Letters & Correspondence Books

The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, 1956-1991

Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg

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Editorial Review:

One of the central relationships in the Beat scene was the long-lasting friendship of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. Ginsberg introduced Snyder to the East Coast Beat writers, including Jack Kerouac, while Snyder himself became the model for the serious poet that Ginsberg so wanted to become. Snyder encouraged Ginsberg to explore the beauty of the West Coast and, even more lastingly, introduced Ginsberg to Buddhism, the subject of so many long letter exchanges between them. Beginning in 1956 and continuing through 1991, the two men exchanged more than 850 letters. Bill Morgan, Ginsberg’s biographer and an important editor of his papers, has selected the most significant correspondence from this long friendship. The letters themselves paint the biographical and poetic portraits of two of America’s most important—and most fascinating—poets. Robert Hass’ insightful introduction discusses the lives of these two major poets and their enriching and moving relationship.

Letters Home

Sylvia Plath

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Sylvia Plath-An insight 5 out of 5 stars.
25 of 30 people found this review helpful.

This book gives an great insight into the mind of one the most incredible writers ever. All her thoughts and feelings are expressed so wonderfully. Even in her letters she keeps the same dry wit and rage that draws so many people to her. She was an incredible writer and this is just another example of her fine work.

Sad 2 out of 5 stars.
6 of 16 people found this review helpful.

Honestly, I don't know how to review this book. Sylvia Plath has inspired a lot of curiosity about her life since she committed suicide and left a mass of interesting poetry and bad prose in her wake. I will admit that she has intrigued, and still intrigues me. I just have to wonder about a few things: why would her mother publish this book of correspondence during her lifetime? Perhaps she was seeking to establish a view of her daughter as a real, breathing, doubting human being, not just as some kind of feminist icon (and if you believe Plath was a feminist in the modern, PC version of the word, just read her journals). I wouldn't doubt that; the bond between Aurelia Plath and her daughter was undoubtedly strong, though imperfect (as are all parental relationships). But these letters. . .perhaps they will be of interest to scholars in the future, excavating the mines of a minor 20th-century poet seeking motivations for some of her more famous poems. . .I don't know. I don't mean to belittle either Sylvia or her mother, but I don't know why this uninteresting book was published.

The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder

Thornton Wilder

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Editorial Review:

This volume of more than three hundred letters, selected from some seven thousand gathered around the world, is the first to provide a comprehensive collection of Thornton Wilder's correspondence. Wilder was known as a man who knew everybody, and these letters vividly document the range of his friendships. Readers will find him roller-skating with Walt Disney, attending an inaugural reception for FDR at the White House, describing his life as a soldier in two World Wars, mentoring younger writers, dining out with Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, and savoring his association with colorful local citizens during his twenty-month stay as a self-styled “hermit” in an Arizona mining town.

Through Wilder's correspondence, readers can eavesdrop on his conversations with Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein. Noël Coward, Max Reinhardt, Gene Tunney, Alexander Woollcott, Laurence Olivier, Ruth Gordon, Garson Kanin, Aaron Copeland, Paul Hindemith, Leonard Bernstein, Edward Albee, and Mia Farrow. Equally absorbing are Wilder's intimate letters to his family.

The author of such classics as Our Town and The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Wilder was a born storyteller and dramatist; we see that talent emerging in scenes and incidental dialogue in his letters. With characteristic exuberance, he draws on his vast reservoir of learning and his incessant reading to inform, encourage, instruct, and entertain. In this collection, Thornton Wilder speaks for himself in his own unique, enduring voice.

Deep Blue

Kat Martin

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

For reporter Hope Sinclair, writing about the recovery of a sunken Spanish treasure off Pleasure Island should be her big chance. But Hope can't help feeling that she's been hand-picked for this job for all the wrong reasons. Someone wants Hope out of New York and off the story that could blow a corruption case wide open. If they think sending her to paradise will shut her up, they've got another thing coming. Hope's subject, treasure hunter Conner Reese, isn't happy to have her along for the ride. He doesn't need the publicity, nor does he want an incredibly tempting redhead on board, driving his crew - and himself - to distraction. But there's something else, too. As a former Navy SEAL, Conner can sense extreme danger, and danger is following Hope Sinclair very, very closely...Now, in the deceptively serene beauty of a sultry Caribbean paradise, Hope and Conner are moving ever closer to finding a priceless Incan relic, and diving deeper into waters more treacherous than they could possibly imagine...

