this i believe essay by norman cousins

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Dan Gediman, Norman Cousins and This I Believe

Each week Bob is joined by Dan Gediman, the Executive Director of This I Believe, Inc . to discuss one of the original essays from the 1950s radio series. This week’s featured essay is by Norman Cousins who was editor of The Saturday Review for 35 years. A noted author, he detailed his fight against two life-threatening diseases in “Anatomy of An Illness” and “The Healing Heart.” In the face of possible nuclear war and ultimate annihilation, writer and editor Norman Cousins wonders about the destiny of man. In his essay from the 1950s, Cousins believes we have the resources to overcome our fears and welcome a new golden age of history. Click here to read a transcript and to hear the audio of his “This I Believe” essay.

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Cousins, Norman (1915-1990)

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“Inevitably, an individual is measured by his or her largest concerns.” — from Human Options , by Norman Cousins

Though not a member of any Unitarian congregation, Cousins did at times attend services at the Unitarian Church in Westport, and he donated the pulpit of that church “in memory of Albert Schweitzer.” Cousins had written two books about Schweitzer and had spent time with him at his hospital in Lambarene. In conversation with the current minister of the Westport congregation, Rev. Frank Hall, Cousins said that for him “the pulpit represented the importance of the spoken word, and the ongoing search for truth and justice.”

Norman Cousins was born in Union Hill, New Jersey, on June 24, 1915, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Samuel Kozinz and Sarah Babushkin (“Kozinz” was recorded in English as “Cousins” by an official at Ellis Island). Growing up, he was both a fine athlete and a fine writer. He graduated from Columbia University Teachers College in 1933 and began his career as writer and editor with brief stints at the New York Evening Post and Current History . In 1940 he became executive editor of the Saturday Review of Literature (later Saturday Review ), becoming editor just two years later at the age of twenty-seven. In the course of his tenure Saturday Review grew from a small and struggling literary magazine to a weekly forum of ideas with a circulation of over 600,000.

At Saturday Review , Cousins not only spoke his own mind as editor, he also encouraged other writers and critics in a collective effort, “not just to appraise literature, but to try to serve it, nurture it, safeguard it.” Cousins believed, “There is a need for writers who can restore to writing its powerful tradition of leadership in crisis.”

During his almost four decades with the magazine he came to feel that his readers were a second family: “Nothing in my life, next to my family, has meant more to me than the Saturday Review ,” he once said. “To work with books and ideas, to see the interplay between a nation’s culture and its needs, to have unfettered access to an editorial page which offered, quite literally, as much freedom as I was capable of absorbing—this is a generous portion for anyone.” Cousins used that editorial freedom to speak his mind on a wide variety of the issues of the day, none more important to him than issues of war and peace.

During World War II Cousins was a member of the editorial board for the Overseas Bureau of the Office of War Information and was cochairman of the 1943 Victory Book Campaign. He also came to believe that enduring world peace could only be achieved through effective world governance. The use of atomic weapons to end the war further galvanized his thinking and writing. In Saturday Review , Cousins affirmed that “The need for world government was clear before August 6, 1945, but Hiroshima and Nagasaki raise that need to such dimensions that it can no longer be ignored.” His editorial “Modern Man is Obsolete,” exploring the implications of the atomic age was widely quoted and in its expanded book form was briefly on the bestseller list. When the United World Federalists was founded in 1947 Cousins served as one of its vice presidents and later as president. To generate support for world government he made more than 2,000 speeches both in the United States and around the world.

In Who Speaks for Man? , published in 1953 following extensive travels in Europe and Asia, Cousins expanded his arguments for world federalism and for a world no longer based on the supremacy of nationalism and other superficial differences: “The new education must be less concerned with sophistication than compassion. It must recognize the hazards of tribalism. It must teach man the most difficult lesson of all—to look at someone anywhere in the world and be able to see the image of himself. The old emphasis upon superficial differences that separate peoples must give way to education for citizenship in the human community. “With such an education and with such self-understanding, it is possible that some nation or people may come forward with the vital inspiration that men need no less than food. Leadership on this higher level does not require mountains of gold or thundering propaganda. It is concerned with human destiny. Human destiny is the issue. People will respond.” He concluded the book with this hopeful affirmation: “War is an invention of the human mind. The human mind can invent peace with justice.”

Cousins’s concern for peace and human well-being was more than an abstract idea. His concern, for example, for the victims of Hiroshima, following a postwar visit to that devastated city, became quite personal. He arranged, with funding from Saturday Review readers, for medical treatment in the United States for twenty-four young Japanese women who came to be known as the “Hiroshima Maidens.” Saturday Review readers also supported the medical care of 400 Japanese children orphaned by the atomic bomb. In the 1950s Cousins and his wife legally adopted one of the “Maidens.” A few years later, again with the support of Saturday Review readers, Cousins helped create a program for the “Ravensbrueck Lapins,” thirty-five Polish women who had been victims of Nazi medical experiments during the war.

During the sixties and seventies Cousins was a leading voice among those opposed to the American role in Vietnam; he continued to oppose the nuclear arms race, and he continued to argue for a strengthened United Nations leading to world government. As he wrote: “The essential lesson most people still resist is that they are members of one species. It is this that we all share—the emergence of a common destiny and the beginning of the perception, however misty, that something beyond the nation will have to be brought into being if the human race is to have any meaning.” Cousins believed that this was both essential and possible. He affirmed over and over again with typical optimistic spirit that human beings could do better, be better, and create better societies.

And he believed that the path to a better world began with the individual. In a democratic society it is, he affirmed, ultimately the individual who makes a difference: “freedom’s main problem is the problem of the individual who takes himself lightly historically.”

One of Cousins’s own great strengths was that he did not take himself lightly historically. He believed in the power of the written and spoken word to make a difference in the world. His commitment to Saturday Review was rooted in this belief. As he wrote in The Healing Heart, “The description of the Saturday Review that pleased me most during the years of my editorship was that it never tried to gloss over the seriousness of the issues it discussed but that at the same time it never wavered in its belief that solutions were within reach.” This was true whether he and the magazine were taking on global issues of war and peace, justice, and the environment, or national issues such as the dangers of cigarette advertising or violence in the media.

In addition to his writing, public speaking, and service with a variety of organizations, Cousins consistently made an effort as editor of Saturday Review to experience events in the making. He believed that the editorial page should be an “encounter with the present.” In this spirit he observed an atomic test at Bikini, visited postwar Germany, reported from a plane during the Berlin airlift, traveled to disputed Kashmir in 1954, to the Gaza Strip in 1956, and to war torn Laos in 1961. Following a visit to the Soviet Union in 1960, he initiated a series of cultural exchanges between Americans and Russians from many fields of endeavor that became known as the Dartmouth Conferences. And over the years he met and often became friends with a wide variety of some of the preeminent figures of the mid-twentieth century from many fields, among them Pablo Casals, Winston Churchill, Albert Schweitzer, Adlai Stevenson, Albert Einstein, Buckminster Fuller, Pope John XXIII, U Thant, Jawaharlal Nehru, Helen Keller, and most of the U.S. presidents beginning with FDR.

In the 1960s Cousins had an experience that changed his life and that, at the same time, reinforced some of his deepest convictions concerning the nature of the human being. Stricken with a crippling and life-threatening collagen disease, Cousins followed a regimen of high doses of vitamin C and of positive emotions (including daily doses of belly laughter), all in consultation and partnership with his sometimes skeptical physicians. He chronicled his recovery in the best-selling Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration , published in 1979. In the book, generalizing from his own experience and research, he affirmed that “the life force may be the least understood force on earth” and that “human beings are not locked into fixed limitations. The quest for perfectibility is not a presumption or a blasphemy but the highest manifestation of a great design.”

When Cousins had a heart attack fifteen years following his earlier illness, he wondered whether it would be possible to recover from two life-threatening conditions in one lifetime, but he was determined that he would. As he was brought into the hospital on a stretcher following the attack, he sat up and said, “Gentlemen, I want you to know that you’re looking at the darnedest healing machine that’s ever been wheeled into this hospital.” Once again Cousins recovered, and once again he chronicled his experience in a book, The Healing Heart: Antidotes to Panic and Helplessness . And once again he generalized from his experience with life-threatening illness to the experience of life threatened humanity. He was struck by the irony that all of his books on the ills of nations did not have the total readership of his one book describing his personal experience of disease and recovery, Anatomy of an Illness . Yet his concern, as he wrote in The Healing Heart , was “that everyone’s health—including that of the next generation—may depend more on the health of society and the healing of nations than on the conquest of disease.” He concluded the book with a call to conquer war, affirming that “the health and well-being not just of Americans but of the human race are incompatible with war and preparations for war.”

During the last year of his life, Cousins received additional awards, including the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism and the Japan Niwano Peace Prize.

Norman Cousins died on November 30, 1990, following cardiac arrest, and having lived years longer than doctors more than once had predicted: ten years after his first heart attack, sixteen years after his collagen illness, and twenty-six years after his doctors first diagnosed heart disease.

