The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn The First Issue Of 'Horizon' IN MOST respects—despite all the new forms of death and destruction—human society is improving. But one important feature of...
...It is time for us to get excited about something besides football, funnies and Westerns...
...This is the age of the picture...
...It is a book rather than a magazine, for it is done up in handsome hard covers and is obviously meant to be preserved...
...When I consider the sprightly and informative journals which have passed away, I feel sorry for a generation which has little in the way of periodical literature besides great and glossy collections of advertising and photographs...
...It takes in more and sets out with higher aims...
...As fast as they can, they are turning us into a nation of illiterates...
...It treats the life and achievements of men from the beginning—but from a point of view, from a definite angle, with, in fact, the high purpose of getting at the inner secret of the impulse that makes things go...
...The articles, I am glad to report, are all signed...
...Why did we have a Renaissance just then, just there...
...What it does is pull out from the great mass of human achievement 15 or 20 explosive points and picture the excitement that went with them...
...Having sounded off with this sad wail, let me announce that something new and something good has been born in the field of periodical journalism...
...I am thinking, of course, of the world of magazines...
...The first number, 152 pages just a mite larger than those of American Heritage, can't give us the history of the world or much theorizing about mankind...
...We spend money, read the books, get the degrees and then stay just about the same...
...For nine years American Heritage has been sent out from an aerie of historians over on Fifth Avenue...
...I have puzzled over these questions down through a long life—and I confess that I have never even come close to an answer...
...The only ones they will tolerate are in headlines or skimpy captions...
...Where and what was the spring, the fulcrum, the lever, the engine—and why did it get into motion just then and there and not at any other time or place...
...There is none of this tasteless, mechanical group product which inevitably forces you to the conclusion that it was produced by Univac...
...But I can't stop trying, and this new journal offers help...
...Yet, every time I attend a class reunion or participate in any exercise which takes me into a crowd, I have a sinking feeling that our expensive education has failed to take hold...
...But I have more than a personal interest in its success...
...Now, American Heritage's publishers have launched a new publication called Horizon, and this hard-cover and handsomely produced journal is even more exciting than its predecessor...
...Like the writers of the British History of Technology, the men behind Horizon will try to give us in the course of time "a history of how things have been done and made"—but that will not be all...
...It is time for the American people to march on into a new age...
...I still don't expect to come upon the answer, but I shall have a lot of fun seeing a lot of good men test their wits...
...But one important feature of life in America is getting worse rather than better...
...We have here some of the best men and women of England and America—with, now and then, an assist from the continent of Europe...
...I want it to succeed partly because I want the fun of reading it...
...THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn The First Issue Of 'Horizon' IN MOST respects—despite all the new forms of death and destruction—human society is improving...
...In addition to being learned, the publishers of this new bi-monthly are smart...
...You go from mountain-climbing to 15th-century art to American musical comedy...
...Their pictures really back up the text and are gorgeously produced...
...But you will not buy it as a picture book...
...We can never escape from the quotation: "One picture is worth a thousand words...
...At the bottom of the entire effort is the yearning to discover what has made mankind move and grow and produce...
...It's about time...
...The editors of Horizon offer to prove to us that adulthood can be fun...
...I am blowing my top about this new journal for two or three quite separate reasons...
...Though the pictures are luscious and exciting, the main thing is the writing...
...Coming once every two months and consisting of more than a hundred juicy pages, it gives us tight-packed and lively slices of American history...
...No big, stupid, advertising- and photograph-packed weekly can touch it for beauty and artistry...
...What started the Reformation or the Industrial Revolution or the World War...
...Millions of our people now go through college...
...The Horizon people appear to understand all of this...
...One would think that our fellow citizens had forgotten how to read...
...You will buy it for ideas and stories backed up by meaningful reproductions of photographs, paintings and drawings...
...Other publishers have jumped to the conclusion that words are a nuisance...
...The most important question in the world is why...
...The mysteries which have baffled the philosophers and historians of the ages are to furnish the motivation of this new journal...
Vol. 41 • September 1958 • No. 33
