Best-sellerism Is The Star System Of The

In Fast-moving, Progress-conscious America, The Consumer Expects To Be Dizzied By Progress. If He Could Completely Understand Advertising Jargon He Would Be Badly Disappointed. The Half-intelligibility Which We Expect, Or Even Hope, To Find In The Latest Product Language Personally Reassures Each Of Us That Progress Is Being Made: That The Pace Exceeds Our Ability To Follow.

What Is More Natural In A Democratic Age Than That We Should Begin To Measure The Stature Of A Work Of Art-especially Of A Painting-by How Widely And How Well It Is Reproduced?

A Best-seller Was A Book Which Somehow Sold Well Because It Was Selling Well.

In Our World Of Big Names, Curiously, Our True Heroes Tend To Be Anonymous. In This Life Of Illusion And Quasi-illusion, The Person Of Solid Virtues Who Can Be Admired For Something More Substantial Than His Well-knownness Often Proves To Be The Unsung Hero: The Teacher, The Nurse, The Mother, The Honest Cop, The Hard Worker At Lonely, Underpaid, Unglamorous, Unpublicized Jobs.

Our American Past Always Speaks To Us With Two Voices: The Voice Of The Past, And The Voice Of The Present. We Are Always Asking Two Quite Different Questions. Historians Reading The Words Of John Winthrop Usually Ask, What Did They Mean To Him? Citizens Ask, What Do They Mean To Us? Historians Are Trained To Seek The Original Meaning; All Of Us Want To Know The Present Meaning.