| Sun, 5 Aug 2007 | | DEARBORN, MICH.-Have you driven an Edsel lately? To most Americans, it's a preposterous question. The Edsel, of course, is the most notorious bomb in transportation history-not as tragic as disasters like the Hindenburg or the Titanic, but a colossal flop compared with the lofty expectations set by its manufacturer, Ford Motor Co. Despite unprecedented hype, Edsel sales fell far below Ford's projections from the day of its launch on Sept. 4, 1957. Barely two years later, Ford pulled the plug. In record time, the Edsel went from wundercar to laughingstock. | | More information |
| Sun, 5 Aug 2007 | | Charles Townes was distressed. It was 1951, a beautiful morning in Washington, D.C., and the physicist had awakened early to take a walk. He was in town for a conference devoted to a peculiar-and frustrating-effect of quantum mechanics: The illusory particles that create light could clone themselves but were getting absorbed faster than they were created. | | More information |
| Sun, 5 Aug 2007 | | The housewife in Grandview, N.Y., was busy doing what so many women were doing in 1957: hustling three kids to school, running the Cub Scout meetings, cooking hamburgers for dinner. When Sputnik flew overhead, Betty Friedan woke up her son and carried him outside to see it tracing its way across the sky. | | More information |
| Sun, 5 Aug 2007 | | When the birth control pill was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1957, it was only as a treatment for menstrual disorders. But backers of the pill, and doctors who prescribed it, were keenly aware that it was, first and foremost, a contraceptive. And they well understood all the political, moral, and social baggage that came with it. | | More information |
| Sun, 5 Aug 2007 | | It was the beginning of the end of America's long love affair with the cigarette. On July 12, 1957, U.S. Surgeon General Leroy Burney announced the unequivocal findings of a commission of top American doctors: "Excessive cigarette smoking," he said, "is one of the causative factors of lung cancer." | | More information |
| Sun, 5 Aug 2007 | | It was just a footnote compared with the more virulent scourge that killed millions more people in 1918, but the 1957 influenza pandemic that sickened some 25 to 30 percent of the American population was a medical watershed for the clues that it offered about how a new strain of influenza could spread. | | More information |
| Sun, 5 Aug 2007 | | Jim Brown has never been short on pride, but the legendary former fullback says his goals going into the 1957 NFL draft weren't exactly lofty. "I just wanted to make the first team," Brown tells U.S. News. "And after I did that, I thought, 'Hey, I might have a chance to score some touchdowns, rush for a lot of yards.'" | | More information |
| Sun, 5 Aug 2007 | | It may look like the name of a hard rock band, but the beauty of Helvetica is that metaphorically speaking, it hardly makes a sound. Helvetica is a typeface, or more appropriately, the typeface of the 20th century. And, surely, it is the only typeface ever to have its 50th birthday observed with a major museum exhibit and an award-winning independent film. | | More information |
| Sun, 5 Aug 2007 | | Who is Ayn Rand? More than two decades after her death, readers still debate the morality and cultural influence of the provocative Russian-born author whose "objectivist" philosophy culminated in her 1957 magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. The 1,192-page novel unapologetically fictionalized an individualist philosophy that praises selfishness, scorns charity, and turns monopolists into paragons of virtue. | | More information |
| Sun, 5 Aug 2007 | | Greece had Zeus. America has Seuss. In the 50 years since The Cat in the Hat exploded onto the children's book scene, Theodor Seuss Geisel-pen name "Dr. Seuss"-has become a central character in the American literary mythology, sharing the pantheon with the likes of Mark Twain and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Of his many imaginative stories, The Cat in the Hat remains the most iconic. | | More information |
| Sun, 5 Aug 2007 | | On July 6, 1957, "Yesterday" was still well into tomorrow. But when two British teenagers met on that warm summer day, the future of popular music was irrevocably changed. The encounter was all the more momentous because it almost never happened. | | More information |
| Sun, 5 Aug 2007 | | For decades, ferry boats crossed the frigid waters of Michigan's Straits of Mackinac, shuttling people and vehicles between the two halves of the split-up state. Since the 1880s, Michigan residents dreamed of a bridge that would span the 4-mile gap between Mackinaw City and St. Ignace, an isthmus that limited tourism in Mackinac Island and stunted commerce in the remote Upper Peninsula. | | More information |
| Sun, 5 Aug 2007 | | Writing a book has become pretty much de rigueur for presidential aspirants. All but two of the 17 declared candidates in the 2008 presidential race have published at least one book or have one due out soon. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is considered a second-tier candidate but is nonetheless on his second title, while former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a second-tier Republican, has just released his fifth. It's enough to overwhelm the most determined student of modern politics. And much of the genre, penned by ghostwriters or image-conscious candidates disinclined to reveal secrets, isn't exactly riveting. But a few of the Oval Office aspirants have put pen to paper with considerable grace and candor. Where they have not, journalists have stepped in with investigative biographies. U.S. News sifted through a dozen and a half recent titles by and about the current crop of would-be presidents to offer a guide to the season's best: | | More information |
| Sun, 5 Aug 2007 | | Thought-provoking books that both campaign-watchers and presidential candidates might find worthwhile. | | More information |
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