Letters of a Nation

Andrew Carroll

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Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The letters in this treasure-trove date from September 1630--when John Winthrop, newly ensconced as governor of Massachusetts, wrote to his wife in England--to August 1996, when a young adopted woman named Michelle Song addressed a moving letter to her yet-undiscovered birth mother. In between are more than 200 other epistles--written by the celebrated and the obscure, the powerful and the powerless--that in aggregate paint a revealing portrait of the United States. The collection's range is enormous--from Groucho Marx's hilarious 1947 tirade to Warner Brothers, which was trying to block him from using A Night in Casablanca as a movie title, to a June 1744 letter from "The Indians of the Six Nations" to William & Mary College, politely declining an offer to educate some of their young (and noting that some previous white-educated Indians "were bad Runners, ignorant of every means of living in the Woods, unable to bear either Cold or Hunger, knew neither how to build a Cabin, take a Deer, or kill an Enemy, spoke our language imperfectly, were therefore neither fit for Hunters, Warriors, or Counsellors.")

Whenever possible, editor Andrew Carroll presents the letters in their original form, complete with capitalization and spelling quirks (including misspellings), which adds to their vividness. His brief introductions tell just enough about each letter without overshadowing their subjects. This splendidly presented piece of research offers a revealing, eminently readable window onto America's past.

Dear Mr. President: Letters to the Oval Office from the Files of the National Archives

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Editorial Review:

"The letters provide a nostalgic timeline of American history told through the words and feelings of Americans, from regular folks to kings." —Star Gazette, Elmira, NY, Dec. '05

"There are more than 80 letters, reflecting both our history and our very American sense that when we speak, our president should listen." —The Arizona Republic, Dec. '05

Drawn from the extensive holdings of the National Archives—which includes all of the Presidential libraries—these carefully chosen letters remind us that ours is a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people," which entitles us to make our views known to our leaders. Most of the letters come from working citizens; others were written by notable figures: John Glenn, Elvis Presley, Walt Disney, Ho Chi Minh, Nikita Kruschev, Upton Sinclair, John Steinbeck, Robert Kennedy, and many more.

Grouped thematically, the sections cover such topics as civil rights, the Cold War, physical fitness, joblessness, World War II, western expansion, and the space race. An introduction by NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams and essays by Dwight Young evoke the tenor of the times in which the letters were written. A wonderful gift book for any American, Dear Mr. President is both enlightening and fun to read.

First Class Citizenship: The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson

Michael G. Long

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

“Brings together not only an extraordinary set of documents by and about the postbaseball Robinson but, through these letters, an extraordinary account of the times.” —Gerald Early, BookForum

Jackie Robinson’s courage on the baseball diamond is one of the great stories of the civil rights struggle, but he was a fighter off the field as well. In First Class Citizenship, Michael G. Long unearths a remarkable trove of Robinson’s correspondence with such towering political figures as Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Hubert Humphrey, Nelson Rockefeller, and Barry Goldwater. These extraordinary conversations reveal the scope and depth of Robinson’s effort to rid America of racism.

Writing eloquently and with evident passion, Robinson offered support to both Democrats and Republicans, and challenged the nation’s leaders when he felt they were guilty of hypocrisy—or worse. Through his words and actions, Robinson personified the “first class citizenship” he considered the birthright of all Americans, whatever their race.

Letters to a New Teacher: A Month-by-Month Guide to the Year Ahead

Jim Burke, Joy Krajicek

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Joy's questions and Jim's responses evoke in us an appreciation for what it means to do the work called teaching with the "living intensity of soul." May such soulful teaching flourish among us: here is a book that can help it be so.
- Parker Palmer and Sam Intrator

Every new teacher needs a mentor, someone smart, experienced, compassionate, and reliable to give advice, share strategies, and lend a supportive ear. What if every new English teacher could have one the nation's most-recognized master teachers as their mentor?

Now they can.

Letters to a New Teacher is the chance of a professional lifetime, an opportunity to read the letters and emails Jim Burke exchanged with novice teacher Joy Krajicek - letters in which Jim opens his practice, his mind, and his heart to guide Joy through her first year in the classroom. Jim fields the whole gamut of questions - from typical classroom-management matters to challenging instructional situations to sensitive topics like the boundaries of studentteacher relationships. His answers open the classroom experience up for novices to understand how to organize their space and time, how to plan instruction yet maintain flexibility, how to communicate effectively with the two-hundred personalities they encounter each day, and how to maintain professionalism under pressure.

