September 1952
In This Issue
Explore the September 1952 print edition below. Or to discover more writing from the pages of The Atlantic, browse the full archive.
Articles
The Philippines
Latin America
My Island Home
This is the beginning of our of the most endearing American autobiographies the Atlantic has ever published. My Island Home recounts the aspirations and adventures of an lowa boy who early in this century worked his way through school and college and whose dream it was to find an island solitude where one day he would write. It was not until his return from a German prison camp in 1919 that JAMES NORMAN HALL, made friends with Charles Nordhoff, and out of their friendship which ripened in Paris came a literary partnership unique in American letters. The Atlantic will publish a four-part abridgment of this memoir.
The Holmes-Laski Letters
Harold J. Laski was in his twenty-eighth year and Mr. Justice Holmes in his eightieth, and the friendship between them had been ripening for four years, when the letters which follow were being written. The richness and the diversity of the exchange make this correspondence of exceptional interest, and we are indebted to MARK DEWOLFE HowE, the Editor, and to the Harvard University Press, which will publish the two big volumes, for the privilege of presenting this preview. Our selection begins at the end of March, 1920, when Laski made his decision to leave Harvard, where he had been teaching, to go to London.
Change of Plan
Little has been written about motor racing which can match, in zest and authentic detail, KEN PURDY’S first short story in a field which has long been his hobby, Atlantic readers will remember his recent articles on the Vanderbilt Cup race and the Indianapolis “500.”Mr. Purdy is the editor of True, and his book on high-performance cars, Kings of the Road, has just been published by Atlantic Little, Brown.
The Paradox of Spain
Editor of the Atlantic from 1908 to 1938, ELLERY SEDGWICK made his first visit to Spain in the year of the King’s abdication (1931). He went back again in 1937. this time in company with his friend Cameron Forbes, the former Governor General of the Philippines. And for the past three years he has spent the winter on the Peninsula noting the contrasts and characteristics which have made Spain a special focus of American interest since first Columbus showed us the way.
The Soviet Soldier
Lucifer in the Train
Hilly Butlin's Buddies
An English journalist with a taste for satire, HONOR TRACY published a year ago her first book, Kakemono, a sketchbook of post-war Japan, in which she recorded her misgivings about the American Occupation. Now, at the Atlantic s invitation, she scrutinizes the Butlin Camps, an English institution as sacred in its way and as full of unconscious humor as that Hollywood cemetery which Evelyn Waugh wrote about in The Loved One.
The Schoolboy's Code
CLAUDE M. FUESS made his mark as the headmaster of Andover and the biographer of Daniel Webster and Calvin Coolidge. For forty years Dr. Fuess played a leading part in the evolution of the independent school: he opposed the school fraternities, fought for smaller classes and fairer discipline, and scored a durable success in building character and in rebuilding Andover. The article which follows is drawn from his autobiography. Independent Schoolmaster, to be published next month under the Atlantic Little, Brown imprint.
Will India Accept Birth Control?
The son of medical missionaries, who accompanied his parents on their rounds of the Indian villages, DR. CARL E. TAYLOR has been thinking deeply about India and medicine during his graduate work at the Harvard School of Public Health. He went out to India as a medical missionary in 1947 and will return there next winter to teach Public Health at the Christian Medical College, Ludhiana. The following article, which won first prize in the Essay Contest sponsored by the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, evaluates the cultural factors that determine the reaction of Indians to birth control.
Darwin and the Islands of Evolution
A Canadian who writes of the natural world with scientific accuracy and the pull of humor, N. J. BERRILL, Professor of Zoology at McGill University, is the author of The Living Tide, which was published last year. He is now working on his new book. Journey into Wonder, an account of the voyages and explorations of the great naturalists, which Dodd, Mead will publish this autumn. This is the third of three articles which the Atlantic has selected from Journey into Wonder.
A Letter From Vienna
An English free lance now in his twenty-ninth year, MICHAEL SWAN travels where he pleases and writes about the places which invite his pen. He is the author of Ilex and Olive, a book descriptive of his peregrinations in France and Italy, and of a short biography of Henry James; and he has recently returned to England from Mexico, where he spent several months gathering source material for a new book.
The Star in the Pail
Do-Nothing Day
On the magnificent stretch of Nauset Beach and on the ponds and marshes that lie inland, DR. WYMAN RICHARDSON for going on fifty summers has lived a life of action and observation, Hatching the bird life as he has paddled or fished for stripers, and ever conscious of the sea changes. This is the eighth in his series of Cape Cod essays which have appeared in the Atlantic.
Father and I
PÄR LAGERKVIST, who received the 1951 Nobel Prize for Literature, is Sweden’s foremost writer, Novelist, poet, and playwrigh, he is the author of many books, and two of his novels have been translated and published in the United States, The Dwarf and Barrabas. This story of childhood teas translated by Alan Blair. Critics in Sweden and elsewhere recognize Lagerkvist as one of the most powerful literary figures on the European scene.
The Peripatetic Reviewer
Reader's Choice
Dance and Skylark
The Red Carnation
Morality in American Politics
Accent on Living
Climbing the Family Tree
The Shepherds
Too Late I Read
Our Mr. Toad
Beyond the Law
Problem for Entomologists
Progress and Prospects