In American National Biography , Cousins’s life is summarized in the following words:

“In June 1983 Cousins told the graduating class of Harvard Medical School that the “conquest of war and the pursuit of social justice… must become our grand preoccupation and magnificent obsession.” These certainly were the concerns that obsessed him throughout his life, and over the years he battled through his writings and actions to make them matters of more general concern. Driven by the shock and portent of Hiroshima, he worked to combat unchecked nationalism, promote federalism, and build a sense of world citizenship, in the belief that people as a whole might yet construct a new world order of peace and justice. His optimism, intellectual curiosity, and commitment to the preservation of human life were equally unquenchable.”

Cousins’s own words, from his 1980 book Human Options: An Autobiographical Notebook , perhaps best capture how he strived to live his life:

“I can imagine no greater satisfaction for a person, in looking back on his life and work, than to have been able to give some people, however few, a feeling of genuine pride in belonging to the human species and, beyond that, a zestful yen to justify that pride.”

— By Ken Read-Brown, Minister of Old Ship Church, Hingham, Massachusetts.

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This I Believe essay - Leadership

This i believe oral evaluation sheet, 'this i believe' essay writing.

Presented in five consecutive standard-period classes, students are invited to contribute to the This I Believe essay-writing project by writing and submitting a statement of personal belief. This is a challenging, intimate statement on one’s beliefs and one’s own daily life philosophy, considering moments when belief was formed, tested, or changed. Written by Jarvis Reed.

Overview: Presented in five consecutive standard-period classes, students are invited to contribute to the This I Believe essay-writing project by writing and submitting a statement of personal belief. This is a challenging, intimate statement on one's beliefs and one's own daily life philosophy, considering moments when belief was formed, tested, or changed. Written by Jarvis Reed.

AFNR.HS.10.5.c Communicate using strategies that ensure clarity, logic, purpose, and rofessionalism in formal or informal settings.

AFNR.HS.20.1.d Examine and practice public speaking.

Learning Goal:

Students will increase written and oral communication skills by thinking critically and articulating in writing a personal foundational belief in 350-500 words stated in the affirmative and then presenting this essay to their class.

Photo by Yeshi Kangrang on Unsplash

Norman Cousins, 75; Editor, Author, Philosopher, UCLA Teacher

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Norman Cousins, a man of letters and peace who late in life wrote of his self-willed triumph over illness, adding yet another dimension to one of the most multifaceted careers of our time, died of heart failure Friday.

The editor, author and philosopher, whose name was synonymous with Saturday Review magazine for nearly four decades, died at the UCLA Medical Center after suffering a full cardiac arrest at a Westwood hotel. He was 75.

Paramedics rushed Cousins, an adjunct professor in the Department of Psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the UCLA School of Medicine, to the hospital, where he died about 20 minutes later.

“We are saddened by the loss of Norman Cousins,” said Sherman Mellinkoff, professor emeritus and former dean of the UCLA School of Medicine. “Cousins was an inspirational leader in trying to understand the grandeur of the human spirit and its promotion of health and resistance to illness.

“His vision and penetrating questions were an inspiration not only to UCLA students and faculty, but to physicians and others throughout the world.”

Just two months ago, Cousins told an Orange County gathering that “the important thing is what we do while we’re alive. The great tragedy of life is not death, but what dies inside us while we live.”

From 1940 to 1977, Cousins maintained a self-professed “love affair with the readers” of Saturday Review, the always prestigious and often financially troubled magazine, which at one time was considered the epitome of arts coverage in the United States.

When that love affair ended, he began a new one--this time with students at UCLA where he taught ethics and medical literature.

Advocate of world peace, opponent of nuclear warfare and ghost writer for Presidents, Cousins was a Renaissance Man in an era of specialists. But it was as a self-healer that he became known to those Americans who were not as interested in his politics as they were in his return from a life- threatening illness.

From that critical abyss came “Anatomy of an Illness--as Perceived by the Patient,” an account of how humor triumphed over pain and of Cousins’ eventual road back to a productive life.

He described in that book, first excerpted in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, that he and his wife had just returned from a 1964 trip to Europe. Shortly after Cousins began experiencing a general feeling of malaise accompanied by achiness and difficulty in moving his limbs.

When his pain got to the point where he could no longer turn over in bed, he went to a hospital where he was told he had a rare disease of the connective tissues--a disease for which there was no known cure and which eventually would lead to an excruciatingly painful death.

Cousins believed that his system had been poisoned by diesel and jet fumes while in Russia and--after extensive reading on collagen (the supportive protein of skin and bone) disorders--attributed his problem to adrenal exhaustion, brought on by the strain of a whirlwind trip.

(He made this self-diagnosis because his wife, who had accompanied him everywhere, was symptom free.)

Remembering that endocrine problems could be aggravated by emotional upheavals, Cousins--by now suffering increasing pain and gravel-like substances under his skin--determined to replace the negatives in his life with positives.

With his doctor’s permission, he took himself off the pain killers which allowed him some sleep, reasoning that the toxins in them might be aggravating his skin condition and that those same toxins were taxing the adrenal gland itself, further inhibiting any possible recovery.

For the pain killers he substituted laughter--setting up a movie projector in his room where he would view old Marx Brothers films and tapes of the “Candid Camera” television series.

To combat inflammation he took massive, intravenous doses of Vitamin C.

Soon, he wrote “10 minutes of genuine laughter would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep.” To augment the films he had nurses read to him from humor books. Between the laughter and the ascorbic acid his fever began receding and his pulse slowed. At the end of the eighth day of self-treatment he said he could move his thumbs without pain.

Several months later he returned to his beloved magazine and by the time the book chronicling his recovery was published in 1979 he could write that he was free of all pain except for a minor problem in one shoulder.

His recovery, he wrote, was due to a coupling of his own determination with the open-mindedness of his physician, a man “wise enough to know that the art of healing is still a frontier profession.”

He also believed that his own reticence to accept the inevitability of death kept him from being “trapped in the cycle of fear, depression and panic that frequently accompanies a supposedly incurable illness.”

The battle of living began for Norman Cousins in Union Hill, N.J. where he was the frail and sickly son of Samuel and Sara Miller Cousins.

Physically he was unable to compete with his childhood friends. But academically he was far their superior. By the time he was 5 his nickname was “The Professor,” a slender, impish boy fascinated with the world of print.

He briefly attended Columbia University and became an education writer for the New York Evening Post in 1934. He then moved to Current History, a world affairs monthly magazine which shared building space with the Saturday Review of Literature. In that building were the writers who were molding SR into the cultural voice of America--William Rose Benet, Christopher Morley, George Stevens and Amy Loveman.

Despite their best efforts the magazine, with a circulation of only 20,000, was losing vast sums of money. When Henry Seidel Canby--with Stevens the driving force behind the tiny cadre of writers--resigned in 1940, Cousins was asked to take over.

“I got the job because no one else would take it,” Cousins wrote years later in “Present Tense: An American Editor’s Odyssey” a collection of his essays.

With the encouragement of the magazine’s publisher, Everette Lee De Golyer, a wealthy geologist, Cousins broadened the extensive literary coverage into a more-sweeping overview of art and music and in 1942, coincidental with Cousins’ appointment as editor-in-chief, Saturday Review of Literature became simply Saturday Review.

Cousins made the erudite publication more palatable. He kept the “Double Crostics” puzzler, the bane of wordsmiths everywhere, but added editorials which offered both thought and whimsy; he brought Irving Kolodin aboard as music critic; had Bennett Cerf write of the bemused world of publishing. Cleveland Amory, the essayist and Joseph Wood Krutch, the naturalist, graced SR’s columns.

While sales and subscriptions inched upward, Cousins found time for his first book: “The Good Inheritance: The Democratic Chance,” an examination of the collapse of Periclean Greece which he coupled with a proposal for international cooperation to protect democracies everywhere.

Next he edited two similarly themed anthologies: “A Treasury of Democracy” in 1941 and “The Poetry of Freedom” in 1945. During the war he served on the board of the Overseas Bureau of War Information and edited U.S.A., a government journal disseminated abroad.

Spurred on at war’s end by its devastation, Cousins began writing the series of editorials and articles that soon involved the magazine with both discussing and reviewing.

Cousins, at a surprise party celebrating the 25th anniversary of his editorship, summed up the magazine’s impact thusly:

“I am proud that Saturday Review was the first magazine to report and write in depth about the implication of the atomic age and to maintain its concern. I am proud of the part Saturday Review played in the campaign for a ban on nuclear testing.

“I am proud of Saturday Review’s role in bringing about reform in the manufacture and dispensing of unsafe drugs and in giving its readers such an early and authentic awareness of the problems and possibilities in space travel.

“I am proud of its service to and standing in the educational community. . . . I am proud of its stand on cigarette advertising. . . . I am proud . . . of the battle it has waged for freedom and intellectual inquiry.”

The world seemed even prouder of Norman Cousins.

He was named honorary president of the United World Federalists and co-chairman of the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. He helped arrange for the “Hiroshima Maidens,” 25 young women victims of the atomic bomb blast of 1945 to come to the United States for medical treatment. As a personal footnote he adopted one of them, Shigeko Sasamori and saw her through nursing school.

