Typed letters (110), Sauk City, Wisconsin, to Edward Wagenknecht, 1945-1971 : typed letters signed.

Mentioning books he is writing, editing, or reviewing; sending many books for Wagenknecht to read or review; listing some projects about comics which he has in the works; sending a list of fine detective novels; sending numerous suggestions of stories for Wagenknecht's anthology of ghost stories(and later criticizing the finished anthology); giving his view of the anthologist's duty; calling a book by Snow "unbelievably bad"(1947); expressing mixed feelings about Harry S. Truman and Robert Taft; worrying about the atomic bomb: "I think we have sown the seed of our own destruction, not by its use on Japan--I am no blind idealist and know that its use was right and inevitable insofar as any act of war can ever be right--but simply by its invention. It is a case again of so much power, so dreadfully much power-and SUCH LITTLE MEN to whom to trust it!"; thanking him for a review but saying he must delete a passage comparing Truman and Stalin which reveals Wagenknecht's "blind political prejudice"; regretting that "the best books by the best British authors do not sell as well as the poorest books by the poorest pulp magazine authors in the fantasy field"; wishing Walter De la Mare would write something for Arkham House Publishers; saying the only movie he has seen recently "which had promise" was The Red Shoes; explaining his use of Black Hawk as a symbol of idealism in Wind over Wisconsin; saying (in 1952) that "There is no one in the entire democratic administration who is as low as McCarthy," and that although he wants a Republican administration in the White House, he doesn't want it badly enough to vote for Robert Taft; speculating at length on the nature of rudeness, and concluding that he and Wagenknecht should refrain from addressing controversial topics; saying (in 1955) that although he is ill "I am still writing just under half a million words a year"; explaining why is in no longer employed as a reviewer at the Tribune; saying (in 1960) "Unlike you, I'm not afraid of a Kennedy victory," and that Eisenhower turned out to be "an amiable fellow who simply doesn't know the score--never knew it at any time in his 8 yrs. as president"; praising Wagenknecht's scholarship and industry, saying, "There simply are not many people writing in English either here or abroad who can hold a candle to you"; and arguing that "if Sam [Sheppard] wasn't guilty of killing his wife I'm the reincarnation of Jesus Christ."