Williamsburg Regional Library

Letters of the century, America, 1900-1999, edited by Lisa Grunwald and Stephen J. Adler

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 677-709) and index

contains biographical information

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Letters of the century

bibliography

41564968

edited by Lisa Grunwald and Stephen J. Adler

America, 1900-1999

Encapsulating the people, places, events and trends that shaped our nation during the last 100 years, this book arrives in time to be a major gift book of the season. Beautifully illustrated and produced, it offers more than 400 letters from both famous figures and ordinary citizens, creating an extraordinary chronicle of our history and an essential volume for any family library. A collection of fascinating letters by Americans, famous and obscure, chronicles a century of life in the United States, from Mark Twain's side-splitting, hilarious letter of complaint to the head of Western Union, to an ecstatic letter from a young Charlie Chaplin upon receiving his first movie contract, to Einstein's warning to Roosevelt about atomic warfare, and a young Bill Gates begging hobbyists not to share software, so innovators can make some money, as well as Mark Rudd's "generation gap" letter to the president of Columbia University during the student riots of the 60s. "Immediate and evocative, letters witness and fasten history, catching events as they happen," write Lisa Grunwald and Stephen J. Adler in their introduction to this remarkable book. In these pages, our century's most celebrated figures become everyday people and everyday people become part of history. Here is a veteran's wrenching letter left at the Vietnam Wall, a poignant correspondence between two women trying to become mothers, a heart-breaking letter from an AIDS sufferer telling his parents how he wants to be buried, an indignant e-mail from a PC user to his on-line server. "Letters," write Grunwald and Adler, "give history a voice." Arranged chronologically by decade, illustrated with over 100 photographs, Letters of the Century creates an extraordinary chronicle of our history, through the voices of the men and women who have lived its greatest moments

Authors included: Joel Chandler Harris -- Walter Reed -- Andrew Carnegie -- Mark Twain -- Theodore Roosevelt -- Elizabeth Cabot -- William Roscoe Thayer -- Susan B. Anthony -- William Dean Howells -- Orville Wright -- Irving Fisher -- Booker T. Washington -- Mary Harris "Mother" Jones -- Jacob Scherer -- Ulbe Eringa -- W.E.B. Du Bois -- Frederick Collins -- Grace Brown -- Wallace Stevens -- Susan Le Flesche Picotte -- Dr. Joseph Collins -- O.J. Elder -- Archibald Butt -- Carl Van Doren -- Robert Peary -- Elizabeth Corey -- Prescott Hall -- Aart Plaisier -- Edith Wharton -- L. Vernon Briggs -- Morris Butler -- Robert Frost -- Mary Dreier -- Gus Cohen -- Arthur Fifield -- Walt Kuhn -- Harry Houdini -- Charlie Chaplin -- W. Franklin -- Henry James -- Leo Frank -- Walter Hines Page -- Alexander Samuelson -- Woodrow Wilson -- Harry Butters -- Laura Ingalls Wilder -- Ruth Gordon -- Lella Secor -- Jesse Day -- W.E.B. Du Bois -- Joseph Tumulty -- Arthur Zimmermann -- Daisy Westbrook -- Kenneth Macleish -- Rose Winslow -- Howard Herrick -- Karl Spencer -- Lincoln Steffens -- John Reed -- John D. Rockefeller, Jr. -- Bill Haywood -- John D. Rockefeller -- Smedley Butler -- Percival Gates -- Elizabeth Stearns Tyler -- Edward House -- Agnes Von Kurowsky -- Thomas Edison -- Bertrand Brown -- Charles Comiskey -- Gertrude Laitinen -- George Washington Carver -- David Sarnoff -- Briton Hadden -- G.W. Price -- Carl Van Vechten -- Clarence Darrow -- George Bernard Shaw -- George Wharton Pepper -- Harry Daughterty -- Huey Long -- William Faulkner -- Ernest Hemingway -- H.L. Mencken -- Edgar Lee Masters -- William Allen White -- William Breen -- Bartolomeo Vanzetti -- Paul Winter -- Maxwell Perkins -- Mary Gold -- Earnest Elmo Calkins -- William Randolph Hearst -- Irving Norton Fisher -- Michael Cullen -- Lawrence Mattingly -- Theodore Dreiser -- F. Scott Fitzgerald -- Amelia Earhart -- Starr Faithfull -- Georgia O'Keeffe -- Bruno Hauptmann -- J.F. Bando -- Lincoln Kirstein -- George "Machine Gun" Kelly -- Clyde Barrow -- Samuel Cowley -- George Draper -- Franklin Roosevelt -- Walter White -- E.J. Humphries -- William Carlos Williams -- Caroline Henderson -- Margaret Suckley -- Helen Keller -- Billy Gobitas -- Alexander Woollcott -- Dorothy Parker -- Margaret Mitchell -- Marion Dickens -- Frank Lloyd Wright -- P.E. Foxworth -- Carey McWilliams -- John Steinbeck -- Thomas Wolfe -- Eleanor Roosevelt -- Albert Einstein -- David Selznick -- George Patton, Jr. -- Jessie Bernard -- Dorothea Taylor -- Rubye Seago -- Lester Markel -- Walter Underwood -- Jonathan Wainwright -- Joseph Breen -- Shizuko Horiuchi -- Dorothy Parker -- Gus Falen -- Dwight D. Eisenhower -- Allen Spach -- John Brainerd -- Robert Hendon -- John F. Kennedy -- Perrin Long -- George Marshall -- Ayn Rand -- H.W. Crayton -- E.B. White -- Henry Giles -- Harry Towne -- Fred Diamond -- Henry Stimson -- Harry Truman -- Meta Maass -- G.C. Brewster -- William Leahy -- Harry Truman -- Jane Poulton -- Jack Poulton -- Groucho Marx -- Fred Allen -- E.G. Hall -- Dalton Trumbo -- Alfred Kinsey -- Alger Hiss -- Anges Maxwell Peters -- Bob Hope -- Zipporah Borowsky -- J. Edgar Hoover -- Mary Church Terrell -- Helen Sellers -- Billy Graham -- Johnny Grzegorcky -- Robert Ward -- Myrna Chase -- Irving Meyers -- Elaine De Kooning -- Lillian Hellman -- Jack Kerouac -- James Watson -- Hugh Hefner -- Ethel Rosenberg -- Ken Bierly -- Nunnally Johnson -- Jo Ann Robinson -- Branch Rickey -- Jonas Salk -- Joanna Shurbert -- William Henry Huff -- Hugh White -- Marianne Moore -- Orval Faubus -- Olga Huckins -- James Thurber -- Rachel Carson -- Joyce Hohlwein -- Robert Moses -- James Baldwin -- Marion Carpenter -- Leonard Gilberg -- Martin Luther King, Jr. -- Jacqueline Kennedy -- Pat Lamb -- Albert Schweitzer -- William Redfield -- Mickey Mantle -- Russ mandor -- Les Johnson -- Francis Fox -- Lady Bird Johnson -- Mae Bertha Carter -- Kenneth Bagby -- Janis Joplin -- David Brown -- Sidney Hook -- d Truma

adult