Miss One Thousand Spring Blossoms/The Hurricane Years/The Wine and the Music/On Reflection/The Black Ship

Fülszöveg

Author of T/ffe;Dev/7's ' Advocate, The Shoes of the Fisherr^'nfjlTe Ambassador, The Tower of Babel


THE WORLD we live in today, good and bad, has been created by the communicators. Radio, television, films, newspapers, orbiting satellite^ have made irre-. versible changes on this spinning planet. Truth has been serv^cfi Lies have been" propagated. Mercy has been dispensed. Wars have been nT%je. Violence has been fomented. Reason has sometimes prevailed. Man has'become suddenly^ and terribly aware that his every word and his every act has an immediate consequence for his fellows.
The battle for the control of the human mind is being ff:'ght by communicators whose weapons are words and images. LInfortunately, ^:Ot all the commu-' nicators are free. Some are the servants of tyranny. Many are sybject to editorial, financial or circulation control. ;
The man who lives by writing books, in Western society at ieist, is still the nearest thing to a free creature. When a writer... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Author of T/ffe;Dev/7's ' Advocate, The Shoes of the Fisherr^'nfjlTe Ambassador, The Tower of Babel


THE WORLD we live in today, good and bad, has been created by the communicators. Radio, television, films, newspapers, orbiting satellite^ have made irre-. versible changes on this spinning planet. Truth has been serv^cfi Lies have been" propagated. Mercy has been dispensed. Wars have been nT%je. Violence has been fomented. Reason has sometimes prevailed. Man has'become suddenly^ and terribly aware that his every word and his every act has an immediate consequence for his fellows.
The battle for the control of the human mind is being ff:'ght by communicators whose weapons are words and images. LInfortunately, ^:Ot all the commu-' nicators are free. Some are the servants of tyranny. Many are sybject to editorial, financial or circulation control. ;
The man who lives by writing books, in Western society at ieist, is still the nearest thing to a free creature. When a writer sells his book to the Reader's Digest Book Club, he accepts a limitation upon that very precious freedom. He puts himself into the hands of editors who have undertal-en to render his thought truly within a limitation of space.
I am pleased to say that in the condensations of my own books made by the Reader's Digest I have never found a perversion of the original thought or a slanting of my original opinion. This is no small compliment in a world where the printed word is far less sacred than it used to be.
When I sold my novel The Ambassador to a Russian literary magazine for translation and condensation, 1 set as a norm of judgment my experience with Reader's Digest Condensed Books. The Russian performance did not measure ¦ up. In my correspondence with the Russian editors, I was glad to be able to invoke from our own society Reader's Digest Condensed Books as an example of editorial integrity. It is a citation which can safely be called in evidence in any forum of the world's communicators.


Reader's Digest Condensed Books are issued once efSry three months-a to^gi^f four a year. Each one contains five or more outsta^;,ng books in o^the condensa-
tions in this volume has appeared in the Reader's Digest'itleTrNoSmRoa^^ Digest Condensed Books are edited primarily for adults. For youngsters, we sugg^ R^ll|r's Digest Best Loved Books for Young Readers, a series of twelve volumes available indiv^B'ally, with four great classics in each. Any reader may receive these services by writing The Reader's Digest Association, Inc., Pleasantville, N.Y. 10570. " ¦. Vissza