A Letter From The Publisher: Jan. 10, 1964

IT is hard for us to think of two subjects that go together better than R. Buckminster Fuller and Boris Artzybasheff. "I can't remember when I enjoyed working on a TIME cover more," said Artist Artzybasheff, after he had finished painting Designer Fuller with a background that includes Fuller's radome, Dymaxion Car, tensegrity octahedron, an example of energetic-synergetic geometry, the 4D apartment house, a Dymaxion mobile laboratory, a demonstration of the omniequilateral, omnitriangulated finite system, and the 15 axes interconnecting opposite mid-points of the icosahedron's 30 edges. But all this, being very Artzybasheffesque, was topped by the opportunity to do Fuller's head in the pattern of his most successful invention—the geodesic dome. "It was," said Boris, "a simple, wonderful challenge of breaking up his head like that and still have it come out a likeness!"

The correspondent who did most of the reporting on the story emerged with the same attitude. "Nobody could be more challenging or more fun to cover than Bucky Fuller," said Chicago Correspondent Miriam Rumwell. "I didn't know what to say for the first five hours—I just listened. He spills out amazing ideas and insights so fast. Even though you may not fully understand what he said, you feel you ought to. By osmosis, you eventually catch on." During one interview. Fuller did his flamenco-type dance for Miriam. During another, in a small plane bouncing into St. Louis in a snowstorm, he sought to calm her by saying: "Relax; just give way to love."

Miriam hastened to add that Mrs. Fuller was along on the flight, and that "he meant love for everything, love for what was happening at the moment, love of 'livingry'—one of his Fullermade words."

In New York, the story was researched by Nancy Gay Faber, written by Douglas Auchincloss and edited by A. T. Baker. We hope you'll think it's fun too.

Two sections of TIME this week tackle areas of broad judgment.

In PRESS, we present a survey of the top U.S. dailies, a list that perhaps unfortunately—since it is such a standard number—added up to ten. The story is the result of long and friendly (as well as critical) consideration of U.S. newspapers by the whole editorial staff. It involved a close study of newspapers all over the U.S. by correspondents and editors, and a sustained dialogue between correspondents and Press Editor John Koffend and Senior Editor Richard Seamon. While it was literally impossible to draft a precise set of criteria on which to measure one newspaper against another—since the communities they serve differ so widely—there was one central question that had overriding importance: Has the community in which this newspaper is published been measurably changed for the better by this newspaper, and if so, how?

The other wide survey is the WORLD BUSINESS section's study of the international economy, which called for reporting from TIME correspondents in Washington, London, Paris, Bonn, Rome, Athens, Cairo, Beirut, Istanbul, Teheran, Tokyo, Nairobi, Hong Kong, New Delhi, Rio, Salisbury, Sydney and Moscow. Their reports, analyzed by Writer Everett Martin and Senior Editor Edward L. Jamieson, added up to an encouraging conclusion about the trend of the economy in the free world.