Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky
New York City

Dear Dr. Velikovsky:

Thank you for your good letter of the 25th.

With redness of face and some embarrassment I must explain to you why, with apparent rudeness, I have failed so far to thank you personally for your generous gift of your book, Worlds in Collision. I received my copy from the publishers, Macmillan, immediately on publication. Nothing indicated that you, and not the publishers, were the donor. So I took it for granted that Macmillan had sent me the book and I thanked them for it. Will you pardon my failure to write you sooner?

Allow me first of all to congratulate you, not of course for the fact that your book has become “a run-away best seller,” but for the magnificent qualities of contents and form of your book. I read it with utter fascination and absorption, being carried away by the cosmic drama which you unfolded before me. I was amazed at the depth and vastness of your erudition, which I have not seen equaled except possibly in O. Spengler’s Decline of the West. Aside from expressing my admiral ion, I am unable to make any valuable comments: my ignorance of astronomy, physics, chemistry, far-eastern, and Aztec literatures, etc. is abysmal, complete. I shall have to sit on the sidelines as you and the scientists discuss your theory about the comet which eventually became the planet Venus.

With renewed apologies, warm thanks, and best regards,

Yours faithfully,

(signed) Robert H. Pfeiffer