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RedditJOHN BROWN, RATIONAL HERO
New York City
I'm an admirer of both David Reynolds and Martin Duberman, but I'm sorry that Duberman, like Barbara Ehrenreich in the New York Times and Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker, seems to see Reynolds as the first reputable historian to argue that John Brown was not insane but a rational and effective hero ["The Avenging Angel," May 23]. All these enthusiastic critics ignore Albert Fried's 1978 John Brown's Journey: Notes and Reflections on His America and Mine. Fried challenged the work of Allan Nevins and C. Vann Woodward, who argued that Brown was mad, a monomaniac.
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