In December 1942, two guests at a Lincoln Kirstein mixer bonded over their shared love of Hart Crane's poetry. One of them was James Laughlin, the founder of a small publishing company called New Directions, which he had begun only seven years earlier as a sophomore at Harvard. The other was a young playwright named Thomas Lanier Williams, or "Tennessee," as he had just started to call himself. A little more than a week after that first encounter,...

Features approximately 200 previously unpublished letters and emails, personal correspondence of US and foreign troops and civilians who have experienced major conflicts firsthand, from the American Revolution to 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq

Dear Mr. President presents a delirious potpourri of 87 letters, written by people from all walks of life, from children to the working man to the very famous. This carefully selected batch of letters includes the letter from a ten year old Fidel Castro to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940 requesting ten bucks; an offer from Annie Oakley to President McKinley to raise a company of fifty American lady sharpshooters in the event of a war with Spain; a scrawled...