A Letter From The Publisher, may 12, 1958

WHAT'S wrong? Have they grown too big? Are they too chromy? Too expensive? Or are people just being mighty careful with their money? Seeking the answers to the question of the year—why the 1958 cars are not selling—TIME correspondents in 21 cities, from Boston to Seattle, talked to hundreds of dealers, mechanics, gas-station attendants and those bona fide experts, the drivers. To help Detroit Bureau Chief Marshall Berger with the bulk of the research, Chief of Correspondents James Shepley flew out for interviews with the heads of the Big Three companies—Henry Ford II of Ford, Harlow Curtice of General Motors and L. L. ("Tex") Colbert of Chrysler. From a research package of 120,000 words, TIME'S editors came to a clear analysis of a complex situation. See BUSINESS, On the Slow Road.

THERE is no recession in Oskaloosa, Iowa. Hogs and cattle are up, and so are chickens and eggs. New-car sales are rolling well ahead of last year, and traded-in tractors are being resold before the new paint is dry. In Oskaloosa and other farm towns from Massachusetts to California and from North Dakota to Texas, TIME last week found facts that added up to electrifying economic news: the farm recession is over. For the story of the upswing that could give the economy an uplift, see NATIONAL AFFAIRS, Boom Times.

AS the polls opened one morning last week, the first voter strode in stark naked except for a straw hat. It happened in Koumea, Togoland, where the voter's garb and his vote were in a sense symbols of the powerful drive toward independence in Africa. The story of how the Togolanders chose their man and then doused him with white powder as a sign of victory is told in FOREIGN NEWS, "Masters in Our Own House."

WHEN baseball's Roy Campanella was found crushed in an overturned car three months ago, the best medical umpires knew that there were two strikes on him. Ever since then, Campy has been fighting back, and now he faces the challenge of medicine's new "third phase": rehabilitation. For the story of an exciting area of medicine that has helped thousands of patients crippled like Campy, see MEDICINE, Back to Life.