Communication

A letter to the editor will be considered only if it relates to an article or review published in this journal; publication is solely at the editors' discretion. The AHA disclaims responsibility for statements, of either fact or opinion, made by the writers. Letters should not exceed one thousand words for articles and seven hundred words for reviews. They can be submitted by e-mail to ahr@indiana.edu, or by postal service to Editor, American Historical Review, 914 E. Atwater Ave, Bloomington, IN 47401. For detailed information on the policies for this section, see http://www.historycooperative.org/ahr/communpo.html.

ARTICLES

To the Editors:
While I am sorry to learn that Stephen Neff did not comprehend my book The Art of Surrender: Decomposing Sovereignty at Conflict's End (AHR, October 2006, 1142), I am more sorry that he has misrepresented some of the book's key passages and foci. One hopes that any reviewer will meet, and evaluate, a book on its own terms, rather than, as in this case, deride those terms at the outset. Perhaps the most egregious misrepresentation, and one that is emblematic, is Professor Neff's claim that the book "blithely states that surrender entails the `unmitigated abjection' of the surrendering party." In fact, the relevant passage reads "An act of power transfer that appears to entail unmitigated abjection for the vanquished and glory for the victor, surrender actually comprises a complex configuration of social and cultural forms" (p. ix)—in other words, just the opposite of what Neff is claiming. This misrepresentation is sustained over the course of the review, a review in which the book's aim to sort through the variations of meaning and consequence of different surrenders is decisively ignored. No mention is made in the review of the book's major focus on the ways that historical surrenders have been represented, in paintings, photographs, memoirs, and maps, among other cultural objects. Clearly, these kinds of analyses are not of interest to Neff, but as they are at the heart of the book's analysis, potential readers should be apprised of them. Finally, a point of fact: The book's analysis of the surrender of Breda correctly identifies the date as 1625, not, as Neff indicates in his review, 1667.
Robin Wagner-Pacifici

Stephen C. Neff does not wish to respond.
To the Editors:
Michael A. Barnhart's review of Paul A. C. Koistinen's Arsenal of World War II: The Political Economy of American Warfare, 1940–1945 (AHR, October 2006, 1210–1211) contains surprising errors. The review opens with the "War Planning Board" meeting in October 1942 to consider the economic feasibility of military requirements. But what Barnhart describes is actually a meeting of the War Production Board, the central agency for directing war production and the focus of more than half of Koistinen's book. There was no such agency as the War Planning Board.
Other inaccuracies follow. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed the National Defense Advisory Commission, not "Council," on May 29, 1940 (nineteen days after Germany invaded the Low Countries and two weeks after it invaded France), not "in the summer of 1940." One of the commission's members was Harriet, not "Harriett," Elliott. Contrary to Barnhart's claim, Roosevelt did not select Donald Nelson to chair the commission—it had no chair, and that was one of its major problems. Koistinen spends three chapters on the commission.
None of these errors, which concern facts well known to scholars of the U.S. mobilization for World War II, appears in Koistinen's book. Such an unfortunate handling of the subject's basic facts cannot help but lessen confidence in the evaluative part of the review.
Terrence J. Gough Arlington, Virginia

Michael A. Barnhart does not wish to respond.

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