To the Editor:

Re “This President Doesn’t Go by the (History) Book” (White House Memo, front page, May 2):

Donald Trump’s vision of American history, in this case his strange analysis of Andrew Jackson’s settling the problem of the Civil War, strikes me as the perfect window into his political worldview.

He puts outsize individuals at the center (Andrew Jackson in the 19th century; Vladimir Putin, Rodrigo Duterte and others today); garbles many of the details; emphasizes deal-making as the way to solve all problems; and reveals a startling ignorance about underlying issues or principles.

His belief that the wealthy, slaveholding Andrew Jackson could have stopped Southern states from seceding over the issue of slavery shows the same blindness about core beliefs as his embrace of Mr. Duterte, the Philippine dictator.

NINA SILBER, NEEDHAM, MASS.

The writer is a professor of Civil War history at Boston University.

To the Editor:

I was concerned before about President Trump’s state of mind and thinking process, but now I’m really worried. The president over the last few days has made one bizarre statement after another, moving one presidential historian, Douglas Brinkley, to refer to a “surreal disarray” and “among the most bizarre recent 24 hours in American presidential history.”