This carefully selected collection of letters, spanning from the earliest days of the Republic to the present, were pulled from the extensive holdings of the National Archives. Archivists searched through hundreds of letters held throughout their network, which includes all of the Presidential libraries. Dear Mr. President reproduces 75 letters from everyday citizens and some quite famous people: John Glenn, Elvis Presley, Walt Disney, Ho Chi Minh, Nikita Kruschev, Upton Sinclair, John Steinbeck, Robert Kennedy, and many more.
An introduction by NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams and essays by Dwight Young illuminate and expand the tenor of the times in which the letters were written. Full-size facsimiles of the letters are reproduced with transcripts of the text for easy reading, and letters are grouped thematically: Civil rights, the cold war, physical fitness, joblessness, World War II, the space race, western expansion, among many other topics.
Dear Mr. President is a charming walk through American history through the eyes of ordinary and extraordinary people writing to their President.
THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES: The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an independent Federal agency that preserves our nation's history and defines us as a people by overseeing the management of all Federal records. Enshrined for posterity in the original building in Washington, DC, are the cornerstone documents of our government, the Charters of Freedom: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of Rights. But the National Archives and Records Administration is more than famous documents. NARA's 34 facilities hold about 2.9 million cubic feet of original textual materials-that's more than 8 billion pieces of paper from the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Federal Government. Presidents and politicians, diplomats and soldiers, the famous, the infamous, and the ordinary citizen all have a place here. THOMAS MALLON: Thomas Mallon is a novelist and critic and the author of acclaimed works of historical fiction including Henry and Clara, Two Moons, Dewey Defeats Truman. His nonfiction work includes In Fact: Essays on Writers and Writing, Stolen Words, A Book of One's Own, and Mrs. Paine's Garage. He is the former literary editor of GQ and has contributed frequently to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The American Scholar, and Harper's. His honors include Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, and served in 1998 as chairman of the fiction judges for the National Book Awards. His 2004 novel, Bandbox, centers around New York magazine wars during the 'Roaring Twenties.' He lives in Washington, D.C.
Dwight Young has been actively involved in historic preservation for almost 30 years. He joined the staff of the National Trust in 1977, and moved to Trust headquarters in Washington in 1992. He is the author of
Alternatives to Sprawl,and
Saving America's Treasures. He is best known as author of the "Back Page" feature in
Preservation magazine. In 2003, the National Trust published a collection of these essays titled
Road Trips Through History.
Brian Williams became the anchor of
NBC Nightly News in 2004, taking over for Tom Brokaw, the first such announced change in major network news anchors in two decades. He was the
NBC News Chief White House correspondent, and was the anchor and managing editor of the Saturday edition of
NBC Nightly News for six years. Williams has been awarded three Emmys, and in over 20 years of broadcasting, Williams has reported from 23 countries on countless stories of national and international importance.