In October, he was presented the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism for his efforts on behalf of international peace and the relief of human suffering.

Of all the hundreds of editorials he wrote perhaps one, “Modern Man Is Obsolete,” a touching plea in which he argued that man must learn to live as a “world citizen” or die a “world warrior,” will be his most lasting printed legacy.

By 1960, Saturday Review had confounded those who felt that a magazine devoted to the arts could never be a commercially viable entity. Circulation was at 260,000 and climbing. Two years earlier geologist De Golyer had given the magazine to his editor and Cousins, in turn, had given 49% of that to the magazine’s staff.

Then came what Cousins later called the greatest mistake of his life. He and other stockholders sold out to McCall Corp., a publishing conglomerate which owned McCall’s and Redbook magazines. Cousins’ contract called for him to be editor in chief of McCall’s but 14 months later he had resigned, unable or unwilling to cope with the competitive world of women’s magazines.

Subsequently McCall’s was taken over by Norton Simon Inc., which in 1971 sold Saturday Review (with its then circulation of 650,000) to Nicolas Charney and John J. Veronis, publishers of Psychology Today.

Originally, Cousins stayed as editor but after Charney and Veronis decided to reshape SR’s format into four separate monthlies, emphasizing education, science, the arts and society and to use SR’s name for a series of marketing adventures, Cousins resigned, citing “philosophical and professional differences.”

He started a new magazine, World, devoted, to “the proper care of the human habitat.” But critic Dwight Macdonald found Cousins’ World “flat” as did many other media experts.

By 1973 Charney and Veronis had bankrupted SR and Cousins reassumed custody of his literate offspring. The result was Saturday Review/World, a biweekly which its editor said would offer “reportorial reach” plus the “literary and cultural interests” of his old SR.

The magazine probed the links of Cubans in Miami to the Watergate break-in, explored the latest in surgical techniques and put such diverse personalities as George Gershwin and Andy Worhol on its covers. Within a year it was prospering and Cousins was named “publisher of the year” by the Magazine Publishers Assn.

Cousins is survived by his wife Ellen and four children.

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From hiroshima to human extinction: norman cousins and the atomic age.

In 1945 the American intellectual, Norman Cousins, was one of the first to raise terrifying questions for humanity about the successful splitting of the atom.

Top Image: Detonation of an underwater atomic bomb at Bikini Atoll, July 1946. Credit: US Army Photographic Signal Corps. Courtesy of the Department of Defense.

Sixteen hours after the Enola Gay dropped the “Little Man” atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, killing some 100,000 people, President Harry Truman announced to the American public and the world the nature of this new weapon. “It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the Sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.” While many Americans (and not only Americans) took these words to mean that Imperial Japan was truly defeated—and World War II was almost over—others recoiled at the prospects for the future signaled by what Truman called this “new and revolutionary increase in destruction.”

Opposition to the atomic bomb ensued almost immediately after the obliteration of Hiroshima and then Nagasaki on August 9. In this earliest phase of nuclear abolitionism, opposition did not assume the form, though, of protests or marches. Only much later, after the invention of the exponentially more devastating hydrogen bomb, would masses of people head to the streets in cities around the world. Instead, it was critique and philosophical thought which took precedence. Even before the Japanese delegation officially surrendered on the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945, American journalists and intellectuals raised terrifying questions for humanity about the successful splitting of the atom. One of them was the liberal editor of the prestigious Saturday Review of Literature, Norman Cousins (1915-1990.)

Cousins is a name no longer that familiar to Americans. However, he was once an extremely important figure in the cultural life of the United States. After becoming editor-in-chief of the Saturday Review in 1940, Cousins championed liberal-democratic ideas and established close ties with the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he joined the board of the Office of War Information and enthusiastically participated in the Victory Book Campaign, when the United Service Organizations, the American Library Association, and the Red Cross organized the donation in 1942-43 of more than 18 million books to members of the American armed forces. During the war, Cousins successfully blended attention to political and cultural events with the Saturday Review’s more traditional focus on literature. As a result, the publication grew from a readership of 20,000 to well over 600,000.

Norman Cousins (left) receives a book from Elmer Davis, head of the Office of War Information, as a donation to the Victory Book Campaign. Credit: George Danor, US Office of War Information. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

When he read Truman’s announcement about the dropping of the atomic bomb on August 6, 1945, Cousins could not rest. He stayed up that night working on a response to the momentous and, for him, terrifying news.

Cousins set a precedent for the philosophical acuity of his 1945 analyses of the new menace to civilization posed by the invention of the atomic bomb. Before John Hersey’s powerful work, Hiroshima (1946) and the creation of the Doomsday Clock in 1947, and well before Jonathan Schell’s bestselling 1982 book, The Fate of the Earth , and Carl Sagan’s prediction of “nuclear winter” (1983), Cousins published a seminal essay on August 18, just a few days after Emperor Hirohito accepted Allied demands for surrender . Titled “Modern Man is Obsolete,” he expanded the piece in the fall of 1945 into a short book for the publisher Viking. He was just 30 years old.

Cousins steered clear of what preoccupied many later commentators on the American use of uranium and plutonium weapons against Japan. He did not inquire into whether it was a necessary or a criminal act by the United States. Nor did he worry much about the Bomb’s impact on relations with the other Allied powers, especially the Soviet Union. It was the fate of the human race or “man,” the heavily gendered term of the time Cousins favored, which concerned him in 1945. Here, for all their limitations, Cousins’s texts proved very prescient.

There are three aspects of Cousins’s argument that seize our attention. The first is how he framed history after the destruction of Hiroshima . The latter both heralded the end of World War II and yet was also the day “a new age was born. That day marks the violent death of one stage in man’s history and the beginning of another.” This new age, the “Atomic Age,” possessed a “saturating effect, permeating every aspect of man’s activities, from machines to morals, from physics to philosophy, from politics to poetry; in sum, it is an effect creating a blanket of obsolescence not only over methods and the products of man but over man himself.” Elsewhere in the text Cousins warned that “modern man is obsolete, a self-made anachronism becoming more incongruous by the minute. He has exalted change in everything but himself. He has leaped centuries ahead in inventing a new world to live in, but he knows little or nothing about his own part in that world.” An enormous gap, Cousins feared, had grown between what modern science could accomplish and the current, sluggish state of human conscience and understanding.

To close the gap a resolute confrontation with humanity’s history of warfare had to occur. Cousins spoke of the “savagely competitive impulses” exhibited by humans, but accented “the insufficiency of the goods and the needs of life.” So much of the violent conflicts from the past, he suggested, resulted from scarcity. Groups, nations, and blocs of nations fought each other over “available land, goods, or wealth.” Showing remarkable optimism, given how terrible the Great Depression had been, Cousins contended that the world was entering a time when scarcity—and, thus, the wars ensuing from it—could be conquered. An age of peace was within reach. Yet it would require tremendous wisdom, determination, and, above all, international cooperation and control of atomic energy in order to create an era without war. Since “national sovereignty” was now antiquated, he called, quite controversially, for a world government, along federalist lines, to replace types of governance bound to the nation-state. There was much then and certainly now that is debatable about Cousins’s notion of a world-state but the question he posed about the necessity for a just and effective framework for preventing conflict and meeting human needs persists.

The alternative to such a framework, Cousins did not flinch from emphasizing, was catastrophic. His language in these sections of “Modern Man is Obsolete” became uncompromisingly radical. Now that the “science of warfare has reached the point where it threatens the planet itself, is it possible that man is destined to return the earth to its original incandescent mass blazing at 50 million degrees?” From August 1945 forward, the “complete obliteration of the human species” would constantly threaten, unless a novel international system based on peace and cooperation was forged. Otherwise, how much time remained to “man” “before the means he has already devised for the ultimate in self-destruction—extinction” sealed the fate of human life, indeed of all life. His warnings appeared prophetic when the United States detonated two atomic bombs in July 1946 at Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Islands, each a thousand times more powerful than the weapons used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Norman Cousins’s essay and book won millions of readers in the United States and beyond. His works compelled people to look beyond the understandable jubilation about the end of the Second World War and to consider how the atomic bombs which helped bring the conflict to a conclusion also entailed a new terror: the prospect of humanity’s annihilation. A lifelong advocate for world peace, who personally assisted the Hiroshima Maidens (women who had been disfigured by the atomic bomb) in getting medical care, Cousins anticipated an entire line of anti-nuclear thought that grappled with how to respond to the nuclear threat. This was a threat that steadily worsened as the United States lost its atomic monopoly in 1949 and several countries acquired the Bomb. The task of overcoming this menace and building a world without such superweapons endures.

The Most Fearsome Sight: The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima

On the morning of August 6, 1945, the American B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

This article is part of an ongoing series commemorating the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II made possible by Bank of America.

Jason Dawsey, PhD

Jason Dawsey, PhD, is ASU WWII Studies Consultant in the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy.

Explore Further

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

When the Nazis came to clear out the Warsaw Ghetto, they were met with fierce resistance.

View of Stutthof concentration camp shortly after the camp’s liberation

Stutthof Concentration Camp and the Death Marches

Stutthof concentration camp was among the sites of horror caught up in this gruesome crescendo to Adolf Hitler’s war for racial supremacy.

