Mail Call: Print vs. e-Reading

Readers of our Nov. 26 story on Amazon's e-reader, the Kindle, had reservations about digital books. "One objection is the lack of the ability to browse before I decide to buy; the other is the likelihood of advertising," one said. But another noted, "School texts on a Kindle would revolutionize the lives of millions."

When Books Go Digital
As an avid reader, I applaud the idea of being able to package multiple books in Amazon's small, user-friendly e-reader, the Kindle, but I'm not entirely convinced that the Kindle could "take me down the rabbit hole" ("The Future of Reading," Nov. 26). However, as a high-school teacher, I think the Kindle could be the answer to a prayer for students, parents and staff. In the vast majority of schools there is a lack of money and storage space for adequate numbers of appropriate texts. Every day, students struggle to carry upwards of 50 pounds of books from home and around campus; many texts are lost, damaged or out of date. Imagine if students had all textbooks at their fingertips, and instant Internet capability to look up references. If school texts could be downloaded onto a Kindle, it would revolutionize the lives of millions.
Diana Matter
Alamogordo, New Mexico

One of my objections to electronic books is the lack of the ability to browse before I decide to buy. The other one is the likelihood of advertising. In South Africa, TV programs are interrupted every 10 minutes by as many as six to eight ads, yet we still have to pay license fees. Anything connected to electronic media like the Internet eventually ends up like this.
Ian Shaw
Johannesburg, South Africa

I am 19 and a product of the digital age: I have gone through seven computers, four cell phones, two digital cameras, a Walkman, a Discman and an iPod. But I refuse to see a book digitized. Amazon's Jeff Bezos is wrong in assuming that we fanatical readers love only the words and ideas; reading a book is an entire process. Pointing and clicking will never hold the same satisfaction as browsing the shelves at a library or bookstore, nor will the Kindle be able to capture the feeling you get as the pages dwindle and you don't know whether to hurry up to find out how it ends or slow down and savor every word.
Beth Papworth
Westerville, Ohio

To create a parallel to the divine book is akin to asking people to wear plastic attire—technically improved to control temperature, change colors et al.—instead of clothes. Amazon's Kindle might succeed in subsuming one's consciousness as a book does, but it robs you of the feel of a book, the smell of paper and ink, and you cannot treasure your gems on your bookshelves. You will simply not be able to go down memory lane looking at your beloved collection.
K. Chidanand Kumar
Bangalore, India

E-books would not be appropriate for one large category of books: publications in which quality illustrations are important. How would a book about Frank Lloyd Wright or Michelangelo show up on the small-format handheld? To accommodate my field, the history of art, and many others where illustrations are essential, e-books would have to be too large to be practical.
James K. Kettlewell
Professor Emeritus, Skidmore College
Saratoga Springs, New York

Jeff Bezos can say all he wants about books' being "the last bastion of analog," but there is nothing like the feel and smell of a book, whether old or new, in my hands. Long live the megabookstores and the corner bookshop.
M. Deane
Bridgetown, Barbados

For this writer, the day I start composing with the "community" as my editors, "wiki style" or otherwise, is the day you can shoot me. Steven Levy's article on digital books is provocative, but surely he must realize just how tenacious writers are about using their own—and no one else's—material. It may be harder to publish serious literature these days, readership may be decreasing and the world may be going digital, but there's still that driving pride of sole authorship and, yes, seeing the original on honest-to-God paper pages.
Steven Schwartz
Ft. Collins, Colorado

Would I take a kindle to the bathtub to read? No. If I dropped it, the splash would cost $399. I'll stick with durable, dependable, no-battery books.
Michael G. Driver
Ichihara City, Japan

Amazon's Kindle may be a great gadget, but the book has a shelf life yet. For starters, the Kindle can't open. One principal reason that the codex or book superseded the scroll in late antiquity was its ability to combine text and image, an important source of edification as well as entertainment. The Kindle can exhibit only one page at a time—a giant step backward! As for 200 books, my bookshelves hold 10,000 (some even purchased from Amazon). My flame is one that the Kindle won't light.
Jeffrey F. Hamburger
Professor of Art & Architecture, Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts

It has become one of the most paradoxical questions of modern times: are books dead on paper? Or are they simply becoming much more accessible to the masses since they are also now in digital form? Today's books have been the beneficiary of astounding state-of-the-art technology. For instance, they are being read every day by millions of book lovers around the world on the Web. The future of books is absolutely rosy. They are just going through a transition, which will benefit all book addicts—authors and readers alike. This is a global phenomenon. So I say fear not, bookworms: our books shall live forever.
Chris Banarasi Russell
Brandon, Canada

Massive Delays and Frayed Tempers
Fareed Zakaria's column "America The Unwelcoming" (Nov. 26) brought back a very unpleasant experience I had on my last visit to the United States, in March 2005. I was singled out for a body search at Ft. Lauderdale's airport in Florida. To my dismay, the search was carried out in full view of passersby. As with many people who are faced with sudden unpleasantries, I was shocked into silence at having this kind of check done under such indiscreet conditions. The situation was humiliating, to say the least. I might add that I am an American citizen who lives in Israel. Should I ask myself if that fact had something to do with the search?
Janet Levy
Karmiel, Israel

