‘Editor’s Choice’ Archives
Oil and Middle East
Oil and Middle East When the first oil well was drilled in 1859 in Titusville, Pennsylvania, oil, which is also called petroleum, was used primarily for illumination. The single most significant incentive to develop the oil industry was the arrival of the motorcar, run on gasoline, at the turn of the 20th century. Today, oil is used in [...]
Hot Spots
Hot Spots The number of dedicated Internet cafés in the United States and many other highly developed countries has been declining in recent years. This is largely due to the growing number of people who connect to the Internet through their own laptops and other mobile devices. Thus many locations, including coffee chains such as Starbucks, [...]
All the Troubles in the World
“All the Troubles in the World” Isaac Asimov (1958) Although many writers anticipated the tend toward greater involvement of computers in everyday life, the internet and the advent of the personal computer did not take quite the course that most expected during the 1940s and 1950s. Like most of his peers, Isaac ASIMOV assumed that computers [...]
Readership and Total Audience
Readership and Total Audience Advertisers are often interested in the number of people a publication reaches as a result of secondary, or pass-along, readership. Pass-along readership can occur when the primary subscriber or purchaser gives a magazine to another person or when the publication is read in doctors’ waiting rooms or beauty [...]
Magazine Ads
Magazine Ads For years magazine publishers focused most of their attention on selling ads in their magazines and devoted less attention to proving the ads were effective. At many magazines, efforts at measuring effectiveness were often limited to tracking consumer response to 800 numbers that appeared in print ads. However, the carefree days [...]
Origins of Metaphysics and Myth
Origins of Metaphysics and Myth Metaphysical concepts were clearly developed by the middle of the second millennium BCE in western South America. Numerous archaeological sites exhibit art that almost certainly depicts religious concepts involving mythic animals, powerful individuals, and other themes. The architecture of the public buildings in [...]
The Pickwick Papers
The Pickwick Papers Charles Dickens, better known to the readers of his sketches as “Boz,” launched his career as a novelist with this episodic, comic adventure tale. The fame it brought him was hitherto unprecedented among popular novelists. Beyond its impact on Dickens’s career, Pickwick charted a new direction for the modern novel and [...]
The Quiet American
The Quiet American The Quiet American tells the story of a love triangle complicated by politics, as a cynical and burnt-out British journalist named Fowler attempts to maintain the status quo of his own comfortable existence, both politically and romantically, while serving in Saigon during the early 1950s. The action is set in French colonial [...]
A Room with a View
A Room with a View There were a number of aspects of Forster’s life that specifically influenced A Room with a View and had an effect on Forster’s other writings. His experience at Tonbridge School as a teenager was very difficult for him because of the cruelty he suffered from classmates. This experience left him with deep sympathy for the [...]
The Scarlet Letter
The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne’s best-known novel is less about adultery and sin than about the debilitating nature of guilt. It was immediately recognized by critic Evert A. Duyckinck as an effective evocation of the consequences of Puritan repressions. However, another contemporary critic, Arthur Cleveland Coxe, charged that the [...]