Dauntless: A Conversation with WWII Veteran Paul Hilliard

Visitors at the National WWII Museum had the special opportunity to hear from WWII veteran and Museum Trustee Paul Hilliard as he discussed his life story documented in the new biography, Dauntless .

Freed prisoners at Dachau scavenging in the dump.

Lee Miller: Witness to the Concentration Camps and the Fall of the Third Reich

One of America’s only women war correspondents reports on the liberation of the concentration camps, Soviet and American troops meeting at Torgau, and Hitler’s burning villa in Berchtesgaden

Women war correspondents in the European theater.

Lee Miller in Combat

One of America’s only female war correspondents reported on the aftermath of D-Day, the Battle of Saint-Malo, and the liberation of Paris.

Lee Miller: Women at War

One of America’s only female war correspondents captured the war through women’s service.

A Contested Legacy: The Men of Montford Point and the Good War

Despite their commendable service during World War II, the Marines of Montford Point would regularly contend with societal forces that vehemently resisted all measures taken toward racial integration.

Our War Too: Women's History Symposium

The symposium, which took place from February 29 to March 1, 2024, featured topics expanding upon the Museum’s special exhibit, Our War Too: Women in Service .

clock This article was published more than 37 years ago

Norman Cousins, Still Laughing

Medicine is only half the battle, asserts the maven of humor.

About 10 years ago, an improbable article about an improbable medical recovery launched an improbable second career for Norman Cousins.

Already well known in literary circles as longtime editor of the Saturday Review -- and a legendary perpetrator of April Fool's Day spoofs -- Cousins wrote an article titled "Anatomy of an Illness (As Perceived by the Patient)" in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Cousins' article chronicled his remarkable recovery from a severe and life-threatening disease of the connective tissue called degenerative collagen illness. He was hospitalized in 1964 with severe pain, high fever and near-paralysis of the legs, neck and back.

"Being unable to move my body was all the evidence I needed that the specialists were dealing with real concerns," he wrote. "But deep down, I knew I had a good chance and relished the idea of bucking the odds."

The key to his recovery, he said, was a powerful drug called laughter.

"I made the joyous discovery that 10 minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep," he wrote.

Flat on his back in a New York hospital, Cousins persuaded the nurses to read him excerpts from the humor columns of E.B. White and Max Eastman and show him "Candid Camera" reruns and old Marx Brothers movies.

It's not often that The New England Journal, must reading for the nation's physicians, prints a six-page article by a layperson extolling the curative virtues of megadoses of laughter and Vitamin C. The article drew some 5,000 letters, more than anything Cousins had ever written, including 31 years worth of signed editorials on the arms race, world affairs, air pollution and other weighty topics in the Saturday Review.

"We launched Cousins' second career," said Dr. Arnold S. Relman, editor of The New England Journal, adding that he has had some "mixed feelings" since then.

In that "second career," Cousins has written two books, including an expanded version of the journal article, "Anatomy of an Illness," and "The Healing Heart," which describes the "healing partnership" with his doctor which helped him recover from the heart attack he suffered in 1980. He also joined the faculty of the University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine as a researcher in the biochemistry of emotions and professor of medical humanities.

Cousins, 71, is to speak tonight on "New Dimensions in Healing" at a benefit for the St. Francis Center, a nondenominational organization that helps patients and their families cope with death and bereavement. The talk will be at 6 p.m. at the Washington Hebrew Congregation, Massachusetts Avenue and Macomb Street NW.

"It is quite possible that this treatment -- like everything else I did -- was a demonstration of the placebo effect," Cousins wrote. But if so, the placebo -- "the doctor who resides within" -- was a powerful one.

"I was greatly elated by the discovery that there is a physiologic basis for the ancient theory that laughter is good medicine," Cousins wrote.

Not everyone was convinced.

"I'm of two minds about Mr. Cousins," said Relman, who became editor of the journal the year after Cousins' article was published.

"I agree with the basic verities he articulates, but I'm concerned that much of what he says appears to take an anti-scientific, irrational approach to medicine that would seek to turn the clock back.

"There is no doubt that an optimistic and determined patient handles the vicissitudes of illness better than one who is depressed, negative and unhappy and defeatist about his illness. It's also true that physicians who try to be emotionally supportive and deal honestly with patients as human beings are more likely to be successful than those who take an impersonal and distant approach.

"All that is true, and I admire Mr. Cousins for saying so in a persuasive and articulate manner.

"On the other hand, he sometimes appears to be saying that that's all there is to it -- that an upbeat attitude will cure a dread disease. There's no evidence that one's positive frame of mind will cure cancer. All the wishing and hopes and claims to the contrary will not make it so."

Cousins himself knows that his message can be misunderstood and oversimplified.

"We mustn't regard any of this as a substitute for competent medical attention," he said in an interview. "But the doctor can only do half the job. The other half is the patient's response to the illness.

"What we really mean by a patient's responsibility is that we've got vast powers that are rarely used. It's important to avoid defeatism and a sense of panic and despair. But that's not an excuse for not seeking medical help."

Cousins is "troubled" by the term "holistic health" because it polarizes the field into two "armed camps." Actually, he said, the idea of taking into account the whole patient -- both mind and body -- is an ancient medical tradition dating back at least to Hippocrates.

He also said the term "holistic health" is so all-inclusive as to become almost meaningless.

"It tends to become a pretty large tent," he said. "At some of these holistic health meetings, you find booths for palmistry and astrology and pyramidology. I'm not sure that having all those camels in the tent is going to advance the cause of effective treatment."

As for criticism of his book, Cousins said he has no quarrel with scientists who demanded more "hard evidence" to document the link between psychological emotions and physiological symptoms. At UCLA, he is on a research task force -- including immunologists, endocrinologists and psychologists -- looking into these very questions.

The UCLA task force has studied the cases of more than 300 cancer patients, Cousins said. While the research has not been published yet, he said preliminary findings suggest that the symptoms tend to intensify and worsen at the time of diagnosis, because of the fear and panic prompted by the label "cancer."

"I'd much rather take my chances with hope than with despair," he said.

In his "first" career, Cousins was a magazine editor, author of more than a dozen books, eloquent advocate of disarmament and international law, and cochairman of the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy.

And, through it all, a merry prankster who once described himself to The New York Times as "a man who loves to goof off."

"UNFORTUNATE COMPUTER ERROR HAS RESULTED IN 118,000 bra cups in rectangular shape . . ." ran an ad at the top of the personals column of Saturday Review a few years ago during the week before April Fool's Day. "Probably good as cigar ashtrays or for storing playing cards . . . Rounder-than-Round Bra Co."

The year before, several editors had been momentarily dismayed by an authentic-looking notice from the printer that 300,000 copies of the magazine had been accidentally printed upside down. Another time, the publisher ordered a frankfurter from the office vendor, smeared it with mustard and bit into a rubber hot dog. He knew instantly who was behind it.

"Cousins," he muttered. Cousins joined the UCLA faculty in 1978, but it wasn't until "just the other night," he said a little sheepishly, that he discovered he had become a Californian. A devoted Boston Red Sox fan for decades, he suddenly found himself rooting for the California Angels last week in their American League championship series against the Red Sox.

At 71, and more than 20 years after his nearly fatal illness, Cousins said he feels no residual effects. He plays tennis several times a week, and rarely goes a week without a round of golf (handicap: 16).

"I can still drive a golf ball 200 yards, and I still get a big kick out of seeing that ball take off like a homesick angel."

He has nothing against retirement, but regards boredom as the "one of the most dangerous diseases" in our civilization.

"The body has to be used. You have to be needed. Your mind has to be activated. There's got to be something you have to do next Tuesday. We're not machines. We prosper when we have things that light up our minds."

Seriousness and laughter, reading and writing, sports and April Fool's jokes still light up Norman Cousins' mind.

"I enjoy life," he said. "I have complete mobility. The hips move, the legs move, the arms move . . .

"I think I had better stop there."

Jump to Content

Misc. corresp.

Special Invitations, telegrams, cards

Scope and Contents note

Bowles, Chester

Brown, John Mason

Buckley, William

Bundy, McGeorge

Bundy, William

Bush, George

Canfield, Cass

Carter, Jimmy

Casals, Pablo

Cerf, Bennet

Commager, Henry Steele

Cranston, Allan

DeGolyer, Everette

Deluise, Carol & Dom

Eaton, Cyrus

Eisenhower, D

Ford, Gerald R.

Farrell, James T.

Fuller, R. Buckminster

Fromm, Erich

Gandhi, Indira

Gandhi, M.K. - Gosh

Golden, Harry

Supreme Court Justices, appelate, district court justices

Foreign government officials

U.N. foreign officials

Meyner, Gov. Robt. - conf. 1960

State representatives

U.S. representatives

U.S. senators - Clark, Sen. Joseph S. (D. Pa.)

