Word: digest
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DIED. DeWitt Wallace, 91, founder and longtime editor of Reader's Digest, the most successful monthly in the world; of pneumonia; in Mount Kisco, N.Y. (see PRESS...
There is no story that cannot be condensed, said DeWitt Wallace, and he spent a lifetime proving it. When he died of pneumonia last week, at the age of 91. Reader's Digest, the magazine he founded in 1922, was the most successful monthly in the world, published in 16 languages with a global circulation of more than 30 million and an estimated readership of 100 million. For him, shorter really was better, and when he was asked what he wanted as an epitaph, he said, briefly: "The final condensation...
...booklet that summarized hundreds of free pamphlets for farmers. He was seriously wounded during World War I, but instead of loafing during his four-month convalescence, he sharpened his editor's shears, tightening magazine articles. By 1920 he had prepared a sample copy of the Reader's Digest...
Readers loved it. Circulation reached 216,000 in 1929 and passed 1 million in 1934. Imitators tried but failed to match Wallace's formula. Somehow the Digest managed to imply that it contained all the information a reader needed to know...
...passions which drove noir seem almost charming today. When Roman Polanski made the mock-noir Chinatown, he had to slice open Nicholson's nostril to get the same effect that was once accomplished by showing a couple of thugs lurking outside the window. Leave it to the Reader's Digest to mourn our passing national innocence--but the real problem is we've lost our faith in passion. Murder and passion seem almost antithetical at the present, and adultery--well, adultery is for adolescents...