As gentle, humorous, and supportive as they are practical, Jim's responses to Joy's questions are immediately useful and are presented in chronological order. From August through June, you'll watch as her questions become increasingly complex and see how Jim's answers build upon one another to create a considered, consistent, and disciplined way of thinking about the teaching of English.

Start a your career the right way. Read Letters to a New Teacher and put the thoughts of a master mentor to work in your classroom. Or give Letters to a New Teacher to a novice so they can discover a wellspring of ideas, a source for emotional sustenance, and a buoy for their spirits during difficult moments.

Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote

Truman Capote

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A book for fans of the genre and of the man 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 11 people found this review helpful.

"Your letter was too brief a treat, but a treat all the same; there is only one excitement to my day, and that is when the postman comes." So wrote the author who sometimes waited an hour for the best word to come to mind when engaged in concocting a novel, yet spun off letters to friends and colleagues like cotton candy.

Truman Capote, to whom fame came early and lasted long, called all of his correspondents by such adorations as "precious baby, darling child." To almost anyone he was likely to say, "much love, little blue eyes" or "I miss you 24 hours of the day" or "a thousand kisses, precious." It seemed that nearly everyone he wrote to was his darling, his love, and wanted showering with kisses.

Not that he couldn't be cutting and catty, though always with gentility, at least on paper: "I'm afraid he's set fire to too many bridges"; "he's furious because anyone other than himself is here" (of W.H. Auden); and, of Jimmy (James) Baldwin, "his essays are at least intelligent, though they almost invariably end on a fakely hopeful, hymn-singing note."

Of his early work on IN COLD BLOOD he wrote, "This is my last attempt at reportage." Like almost every writer, he wanted to know what the critics were really thinking and get copies of all his reviews. He managed to sound both humble and very puffy when referring to his successes, and terribly anxious about the fate of pieces in progress.

A collection of so very many letters (for that is all the book is) can start to feel water-logged after a while. It's a good thing to recall that posterity will not necessarily be fascinated by one's complaints about the cold, the prices of goods in foreign cities, or the antics of one's pets (and Truman had many). We would all make our letters more artistic and succinct if we imagined that they'd be read generations hence.

So we can speculate on two forking probabilities. One: that Capote well knew that his words would be taken for gemstones ages from now and wrote with the cagey casualness of the omniscient observer. Two: that Capote never imagined for an instant that anyone would collect his letters to friends and place them on the altar of memory for the entire world to see.

I prefer the second alternative, because I like thinking of Capote as a natural, sweet-hearted man, who showed his artistic brilliance to the public but saved his syrup and a touch of spice for his epistolary relationships.

TOO BRIEF A TREAT is a book for fans of the genre and of the man.

--- Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott, author of WITH IT: A Year on the Carnival Trail

Editorial Review:

The private letters of Truman Capote, lovingly assembled here for the first time by acclaimed Capote biographer Gerald Clarke, provide an intimate, unvarnished portrait of one of the twentieth century’s most colorful and fascinating literary figures.

Capote was an inveterate letter writer. He wrote letters as he spoke: emphatically, spontaneously, and passionately. Spanning more than four decades, his letters are the closest thing we have to a Capote autobiography, showing us the uncannily self-possessed na•f who jumped headlong into the post—World War II New York literary scene; the more mature Capote of the 1950s; the Capote of the early 1960s, immersed in the research and writing of In Cold Blood; and Capote later in life, as things seemed to be unraveling. With cameos by a veritable who’s who of twentieth century glitterati, Too Brief a Treat shines a spotlight on the life and times of an incomparable American writer.

Away From Home: Letters to My Family

Lillian Carter, Gloria Carter Spann

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Editorial Review:

Lillian Carter was one of the most loved and admired women in the country. Mother of a president, she was a strong, resolutely independent woman with a mind of her own, determined to bypass the barriers of age and sex.

In these letters to her daughter Gloria that she wrote during her two-year stay in India as a Peace Corps volunteer, we hear the voice of a courageous woman with a sense of humor and an abiding integrity as well as curiosity, who welcomed new customs and fresh faces. Mrs. Carter discovers a determination that brings her peace within herself. And her readers take a daily walk with an extraordinary woman.

Mrs. Carter's letters reveal the ideals, commitment, and emotions of that early generation of Peace Corps volunteers. They are a powerful demonstration of why Jimmy Carter acknowledges the inspiration he drew from his mother, to follow her example.