U.S. senators - Kennedy, Edward

U.S. senators - Simon, Sen. Paul

U.S. senators - Cranston, Sen. Alan

U.S. senators - A-G

U.S. senators - H-L

U.S. senators - M

U.S. senators - N-Z

White House staffs

Executive depts., agencies, Armed Services

Hammerstein, Oscar

Herter, Christian

Humphrey, Hubert

Johnson, LBJ

Kennedy, John F. & staff

Kennedy, Edward

Kennedy, Robert

Kennedy, Mrs. JFK

Kilpatrick, James J.

King, Martin Luther

LaRocque, Gene R.

Lear, Norman

Leinsdorf, Erich

Luckman, Charles

Lindsay, John V.

Linowitz, Sol

Luce, Henry & Clare

Mathews, David

Murphy, Franklin D.

MacLeish, Archibald

Menninger, Karl

Menninger, Ann Catherine

Menninger, Roy & Barbara

Menuhin, Yehudi

Michener, James

Muller, Robert

Mumford, Lewis

Muskie, Edmund

Nixon, Richard M.

Overstreet, Bonaro & Harry

Pauling, Linus

Reagan, Ronald & staff

Rockefellers

Romulo, Carlos

Schlesinger, Arthur jr.

Shotwell, James T

Smith, Lillian

Sorenson, Theodore

Stevens, George

Stone, Irving

Stevenson, Adlai

Szent-Gyorgyi, Albert

Szilard, Leo

Thomas, Norman

Truman, Harry S.

Wadsworth, James

Wharton, John

White, Paul Dudley

International-Important

Nuclear Test Ban Materials, Citizens Committee for a Nuclear Test Ban Rep. to JFK, copies of corresp. with Nehru & Krushchev

NC visit to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Dec. 1961

NC notebooks '62, '63; 3 steno notebooks, 1 notepad

Khrushchev photos

Khrushchev greeting to Pope/Kennedy 1962; Encyclical copies

Test Ban Treaty, JFK NYC 1963

NC/Khrushchev Corresp 1961-1963

Visit to Gagra 4/12/63

Khrushchev tapes

Moscow Conference - Communist/worker parties 1960

NC unidentifed quotes: JFK, Khrushchev, China

Pope John XXIII Encyclical Letter, corresp. re 1963

Msgr. Ignacio Cardinale Archbishop Dell Aqua

Vatican corresp

NC/JFK corresp. re visit to Pope John 1962, memos

NC negotiations re Vietnam, research & xeroxes (mtg. with U Thant)

Gen. Ky (Premier, Rep. of Vietnam)

Vietnam negotiations

Memorandum for Hubert H. Humphrey on visit with Dobrynin 4/8/65

Atomic bomb - clippings, background 1945, 1946

Radio Free Europe script, Pacem in Terris

Important news events - Dr. Robert Oppenheimer

Sakharov memorandum July 1968

Sholokov, M.

News background materials

Tagore (India trip) 1960

Radio Vientiane Communiques 1960

Bikini Tests 1946

Dumbarton Oaks (proposals for U.N. Charter)

Datebooks, calendars

[datebooks, calendars] 1948-1990

Politics/Congress

Communism, subversion

World trip 1953

Presidential Elections

Civil liberties

War editorials

World Public Opinion

World government

Chronological

Corr. on SR edits

Misc. SR MSS.

[SR editorials] to 5/5/53

[SR editorials] 5/9/53-2/20/54

[SR editorials] 2/27/54-6/25/55

[SR editorials] 7/2/55-6/2/56

[SR editorials] 6/9/56-4/20/57

[SR editorials] 4/20/57-6/14/58

[SR editorials] 6/28/58-6/13/59

[SR editorials] 7/25/59-2/13/60

[SR editorials] 2/20/60-3/18/61

[SR editorials] 3/25/61-11/18/61

[SR editorials] 2/10/62-12/15/62

[SR editorials] 1/19/63-8/3/63

[SR editorials] 8/10/63-4/18/64

[SR editorials] 4/25/64-9/26/64

[SR editorials] 10/3/64-4/24/65

[SR editorials] 4/24/65-11/13/65

[SR editorials] 11/20/65-7/1/66

[SR editorials] 7/23/66-11/19/66

[SR editorials] 11/26/66-4/8/67

[SR editorials] 4/22/67-9/7/67

[SR editorials] 9/23/67-5/3/68

[SR editorials] 5/18/68-2/1/69

[SR editorials] 2/1/69-8/2/69

[SR editorials] 8/2/69-12/6/69

[SR editorials] 12/13/69-5/9/70

[SR editorials] 5/16/70-11/21/70

[SR editorials] 11/7/70-5/15/71

[SR editorials] 5/15/71-6/26/71

[SR editorials] 7/3/71-10/2/71

[SR editorials] 10/9/71-7/18/72

[SR editorials] 8/1/72-11/7/72

[SR editorials] 11/21/72-3/13/73

[SR editorials] 3/27/73-8/14/73

[SR editorials] 7/17/73-12/4/73

[SR editorials] 12/4/73-5/4/74

[SR editorials] 5/18/74-8/24/74

[SR editorials] 7/7/74-1/11/75

[SR editorials] 1/25/75-4/5/75

[SR editorials] 4/5/75-7/26/75

[SR editorials] 8/9/75-11/15/75

[SR editorials] 11/15/75-2/7/76

[SR editorials] 2/21/76-5/29/76

[SR editorials] 6/12/76-8/18/76

[SR editorials] 10/2/76-12/3/76

[SR editorials] 1/8/77-3/5/77

[SR editorials] 3/19/77-5/28/77

[SR editorials] 6/11/77-9/3/77

[SR editorials] 9/3/77-11/12/77

[SR editorials] 11/26/77-2/18/78

[SR editorials] 2/18/78-4/15/78

[SR editorials] 4/15/78-6/10/78

[SR editorials] 6/24/78-9/30/78

[SR editorials] 9/30/78-3/3/79

[SR editorials] 3/17/79-7/21/79

[SR editorials] 8/79-3/1/80

[SR editorials] 3/15/80-11/81

[SR editorials] 12/81-4/84

Encyclopedia Britannica/Benton

Senator Benton c1951-1972

Harry Abrams

Films - General Correspondence

Harold W. Bentley

William Haley

Hubert H. Humphrey

Robert Hutchins

John Kobler

Library of Presidential Papers

Frederick A. Praeger/Phaidon

Warren Preece

Norman Cousins

Mortimer Adler

F.A.P. Henry Bowes

F.A.P. Meriam Webster

F.A.P. Weidenfeld and Nicolson

NC and Senator Benton

WBF Statements

Board of Editors

Newton Minow

To discuss with NC

Quadrangle Books

Public Television Corporation

Films humanities

TV as a news medium

Charles Swanson

Films Living Bill of Rights

Satellite television

Report to the Britannica Board of Editors and EB Mgmt. of REP-confidential

Misc. Encyclopedia Britannica

[SR financial material] 1941-1971

[Hiroshima] 1940s-1990

[SR history]

Ikeda Writing Project

[Ikeda Writing project]

Juvenilia/early career

NC autograph book 1929

Mohican Camp papers, letters to mom 1931

High school essays, letters

High school newspaper: The Square Deal

High school annual: The Rooseveltian 1931, 1932

First lectures

First editorship, The Merchant Plumber

Current History Magazine

Kettering Foundation

Kettering Foundation (incl. semi-annual mtg.) 1984/85

Legal - Wharton

[SR legal files]

Manuscripts of others for review

[approx. 20 MSS of others for NC's review]

Memorabilia

facsimilies of T. Jefferson letter, P. Revere letter

Bobby Kennedy - American Heritage Magazine

Metropolitan Opera farewell performance 4/16/66

First picture of Mars, NASA Voyager encounter with Jupiter

Typescript Hist. Doc.: "To Abraham Lincoln from the Int'l Working Men's Association

New Yorker - Issue on Hiroshima 8/31/46

Life Magzine bicentennial edition 1975

The Freeman issues 1922

The Nation 1952

Misc. files from house

[Miscellaneous files from house]

Miscellaneous

NC unpublished, NC notebooks, working papers, writings, unfinished notes 7/89

Healing of Nations

Research Material: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Research material: Jefferson

Research material: Mark Twain

Natural Goodness of Man (anthology)

Robert R. Young

Intro to Shotwell book 1964

NC-Mike Row (Little Man)

NC's Dream about the KC Airport (short story) 2/67

A Most Beautiful Baby (short story)

Dictators and Democrats

Litany for Modern Man

Office of War Information booklets - "USA"

Wilkie - "I Remember Father"

Architects of the World

NC Short Story

Dialogue with God

Immortality

Scaffolding for Adventures Among the Humans

Miscellaneous business

[SR miscellaneous business] 1973-1978

[SR miscellaneous business] 1973-1975

[misc. business, financial] 1976-1981

[misc. business] 1976-1983

Miscellaneous writings

Book reviews

NC article Berlin SR, Vietnam 1953, 1969

Organizations 1

American Institute of Stress

Asinkenazy/Pacific Rim

Authors Guild

Beverly Hills Country Club

Buckminster Fuller Inst.

Carr Foundation/O.J. Fareed

Center for Health Communication, Harvard

Century Club

Christian Science Monitor

Christic Institute

Concerned Faculty

Covel Comm.

