To be a Miracle Man on Harold Ross’s NEW YORKER was a summons that few of those tapped for the position knew enough to refuse. But the miracle proved to be the velocity with which the incumbents came and went. Poets, editors, writers, and men about town were hired, only to be fired, often for nonexistent reasons, after a short and painful interval on the job. This, the seventh part of JAMES THURBER’S series, continues his discussion of the long line of Ross’s Miracle Men.
Dylan Thomas, the Welsh poet, was twenty-two years old when he married Caitlin Macnamara, the beautiful girl who was the love of his life. As Dame Edith Sitwell has said, “Their love was most touching to see.”In her forthcoming book, Leftover Life to Kill, from which this excerpt is drawn, CAITLIN THOMAS writes of their “long-growing years” together, with her deep understanding of “the changing man hidden inside the poet ”
Mr. Justice Holmes, John Adams, and Sir Edward Coke — to the study of these three giants in law CATHERINE DRINKER BOWEN has devoted no less than fifteen years. The sequence is important, for each of the three built upon the edifice of his predecessor; and for this reason perhaps Sir Edward Coke, who suppressed the conspiracies against Queen Elizabeth and fought for the Commons against James I and Charles I — perhaps he is the mightiest of the trio in that he laid the foundations of our Bill of Rights. The following excerpt is the first of three, powerful and charged with character, which the Atlantic will draw from Mrs. Bowen’s forthcoming book, The Lion and the Throne. They are highlights in a volume which in its entirety runs to 200,000 words.
This is the first of two episodes to be drawn from KATHERINE ANNE PORTER’S forthcoming novel, No Safe Harbor, which will appear under the Atlantic-Little, Brown imprint. No Safe Harbor, Miss Porter writes us, “began as a diary kept on hoard ship on my first trip to Europe in 1931. Little by little it began to turn itself into a story, by that mysterious process which I cannot explain, but which I recognize when it begins, and I no along with it out of a kind of curiosity, as if my mind which knows the facts is watching to see what my story-telling mind will finally make of them.” Miss Porter is regarded as one of the masters of the short story, and her collections Flowering judas and Pale Horse, Pale Rider have become classics in our time.
As we look back over the American past it is possible to recognize a series of great achievements which were crucial in our development as a world power. Historians of the nineteenth century believed that God’s will was “visible in historyin”; in our time a search for cause and effect takes a different approach. In his new book, Chance or Destiny: Turning Points in American History, OSCAR HANDLIN, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1952, has made a colorful and penetrating analysis of the accidents, the deliberations, and the unpredictable decisions which have again and again determined our future. This is the last of five articles drawn from Mr. Handlin’s book, which will be published in May under the Atlantic-Little, Brown imprint.
“Pondering the degree to which accident could overturn the schemes of wise men, Prince Bismarck once concluded that there was a special providence for drunkards, fools, and the United States. Indeed there is much to be said for the argument that America has survived and grown strong by a miraculous streak of luck that, at one turning point after another, has directed fortune its nay A So writes OSCAR HANDLIN, Professor of History at Harvard and author of The Uprooted, which won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1951. This is the fourth in a series of Jive articles drawn from Mr. Handlin’s forthcoming book, which will be published in early spring under the Atlantic-Little, Brown imprint.
The daughter of American missionaries, who teas taken to China at an early age. PEARL S. BUCK made her first appearance in print in the Atlantic for January, 1923. Since then she has contributed to us as the spirit prompted and we were particularly proud of her a when in 1938 she received the Nobel Prize for Literature. The paper which follows is drawn from her new book, My Several Worlds, autobiographical in nature, touching on her life in China, Japan, and in this country. It will be published in early November by John Day.
Philosopher, author, and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead was born in England in 1861, taught long, full years at Cambridge University and at the University of London, and brought his career to a golden sunset at Harvard. He was one of the most illuminating conversationalists of our time. After his retirement, his talk was confined to a few intimates, of whom LUCIEN PRICE was one. Mr. Price, the author of We Northmen and Winged Sandals, has recorded with the discipline and accuracy of a trained journalist the audacity and the probing of the philosopher’s mind in his new book, Dialogues of Whitehead, which is shortly to be published. His record of the conversations was read and authorized by Whitehead. The Atlantic is proud to present three characteristic excerpts from this book, which has been more than a decade in preparation.