Editor's Note: Perspectives on History welcomes letters to the editor on issues discussed in its pages or which are relevant to the profession. Letters should follow our guidelines. Letters selected for publication may be edited for style, length, and content. Publication of letters does not signify endorsement by the AHA of the views expressed by the authors, who alone are responsible for ensuring accuracy of the letters' contents. Institutional affiliations are provided only for identification purposes.

To the Editor:

The article "The Frailty of Historical Truth" by David Lowenthal in the March 2013 issue delivered a spot-on examination of the limitations and challenges that historians face in interpreting and reporting history. The most revealing to me was acknowledgement of the "bias stemming from temporal distance." Modern historians tend to view past personalities from a 21st century lens and therefore give their readers a distorted picture of those persons. They would be much more accurate in their conclusions if they gave more consideration to the culture of the times in which those persons lived.

-Martin S. Nowak
Independent researcher,
Lancaster, New York