Dramatists Guild

Albert Einstein Peace Prize Foundation

The Environmental Fund (NC on Advisory Board)

Fetzer Foundation

International Pain Foundation

International Student Center - UCLA

Institute for Genocide Teaching

Institute for the Advancement of Health

J. Paul Getty Trust

Jonsson Cancer Center

Kettering Corresp.

MacArthur Foundation

MacArthur Found. Fellowships

Menninger Foundation

Native American Rights Foundation

People for the American Way

Pepperdine University Associates

Stehlin Foundation for Cancer Research

Wellness Community

World Federalist Assn.

WFA Sam Winograd

World Association of World Federalists

Organizations 2

American Inst. of Stress

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Society

Bens (Stanley Weiss) - Business Executives for Nat. Security

California Chamber Symphony

California Governor's Council on Fitness

California Wellness Council

Cancer Advisory Council - Gov. Brown

Cardiac Runner Assoc.

Center for Citizenship Ed.

Center for Defense Information

Center for Health Enhancement (Drs. Kleaman & Reading)

Center for International Strategic Affairs

Center for Social Studies Education

Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions

Council for Advancement and Support of Ed.

Council on Foundations

Comedy Conference Committee

Committee for National Security

Committee on the Constitutional System

Corporation for Society - Bartz

Council on Foreign Relations

Educational Policy and Curriculum Committee

The Fund for Peace

Global Energy

Greely Foundation/Dana McLean

Grenville Clark Fund

Connie Haines Living Center & Cancer Foundation

Hospice Evaluation Advisory Committee, GE Lewis MD

Hospital Satellite Network

Hugh O'Brien Youth Foundation

Interfaith Center to Reverse the Arms Race

Minn. Home Care Advocacy Program

Meals for Millions

Ruth Mott Foundation

National Academy of Science

National Council for Children's Rights

National Institute for Jewish Hospice

Parliamentarians for Global Action

PEN American Center West

Plato Society of UCLA

Scott Newman Center

Staford Sleep Disorders Center

St. John's Hospital

Trilateral Commission

UN Association

UN Lumbini Project

US International University

World Academy of Art and Science

World Community Year USA 1983

World Constitution and Parliament Assn.

Personal files

Mailing list

Notes for Mesmer

Reprint list

Articles 1988-90

Intangibles in Medicine (JAMA commentary by NC)

Articles 1976-1987

CSM (Christian Science Monitor) articles

Speeches by NC

Books by NC

Long bio, short bio

Photographs of NC

Articles about NC

Lecture log

Photographs by NC

Environment

Color/Airports and planes

USA Architectural shots and patterns

NC & friends 1963-1966

Cousins families - New Canaan

NC's Friends

NC & Friends 1956-62

USSR mainly pre-1961

Rome, Berlin

NYC & Misc. environs - Architecture, landscapes

NC & SR staff 1953-55

Africa (Ethiopia, Congo, Lambarene), Haiti

Far East Mission 1965

Far East - Fiji, Philippines, Australia; Philippines 1965 1964

India, Indonesia, Laos, Israel, Greece 1964

[materials on NC photo exhibits]

A-Z, AA, mostly mounted

AA, SS, DDD, III, mostly mounted

EE-II, LL, mounted

MM, OO, RR-TT, VV, WW

RR-WW, ZZ, AAA

Misc. and unidentified prints

AA-GG color mounted

AA-GG mounted

HH-LL mounted

MM-QQ mounted

RR-ZZ mounted

HH-ZZ color

AA-MM color

Oversize boxes

Mounted for exhibit, abstract light studies

Black and white mounted photos, misc. abstract nature

Captions for exhibit - people, places

For NC, consider personal mounting

Nature close-ups mounted

Clothes being washed, clothes lines, etc.

Color selection for Norton

black & white misc. (Global Perspectives)

Black & white mounted prints skyscrapers, abstract light patterns

Black and white, people everywhere (Global Perspectives)

Animals, black and white, everywhere

Global Perspectives, black and white, aerial

glossy paper (for Nick)

Black and white, people, city buildings (Global Perspectives)

Misc. color - Wilton

Mounted black and white tree shots

Black & white, misc. incl. large-monks? in Port Rome?

Black and white mounted prints, abstract nature

Black & white prints (Global Perspectives)

Choice, black and white, trees

NC exhibit at Grand Central 1963

Trip files/boxes

Moscow circus 1977

Frankfurt & Siberia 1977

April Fools Day at SR 1977

Christmas New Canaan 1976

Christmas Arizona 1975

Moscow, USSR 1975

Palestine, Cairo 1975

London, Vienna 1974

New Canaan Nov. 1973

Arizona 1973

Brussels, Ireland, Romania, Moscow, CT 1972

Castine 1971

Arizona 1972

Arizona 1971

NYC, Saturday Review April Fools, Stewardess; black & white: 810659 810859, 811236, 807339, 806946, 3242, 4658, 4842, 77311 1971

Family and friends, New Canaan 1969

Hiroshima, Tokyo 1969

Mets Day 1969

Friends & family 1969

Cameroon, Nigeria, Biafra, Schweitzer 1969

NC's Arizona landholdings 1969

Circus Madison Square Garden 1967

Asian African Conf 1953?

Rome, USSR 1963

Poland 1958

Africa 1961

Conservation, nature

Mix of important negatives

China, Hong Kong 1979

Jeruselem - Sarah Cousins' wedding Jan. 1978

Arizona March 1978

Israel Dec. 1977

Cynthia Nichols July 26, 1977

USSR, Israel, Germany, Riga, Frankfurt June 1977

Arizona May/June 1977

San Francisco Bay March 1977

Puerto Rico Feb. 1977

Arizona Jan. 1977

SR Picnic - New Canaan 1976

Arizona Aug. 1975

New Canaan spring 1975

England, France, Italy 1975

Arizona March 1975

India, Rome, Cairo, Jeruselem Jan. 1975

Arizona Nov. 1974

Nashville, TN Oct. 1974

France, Italy, USSR Apr. 1974

Arizona Feb. 1974

Paris, France Jan. 1974

Arizona Dec. 1973

Arizona Aug. 1973

New Canaan Aug. 1973

Grand Canyon, Patagonia Apr. 1973

Arizona Mar. 1973

Arizona Jan. 1973, New Canaan 1972

Brussels, Ireland, Romania, Moscow Sept. 1972

Arizona July 1972

Arizona & California Jan. & Feb. 1972

Puerto Rico Oct. 1971

Arizona & Maine 1971

Maine Aug. 1971

Arizona, California July 1971

UN plaza views May 1971

Arizona May 1971

St. Croix, Virgin Islands, La. March 1971

New York City March 1971

Arizona March 1971

New Canaan; Sea Island, Ga.; London 1970

Dallas, New York Nov. 1970

Barbados, Puerto Rico 1970

David Mathews, Univ. of Alabama 10/70

Castine July 1970

Air shots 1970

Arizona June 1977

Nigeria, Biafra, Schweitzer grave July 1969

Arizona 1970

Air shots & NYC 1969

Wisconsin 1969

New Canaan 1969

Circus Madison Square Garden 1969

Chicago: port and waterfornt 1969

Arizona, New Mexico 1969

Arnold Palmer 1969

Brigit Hall, Susannah Hall & cat, Jean Sanderson 1968

Puerto Rico 1969

Mets Party 1969

Hiroshima, Japan, Philippines 1963-1965

Mr. & Mrs. Neutra

Art & Leisure - What I have Learned

Arts & leisure - Casals/Hammerstein

Ideas & Action - Eisenhower [empty]

World Around Us - Buckminster Fuller

Weapons for Peace - Test Ban - HHH (Hubert Humphrey) & JFK

Arts & leisure - photography

Photographs - India 1953

India - Marie Buck

Photographs - Mahamblaparim (India)

Faridabad photo

India - Norman Cousins - photo

Calcutta photos

Photographs - Copenhagen 1953

Photographs - Bottle Sanctuary (Zero Schwartz)

Bombay photographs - general refugee camps

Korea personal photography

Photos London 1953

Pakistan photographs 1951?

Pakistan - prime minister

Photographs - Paksitan wedding 1953

Photographs - Salt Lake City tabernacle

Egypt photographs

Japan personal photos

Japan National Diet Library

Color misc 1968-77, 1979

Transparencies

Cousins family

Africa 1957

Photo show negatives - early exhibits

Germany Austria, England, Denmark 1948, 1953

India, Indonesia 1953

Russia 1959

Abstract architecture, nature 1959

Maidens, Japan 1953 & 1964

USSR, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Leningrad 1964

Color, sky & earthscapes

Photos of NC

Color, places

Jamaica 1962

Europe, Middle East 1957, USSR 1961, Rome-Moscow-Poland 1962, Far East (color) 1964, Brussels-London-Spain 1964, Far East, portraits

Show Grand Central, tree barks

Misc. photos

14 albums, usually from a particular event 192?-1982

[unsorted loose photos of NC, family, friends]

PNI proposals for grants

NC writings on Task Force & PNI

NC & scientists re: grant money

Papers by Task Force Grantees

Meetings - PNI related

Task force related correspondence

Administrative

PNI Articles, lists

Possible editorials

Possible editorials : China

Possible editorials : USSR

Possible editorials : Geographical by Country

Possible editorials : Arms 1958-1968

Possible editorials: A

Possible editorials: B-F

Possible editorials: F-N

Possible editorials: O-S

Possible editorials: S-Z

Posters, and other oversize

Nuclear Test Ban - poster sized ads

A message from Dr. Spock & 67 other physicians - 1 copy

Why these scientists want the Nuclear Test ban - 3 copies (1 diff.)

