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livrad's review
4.0
This was an entertaining and thought provoking collection of letters to the president(s) from the National Archives.
Some of the more notable letters include:
The King of Siam's letter to Abraham Lincoln; the letter from 54th of Massachusetts, asking for equal pay for Black soldiers, "Are we soldiers or are we laborers?"; Annie Oakley offering to William McKinley to head a female group of sharpshooters in a war against Spain; Amelia Earhart sharing her secret flight plans with FDR; 12-year-old Fidel Castro asking FDR for a U.S. ten-dollar bill; Harold Ickes (Secretary of the Interior in 1944) attesting that Japanese internment was unconstitutional; the scores of letters about the Civil Rights Movement; Albert Einstein warning that atomic weapons pose both a supreme physical and moral threat; a handwritten recipe for drop scones the Queen made at Balmoral and forgot to write down for Eisenhower.
My favorites:
*A ten-year-old Miss Weatherhogg asking FDR that fathers be drafted alphabetically
* The letters about pets
* The letter from Linda Kelly and her friends to Eisenhower: "It's bad enough to send Elvis Presley in the Army, but if you cut his sideburns off, we will just die!"
*12-year-old Leah Russell's 1957 letter in braille saying that the way to end racism is to send every child to school blindfolded.
*7th-grader Andy Smith, whose mother declared his bedroom a disaster, so he was writing to request federal relief funds. And Reagan's awesome response.
Some of the more notable letters include:
The King of Siam's letter to Abraham Lincoln; the letter from 54th of Massachusetts, asking for equal pay for Black soldiers, "Are we soldiers or are we laborers?"; Annie Oakley offering to William McKinley to head a female group of sharpshooters in a war against Spain; Amelia Earhart sharing her secret flight plans with FDR; 12-year-old Fidel Castro asking FDR for a U.S. ten-dollar bill; Harold Ickes (Secretary of the Interior in 1944) attesting that Japanese internment was unconstitutional; the scores of letters about the Civil Rights Movement; Albert Einstein warning that atomic weapons pose both a supreme physical and moral threat; a handwritten recipe for drop scones the Queen made at Balmoral and forgot to write down for Eisenhower.
My favorites:
*A ten-year-old Miss Weatherhogg asking FDR that fathers be drafted alphabetically
* The letters about pets
* The letter from Linda Kelly and her friends to Eisenhower: "It's bad enough to send Elvis Presley in the Army, but if you cut his sideburns off, we will just die!"
*12-year-old Leah Russell's 1957 letter in braille saying that the way to end racism is to send every child to school blindfolded.
*7th-grader Andy Smith, whose mother declared his bedroom a disaster, so he was writing to request federal relief funds. And Reagan's awesome response.
sharonfalduto's review
Letters written to presidents--grandiose things, like the king of Siam offering Lincoln some elephants, Jackie Robinson arguing for equal rights, and more everyday things, like a young man who wrote to president Reagan and asked for federal funds to clean up his room, which his mom had declared "a disaster area." (Reagan wrote back that the boy should begin a volunteer initiative.)
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