A review by pwbalto
Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience by Shaun Usher

5.0

I laughed (Dorothy Parker bored in the hospital, Eudora Welty asking for a job). I cried (Louis Armstrong responding to a soldier's fan letter). I learned more about things I thought I knew (Vonnegut's letter to his parents about Dresden, William Safire's presidential speech in case Armstrong and Aldrin were left stranded on the moon). I was deeply deeply puzzled (why the hell did Amelia Earhart get married if that was how she felt?).

But holy Moses, I am intensely grateful to this book for exposing me to two letters written by Jourdon Anderson and Jermain Loguen, former slaves who were each importuned by their former owners to come back to the farm. More elegant, eloquent, precise, and logically sound expressions of "go fuck yourself" I have never read.