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Ralph Peters is a prolific writer with a pen for stinging commentary and always enjoyable to read, but in his review of Steve Fainaru's Big Boy Rules: America's Mercenaries Fighting in Iraq (Book World, Dec. 21) Peters's hyperbole ignores at least one fact. Peters writes that the British use of German mercenaries (I assume he means the Jaeger Corps) "imprinted an abhorrence of mercenaries on our national character: We never hired our guns."
That statement is incorrect. At the very least, during the American Revolution and War of 1812, the U.S. government hired privateers to attack British commerce. During the Battle of New Orleans, Gen. Andrew Jackson used the privateer Jean Lafitte's forces to defeat the British.
-- CLAUDE BERUBE
Annapolis, Md.
In Katherine A. Powers's review of audio books (Book World, Dec. 14), she mentions the animal speech varieties in the 100th-anniversary audio edition of The Wind in the Willows and the many regional accents in the audio version of Alan Garner's The Owl Service. Her review brought to mind a technical problem that none of the publishers of audio books I have contacted has seen fit to address.
A good reader uses different voices and voice levels to portray various characters, which is as it should be. The problem arises from the the fact that many, if not most, audio books are played in automobiles, and there is a certain amount of constant outside noise. A volume-level setting at which one can comfortably hear, for example, an evil villain's callous remarks while he ties an innocent maiden to the railroad tracks might be too low for the listener to hear her pleas. A quick increase could then produce an ear-shattering blast when the hero comes to her rescue.
I strongly suspect that there is some sort of electronic mixing board technique that would allow the actor's voice variations to remain in place but would keep the decibel level in a more narrow range, thus making possible a single setting on the player deck.
-- ROBERT LANTZ
Timberville, Va.
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