Why these business leaders want the Nuclear Test Ban - 4 copies

Smaller copy of business leaders ad

Copy of article from The Advance

Poster: Norman Cousins Healing Force

Poster: Hiroshima Peace Concert 8/85

NY Herald Tribune ad: "Don't Resign from the Human Race," SR ed. 8/7/48

NY Times Int'l ed., "The Legacy of JFK," from SR ed. 12/7/63

Certificate from President to NC for work as member of Advisory Commmittee on the Arts, signed by Dean Rusk & Kennedy?

Buckminster Fuller map, inscribed to NC

Poster of unidentified cleric, with signed dedication

Peace symbol - Hiroshima Peace Center

[5 Newspapers with headlines regarding atomic weapons] 1941-1948

[SR reprints] 1945-1962

SANE resignation

NC Corresp. re: SANE

Draft Policy Statement - conflict between Keyes & Spock

NC Corresp. : Spock/Keyes 1967 Confidential

Confidential SANE/Norman Thomas corresp. 1960

NC on merger of SANE/UWF

Norman Thomas on SANE

The Celebration of Life 1974

The Celebration of Life - letters to NC 1974

The Improbable Triumvirate 1972

In Place of Folly 1961

Books reviews 1942-1963

Clippings - Reviews of NC's books [1942-1945]

Present Tense [1967]

Trip to Japan 1969

The Years of Norman Cousins: a Press Clipping Biography [1940-1967]

Hirsohima 1955

Hiroshima 1955-56

Biafra 1969

Ravensbrueck Lapins 1958/59

[foldered clippings] 1981-1990; 1972-1977

Treasures pre-resignation 1971

Treasure letters World (including some special resignation) 1971-1972

Treasures - Readers 1973

Treasures from readers 1974

NC treasure letters 1975-1976

Treasures Readers 1975-1976

Special fans [1959-1981]

World First Issues - letters of Congratulations, A-L, and M-Z 1972

Saturday Review merger, congratulations letters to NC: A-F, G-N, D-Z 1973

Boxed letters from readers and friends re resignation: A-J, and K-Z 1971

Publius Award Dinner- UWF, Waldorf 11/18/64

SR resignation letters 1971

Letters to NC 1967-1968

Letters of appreciation 1964-1966

Letters to Norman Cousins from friends and readers of SR 1941-1969

NC scrapbook 1974

NC scrapbook: Jan-May book I, June-Dec. book II 1973

World Magazine clippings 1972

World beginning 1971-1972

NC scrapbook 1971

Clippings Sept. 1980-Jan. 1981

Clippings June-Sept. 1980

Clippings Jan.-Jun. 1980

Clippings 1979

Newspaper clippings 1976-1977

NC scrapbook Jan.-June 1976

NC scrapbook 1975

Clippings 1968-1969

Magazine, newspaper clippings 1967

Clippings 1965, 1968

Clippings 1965

Clippings 1965-66

Clippings 1964

Clippings 1973-1978

Clippings 1971-1979

Clippings 1970-1973

Clippings 1970-81

Clippings 1969-1970

3 Original muscial scores for NC

Misc. scrapbooks

Clippings 1955, some 1942-1962

Clippings Jan.-Aug. 1953

Clippings 1952

Clippings 1951-1967

Clippings Jan.-April 1949

Clippings 1941-1956

Clippings 1963

Clippings 1962

Clippings 1961, April-Dec.

Clippings 1961, Jan.-Apr.

Clippings 1960, June-Dec.

Clippings 1960, Jan.-June

Clippings 1959

Clippings 1944-45

Special series

State of Mankind

[State of Mankind series]

What I Have Learned

1st series and book

Paul Dudley White

Hans Thirring

A. Kerensky

I.A. Richards

Allan Nevins

Horace Kallen

Clarence Faust

Cass Canfield

Danilo Dolci

Cardinal Bea

Harry Golden

Salvador de Madariaga

Herbert Read

Robert Moses

John Wharton

Bucky Fuller

Dwight Eisenhower

Warren Weaver

Rafaaopalachari

Eric Hoffer

C.A. Doxiadis

Reinhold Niebuhr

Delivered by NC

[Speeches arranged chronologically] 1990-1978

[speeches arranged chronologically] 1958-1944

[speeches arranged chronologically] 1967-1959

[speeches arranged chronologically] 1969-1968

State Dept. MSS.

Chester Bowles

Sen. Frank Carlson

Jimmy Carter

Sen. Javits

Lyndon B. Johnson

John F. Kennedy

Robert F. Kennedy

Possible speech materials

Gov. Mayner

Mayor J. Lindsey

Misc. speech drafts: McMahon, R.M., Stephanie May, Mondale

Richard Nixon

Ronald Reagan

Carlos Romulo

Adlai Stevenson

Harry Truman

Kurt Waldheim

Spoofs & Humor

[SR spoofs material]

Subject files

[Unfiled material]

Biographies

Ca. Magazine debate materials

Christian Science

Common Cause

Conversion - S. Melman

U.S. Constitution

Cooperation

East/West cultures

Environment - R. Rosenwald

Environment - Larry Ephron

Fluoridation

Founding Fathers

Government Accounting Office

Government Accounting Office publications

Genetic engineering

Humor/aphorisms & homely philosophy

Humor materials

Judaism & christianity

KROC Foundation

Iran-Contra Affair

International relations

Legal topics

Middle East

Movie ratings

Nazi doctors

Politics/government

Soviet-American relations

Institute for Policy Studies

United Nations

U.S. foreign policy

U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey 1946

Women's movement

Academy of Stress and Chronic Disease

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Society - Bishop

American Medical News

Anorexia Nervosa

Acupuncture

Background material for book on aging

Altered states of consciousness

Ankylosing spondylitus

Ancient medicine, hygiene and public health

Atherosclerosis

Biofeedback

Bio-Science Magazine

Blue Cross (second opinion)

Center for Health Enhancement - UCLA

Chiropractors

Chronic illness

Columbia University

Coodley, Alfred, M.D., Phd

Candidiasis (& yeast)

Cannom, David

Cholesterol

Death and dying

Dentistry - A.D.A. Corresp.

Downstate Medical Center

Diagnostic procedures

East West Academy of Healing Arts

Emerson on mental health

Enkephalins

Epidemiology

Family Practice

The female patient

Firewalking

Frontiers of medicine

Genes and emotion

Gerontology

Grief/Mourning

Healing and healers

Hodgkins disease

Heart attack, heart disease

Holistic medicine

Ernest Holmes Research Institute

Hospital: articles

Humanism/humanities in medicine

Huxley Institute

Hypertension

Hypochondria

Informed consent

Intelligence operations

Interferons

Kirlian photography

Language disabilities

Lehrman, Nathaniel S., MD

Lemole, Gerald, MD

Loye, David

Legislation

Male chauvanism

Man and medicines

Medical malpractice

Mental illness

Mental retardation

Medical articles: general interest

Medical books

Medical costs

Medical ethics

Medical humanities

Medical materials: editorials

Medical researcher

Medical world news

Medical education

NC's medical kit

Medical writing

Medicine history

Mental health

Molecular Biology Inst. - UCLA

Music & medicine

Norepinephrine infusion

New England Journal of Medicine

New Realities

Orthomolecular medicine

Panic - East LA football game

Psychoendocrinology

Parapsychology

Parkinsons disease

Patient-physician relationship

Personality

Pet therapy

Physician patient relationship

Preventative medicine

Psychic healing

Public relations

Santa Monica Hospital Medical Center

Silver, Burton, PhD

Sleep and snoring

Special X file

Stress (and Dr. Hans Selye)

Transcendental meditation

Tuberculosis

Veterans Administration

World Health Organization

Work and retirement

Yeast infections

Journal articles of interest to NC

Andrus, Alex

Benson, Herbert

Berman, Sidney

Bernie, Jon

Bierman, Stanley

Bluming, Avrum

Brill, Norman

Comfort, Alex

de Duve, Christian

Ecanow, Bernard

Eliot, Robert S.

Glick, Seymour

Greenblatt, Milton

Guze, Samuel

Katz, Alfred

Kavanagh, Terence

Kelly, Lawrence

Kling, Arthur

Kroger, William S.

Looney, Gerald

Maloney, James J.

Pelletier, Kenneth

Pomeroy, Dr.

Ricketts, Robert

Rimland, Bernard

Salk, Dr. Jonas

Sandblom, Philip

Stehlin, John

Sakalosky, George

Stone, Irwin

Bergland, Richard

Borysenko, Joan

Vellore, India (Dr. Paul Brand)

Brod, Dr. - UCLA Ext.

