This one a book review, deserving a response.
To the Editor;
Amity Shlaes fizzles what is an otherwise honorable review of the life of Herbert Hoover when she declaims 'progressive historians' who, "... are eager to absolve a hero of government expansion, Roosevelt, from responsibility for the Depression that plagued his first two terms. If Roosevelt was good, they reason, then those who preceded him—Hoover especially, but also Calvin Coolidge and Warren Harding—must be bad" ("He knew he was right" March 29, 2013).
With her new book extolling Calvin Coolidge, and a previous work attempting to deconstruct the historical record on Franklin Roosevelt, Ms. Shlaes by her own logic could be read as offering her own 'extreme' version of history.
It works both ways, unfortunately. Either historians succumb to the group think narrative of their chosen partisan base, or they interpret the facts as they find them. Students deserve better than to be treated as ignorant and naive, unable to perceive the engine of bias. Seeing so much personal at stake in her scholarship, Ms. Shlaes should not be confused if one might be tempted to question understanding of the past.
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