1940.…” This gives the impression that Lindemann’s contribution was central to the development and deployment of the defenses that won the Battle of Britain. Alas, the converse is nearer the truth.

As a member and affiliate of the 28th Division for more than sixty years, I’ve read with interest “The Example of Private Slovik” (September/October).

The author accents the inexperience of members of the general court-martial who tried Private Slovik for desertion. Certainly the author is the best judge of his own qualifications for that duty. However, since all U.S. military officers are deemed competent to serve on courts-martial, and since that court had been serving for some months, a 1987 judgment on others who served in 1944 seems questionable, to say the least.

A couple of years ago I visited the Stanford campus at PaIo Alto, and as I stood with a university official under a long cloister that rimmed a bright green lawn, I said what a very handsome place it was. “Oh yes,” he replied instantly. “It’s the loveliest college campus in America.”