Dear Mr Foote: -- Please forgive this intrusion. --The University of Missouri Press has asked me to supply the names of three people "qualified to read and appraise" a manuscript of mine which they have requested to see. It is entitled *The 304th New York,* and sets Stephen Crane's *The Red Badge of Courage* in the context of Civil War history and, extending therefrom, in the context of military history, fiction about warfare, and fiction generally. Very briefly: I am convinced Crane researched his impressionistic work in extraordinary detail, although the book wears its research lightly indeed; that such detail enables a reader to come to an accurate assessment of Private Henry Fleming's conduct, and the conduct of his regiment (the 304th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment) with some accuracy; but that such assessment has been masked not only by a general lack of interest in such historical detail-- e.g., the effect of the rifled musket upon the battlefield-- but also by the overwhelming impact of fiction following the 1914-1918 War, and the paradigms generated therein. I have published two historical novels set in the Civil War-- The Falling Hills (reissued in 1994 by South Carolina, after having been published in 1967 by Scribner's) which concerned the Fort Pillow battle, and It Must be Now the Kingdom Coming (1972) which was an historical romance set during Sherman's march. I have offered instruction in literature at Kenyon College since the autumn of 1969. --It would be an honor to include you among potential readers, but I do not at all wish to intrude. Sincerely, Perry Lentz