LETTERS

...But in The New Yorker of October 6, 1986, there is a profile of Rear Admiral (Retired) Gene R. LaRocque, director of the Center for Defense Information in Washington, which at some length describes his strong effort for peace...

...The New Yorker’s library informed us that the magazine had not run any articles on generals in the past 10 years...

...Besides, I’m going to be commenting in my March column about Gulf reporters hiding out in cushy hotels...

...Mitgang’s article in the course of preparing the piece...

...Hamilton has violated at least one tenet of basic journalism instruction that I have always taught my University of Michigan reporting students: “If you get the little stuff wrong, who’s going to believe you on the big issues?’ Still, I agree with many of Hamilton’s observations, especially regarding the inaccessibility of much academic writing and the devaluation of teaching at research universities...

...I do not know about Esquire, which I only read at the dentist’s...

...And, as with much humanities work, it certainly was not funded by the government or the private sector...

...This review gives every indication that the reviewer skimmed, rather than read, the book...

...My mother, an early subscriber, finally wrote to Time and simply said, “Jew Lehman cancels her subscription...

...To hear Rauch tell it, my book was mainly an attack on laissez-faire in domestic policy...

...Scott Shuger: So Charlie, what about my proposed article on press coverage of generals for March...

...The U.S...

...But there is something about the smugness (Hamilton would call it common sense) of a Science reporter who, in a mere seven-page tour de force, has the “expertise” to indict bad academic research in everything from news and myth, NASA, immunology, psychology, sociology, mathematics, literature, ergonomics, botany, anesthesiology, and all 138 journals of economics...

...ROBERT KUTTNER Brookline, Massachusetts J’accuse Your constant sniping at Israel has been a source of disgust to me...

...FELICE L. EMANUEL Las Vegas, Nevada...

...RICHARD CAMPBELL Ann Arbor, Michigan Reviewing the reviewer I don’t expect The Washington Monthly to endorse my views, but I appreciated that your reviews of my previous books were seriously done and reflected a careful reading...

...T. BOONE PICKENS Dallas, Texas I realize that Peter Gray’s article in the March issue was about converting our automobile fleet to a less harmful fuel source and not about alternative forms of transportation, but with a title like “Kicking the Oil Habit,” you could have at least mentioned the word bicycle somewhere in the article...

...Shuger: Good points, Charlie...

...But, then, academics don’t usually live in the world of journalistic certainty...

...And I’d better stock up on groceries...

...In my own generation, I follow in her indignant footsteps and say to you and your magazine, “Jew Emanuel cancels her subscription...

...That care was lamentably lacking in Jonathan Rauch’s recent travesty [“Booknotes,” March], which purported to be a review of The End of Laissez-Faire...

...What’s more, they should quit buying gasoline-powered cars completely after 199 1 . If we can send 500,000 troops to the desert in a matter of months, surely we can convert 500,000 vehicles to compressed natural gas in a year...

...There’s no refueling infrastructure because there’s not a market of compressed natural gas vehicles...

...Rauch, erroneously, has me using “New View” to mean economic planning...

...We’re not about to stop short at telling them what to do...

...That CentCom base in Florida probably doesn’t have a decent restaurant...

...Scientific reasoning I am not sure how or why David Hamilton [“Trivia Pursuit,’’ March] picked my article for his slam at bad science...

...HERBERT MITGANG New York, New York The author replies: I am sony I missed Mr...

...Rauch also misuses the phrase “New View,” which has been widely used to describe the technical critique of comparative advantage by economist Paul Krugman and others...

...Mention should also be made of the strong Notes and Comment pieces in The New Yorker’s Talk of the Town section, which over the years have taken sane stands against military adventurism...

...Charles Peters: Scott, this magazine made its reputation on showing other journalists how to write stories-how to dig out information, ask penetrating questions, get answers, analyze...

...No academic I know would claim such scope...

...Good piece, though...

...Unfortunately, it is not a social science article...

...My book had a core argument never acknowledged in the review-namely that America’s obsession with laissezfaire as a principle for global economics is directly related to Pax Americana...

...The federal government should get the ball rolling by converting 500,000 of its vehicles to compressed natural gas...

...If, as Hamilton claims, “80 percent of scientific literature [is] nonsense” and “90 percent of anything is crap,” may we assume that this is true of magazine journalism as well...

...Consumers aren’t switching to vehicles run on compressed natural gas because Detroit isn’t producing them...

...tends to view the global market as an extension of its own, which often hurts American industry...

...Detroit isn’t producing them because there’s no refueling infrastructure in place...

...Or for a diversion you might point your soiled finger at Peru or Tibet or Botswana, or maybe even Liberia...

...There are always worshippers at the wall, even when there is no holy day...

...It was a holy day and there were worshippers at the wall...

...it is a critical article belonging to a humanitiesbased research tradition...

...When it comes to reaping the transportation benefits of compressed natural gas, we’re pretty much chasing our own tail...

...Let me tell you, writing a book is a lot of work...

...As it happens, I wrote that book in 1984-The Economic Illusion...

...ANN BJORK Seattle, Washington In the informative and intelligent article by Scott Shuger, “General Failure” [March], the statement is made that in the past decade, there have been no articles on generals or admirals in The New Yorker or Esquire...

...He has every right to dislike the book, but he should do his homework...

...May I suggest that you switch your venom to India, where 3,000 were killed in six weeks over a holy site claimed by both Moslems and Hindus...

...Authors, and your readers, deserve better...

...LETTER Oil habits die hard Peter Gray’s recent article, “Kicking the Oil Habit” [March], echoes what I’ve been saying for months...

...During the thirties, Time magazine always referred to Henry Morgenthau, the distinguished secretary of the treasury, as “Jew Morgenthau...

...I suppose that for many of us, it’s a comfort to know things are finally reducible to titles, numbers, and the commonsense world of David Hamilton...

...The article also mentions some of his colleagues, retired admirals and generals, who have taken bold positions against excessive military spending and for improving the state of the nation and world without wars...

...Your criticisms of press coverage are good ones, and I’ll write them into a short intro for the piece you are going to write-an in-depth analysis of Schwarzkopf, Powell, et al., and what their strengths, weaknesses, backgrounds, experiences, etc., may mean for Desert Storm...

...It has finally culminated in the awarding of your journalism prize to Mike Wallace for his biased presentation of the Temple Mount incident [March...

...KEVIN KEEFE Washington, D.C...

...He has cited the four-year-old “Securing the Middle Ground: Reporter Formulas in ‘60 Minutes’ ” as an example of silly social science...

...Too generally speaking What on earth happened to the following conversation that should have taken place in Charles Peters’s office, oh, about three months ago...

...It wouldn’t look good to have the lead article in the same issue written from your desk without any leg work except the collection of a few articles from other publications...

...The profile was written by the undersigned...