I really do appreciate Fareed Zakaria's column on this matter. I myself and a large number of my friends will not travel to the United States because of these humiliating methods of immigration control and measures for tourists. The inconveniences start when you arrive at any European airport to board a flight to the States. Because of these policies, America will become more and more isolated.
Uwe Andresen
Albi, France

In November a U.S. immigration officer at the airport in Toronto got mad at me because he dropped my documents. I carry my Canadian immigrant card inside my Mexican passport. As I was trying to retrieve this card, the officer rudely took the passport out of my hand and dropped the card. "C'mon! I'm not Canadian, I don't want to see this," he complained, bending under the desk to pick up the document. "Right, you are not," I thought—I suspect a Canadian would have been a lot nicer. As a relatively frequent traveler to the United States, mostly for professional reasons, I always wonder how it is that officials at the entry ports fail to realize they are the first face of the United States anyone sees—an unfortunately disappointing and unwelcoming face for many of us. While I've noticed some positive changes over the past two years, with more courteous and educated staff, there clearly remains a lot of room for improvement.
Antonio Paez
Associate Professor, McMaster University
Hamilton, Canada

Iran ' s Nuclear Ambitions and Israel
Apropos your article "The Whispers of War" (Oct. 1), we have seen a lot of cynicism and dirty tricks, whether it's Henry Kissinger's prescient remark on the Iran-Iraq War ("A pity they can't both lose") or Madeleine Albright's comment on the huge human losses due to the embargo against Iraq ("We think the price is worth it"). Remember those truck-based "chemical-weapons laboratories" falsely presented before the United Nations? And now perhaps another gin trap, designed for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. What puzzles me is why, despite our rule of law, we are unable to impeach those liars whose rhetoric triggers the deaths and agonies of thousands of people, whose only sin may have been to live in foreign lands.
Karl Ulrich Voss
Burscheid, Germany

As Israeli generals continue to ponder when to attack Iran and by which route, they are acutely aware that their decision may be the spark that starts World War III. But that is not their primary concern. Their agenda is to safeguard the state of Israel, allowing an acceptable loss of life for the greater Israeli good. Up until now, the Israelis' strategy has been to convince the world that their enemies are not theirs alone, and they have had some success in this ploy. The European Union's decision-making process has been infiltrated by pro-Israel administrators and politicians at various levels, who see it as their mission to lobby Brussels so that the EU will continue to appease Israel's demands for preferential treatment on trade, on arms delivery and export licenses and on political decisions that favor Israel's wider agenda. That agenda is to foil the advancement of a viable Palestinian state by any means—political and economic—and in this it has been successful for many years. The only solution now is a radical reform of the U.N. Security Council that will expand its membership to reflect the real world (and realpolitik) by the doubling of its membership and the removal of veto power. Only then will the United Nations be accepted by the world's nations as the supreme international authority of final decision and appeal.
Michael Halpern
Westbourne, England

In the British Parliament in October, John Hutton, secretary of State for the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, said: "There will be no taxpayer subsidy and no hidden subsidies for new nuclear [power] if Her Majesty's government reach[es] that decision" ("A Nuclear 'Litmus Test'," Oct. 1). It is interesting that he says there would be no hidden subsidies for nuclear power because in England, as is the case in many other countries around the world, the nuclear-power industry enjoys a very large hidden subsidy: it is required to pay only a small fraction of the cost of insuring fully against a Chernobyl-style disaster or worse. Details of the size of this subsidy are given in Helen Caldicott's book "Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer." If the government is serious in saying that there would be no hidden subsidies for nuclear power, then it should require the nuclear industry to pay the full cost of insuring against nuclear disasters, without any limitations on liabilities.
Robert Palgrave
Via Internet From England

It is strange that a country so rich in nuclear bombs as the United States is so afraid of peaceful applications of nuclear power. Isn't military nuclear waste dangerous? In any case, nuclear waste from peaceful applications can be safely stored using the vitrification process (in salt mines, for example). It is Big Oil that pushes for fake solutions like wind power and solar power, low-density energy sources requiring tons of devices to produce just 100 kilowatts of power. They are unworkable in an age when raw materials are becoming rare and expensive due to rapid industrialization. We'll need nuclear power for getting ocean water free from salt and pumping it to mainlands, for example. It's sad that only nondemocratic countries like Russia, China and Iran have the strong governments needed to do what is necessary.
Ugo Tornar
Jouy-Le-Moutier, France

Christianity in North Korea
Your Oct. 1 piece "Houses Of The Hidden" is a sad story on two levels. First, the persecution of Christians in North Korea is truly deplorable. Second, by succumbing to evangelical missionaries, the North Koreans are showing the all too familiar eagerness of people of failed or failing totalitarian states to embrace radical religion. By doing this, however, they are merely exchanging one intellectually bankrupt, dogmatic ideology for another. What we need on the borders of states like this are not religious missionaries but educators who can show refugees that the only truly workable social system is secular democracy. This, rather than ancient Scripture and promises of an imaginary afterlife, is their path to freedom and self-governance.
Mads Moller
Aarhus, Denmark