Bulloch, Dr. Karen

Cassileth, Barrie R.

Edna McConnell - Clark Foundation

Elkes, Joel

Engel, Dr. George

Kleeman, Dr. Chas.

Miller, Neal

Rea, Dr. W.S.

Selye, Dr. Hans

Solomon, Dr. George

Spector, Dr. Norvera Herbert

Towers, Bernard

Udelman, Drs. Harold & Donna

Wallerstein, Robert S.

Arms control

The Defense Monitor

Center for War/Peace Studies

Nuclear arms race ad

Healing of Nations material

Nuclear arms race material for speeches

Nuclear disarmament

Nuclear war consequences (conf. report)

Nuclear war/nuclear freeze material

Peace projects

Peace plans - Rosenfeld, Forsberg, etc.

Commission to study the organization of peace

Strategic Defense Initiative

Saturday Review editorials - possible use in RAF

Harris Woffard

Telephone logs

[48 spiral notebooks] 8/78-10/88

Philippines trip with H.H. Humphrey 1965-1966

Lebanon 1972?

Israel 1978

Corresp. European Trip 1948

Japan Trip 1966?

China 1979?

Trip files and logs

[trip files arranged chronologically] 1988

[to be sorted]

[tapes 1-9]

[tapes 10-35]

[tapes 36-54]

[tapes 55-72]

[tapes 73-98]

[tapes 100-123]

[Corresp. regarding making of video/audio tapes]

World Federalist Association

WFA annual files (correspondence, programs) 1980

WFA annual files (correspondence, programs) 1981

WFA annual files (correspondence, programs) 1982

WFA annual files (correspondence, programs) 1983

WFA annual files (correspondence, programs) 1984

WFA annual files (correspondence, programs) 1985

WFA annual files (correspondence, programs) 1986

WFA annual files (correspondence, programs) 1987

WFA Board Mtg. 1990

Additions 1985

Trip Files:

- SALINA KANSAS: Marymount College of Kansas MAY 10, 1981

- NEW YORK CITY: Society of Authors and Journalists MAY 9, 1981

- DURANGO COLORADO: Kettering Foundation Board Meeting. MAY 6-8, 1981

- LOS ANGELES SINAI TEMPLE: University of Judaism MAY 4, 1981

- ANAHEIM: Association of Western Hospitals APRIL 29, 1981

- LOS ANGELES: Cancer Advisory Council APRIL 22, 1981

- UC IRVINE: Environmental Development Health Colloquium APRIL 8, 1982

- WINSTON-SALEM, NORTH CAROLINA: Wake Forest University - Bowman School of Medicine MARCH 26, 1981

- NEW YORK: Columbia University - National Magazine Awards. MARCH 25-26, 1981

- ANAHEIM: Stress and Catastrophic Illness Meeting. MARCH 22, 1981

- LOS ANGELES: Holmes Center Annual Symposium. MARCH 21, 1981

- MOSCOW: Dartmouth Interim Meeting MARCH 15-18, 1981

- DALLAS: Mountain View College MARCH 12, 1981

- NEW YORK CITY: Cornell University Medical College. MARCH 9, 1981

- PHILADELPHIA: Albert Einstein Medical Center. MARCH 8, 1981

- WASHINGTON, D.C. World Federalists Association. MARCH 6-8, 1981

- PHILADELPHIA: Thomas Jefferson Medical College MARCH 5, 1981

- HARBOR-UCLA MEDICAL CENTER: Grand Rounds (OB-GYN) MARCH 2, 1981

- LOS ANGELES: Writers' Conference - Loyola Marymount University. FEBRUARY 28, 1981

- COVINA: Chapman College FEBRUARY 18, 1981

- SANTA ROSA, CALIFORNIA: Sonoma County Medical Association. FEBRUARY 12, 1981

- SANTA ANA, CALIFORNIA: Santa Ana-Tustin Community Hospital. FEBRUARY 6, 1981

- WILSHIRE EBELL: Southern California Counseling Center FEBRUARY 5, 1981

- LOS ANGELES: Psychologists-L.A. City Schools. FEBRUARY 2, 1981

- SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS: Trinity University. JANUARY 30, 1981

- WESTWOOD: Society of Methodist Men JANUARY 26, 1981

- SAN FRANCISCO: Woody Clark Productions. Film. JANUARY 22-23, 1981

- KANSAS CITY: U.M.K.C. Consultants to Chancellor. JANUARY 19-20, 1981

- UCLA NPI AUD.: Hospital and Clinics Series: Health Wise. JANUARY 18, 1981

- MALIBU: Pepperdine University JANUARY 16, 1981

- WASHINGTON D.C.: Veterans Administration JANUARY 14-16, 1981

- NEW YORK CITY: "Open Mind" T.V. Show. JANUARY 13, 1981

- MIAMI: Peers, Incorporated Nurses Seminar JANUARY 8-9, 1981

- BOCA RATON, FLORIDA: Women's Club of Royal Palm Yacht and Golf. JANUARY 7, 1981

- USC: Friends of Music Dinner DECEMBER 7, 1980

- BOSTON: Harvard Medical School DECEMBER 4, 1980

- BOSTON: American Cancer Society DECEMBER 3, 1980

- LOMA LINDA, CALIFORNIA: Loma Linda University School of Medicine. NOVEMBER 30, 1980

- SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA: Book and Author Event. NOVEMBER 21-22, 1980

- CHICAGO: Blue Cross-Blue Shield NOVEMBER 19-20, 1980

- UCLA: Pharmacology 201 Guest Lecture NOVEMBER 18, 1980

- BRENTWOOD: Brentwood Presbyterian Church NOVEMBER 16, 1980

- RANCHO MIRAGE: Eisenhower Medical Center NOVEMBER 6, 1980

- KANSAS CITY: University of Missouri, Kansas City. NOVEMBER 5, 1980

- UCLA: The Engineer and Society NOVEMBER 4, 1980

- NEW YORK: Synagogue Council of America OCTOBER 30, 1980

- LOS ANGELES: California Magazine Day OCTOBER 29, 1980

- WASHINGTON D.C.: D.C. Medical Society OCTOBER 26, 1980

- SANTA MONICA CHRISTIAN CHURCH. OCTOBER 19, 1980

- LOS ANGELES: National Association of Social Workers - L.A. Chapter. OCTOBER 18, 1980

- WACO, TEXAS: Baylor University. OCTOBER 16, 1980

- HOUSTON: Baylor College of Medicine OCTOBER 15, 1980

- HOUSTON: Congregation Beth Israel OCTOBER 15, 1980

- CLAREMONT: Pilgrim Place Dedication OCTOBER 12, 1980

- SANTA BARBARA: Hutchins Center OCTOBER 8, 1980

- SAN FRANCISCO: Council on Learning OCTOBER 9, 1980

- TORRANCE, CALIFORNIA: Harbor General Hospital. OCTOBER 7, 1980

} UCLA EXTENSION SERIES OCTOBER 7,14,21,28

} NOVEMBER 4,11,18

- FLINT, MICHIGAN: Ruth Mott Fund - Board Meeting. SEPTEMBER 29, 1980

- Jerusalem International Seminar on Hospital Pharmacy. AUGUST 27, 1980

- SAN FRANCISCO: "Sunday Times" [T.V. Show] AUGUST 14, 1980

- SAN FRANCISCO: "Over Easy" [T.V. Show] AUGUST 14, 1980

- BERKELEY: Lawrence Livermore Laboratories AUGUST 14, 1980

- HILLCREST/CENTURY PLAZA: Chief Executives Forum AUGUST 12, 1980

- David Letterman Show AUGUST 11, 1980

- SHELBURNE, VERMONT. Shelbrune Farms/E(llen) Rockefeller. AUGUST 9, 1980

- CAPE COD: Continuing Education Institute AUGUST 4-8, 1980

- UCLA: Dr. Roy Menninger JULY 22, 1980

- WESTWOOD: Voluntary Euthanasia JULY 16, 1980

- IRVINE: U.C. Irvine College of Medicine JULY 16, 1980

- SANTA MONICA: Rand Seminar JULY 15, 1980

- LOS ANGELES: Temple Isiah JULY 10, 1980

- UCLA: Hugh O'Brian Youth Foundation JULY 6, 1980

- LOS ANGELES: Humanitas Prize Luncheon JULY 2, 1980

- SAN PEDRO: San Pedro Peninsula Hospital JUNE 28, 1980

- SANTA BARBARA: Writers' Conference JUNE 25-27, 1980

- WALNUT CREEK, CALIFORNIA: John Muir Medical Film Festival JUNE 22, 1980

- Commonwealth Club of California JUNE 20, 1980

- 2644 CEDARS: Dr. Rene Dubos. JUNE 19, 1980

- LOS ANGELES: Round Table West JUNE 19, 1980

- KALAMAZOO, MICHIGAN. Kalamazoo College; and Midl and Michigan. JUNE 14, 1980

- BEVERLY WILSHIRE: General Surgery Banquet JUNE 7, 1980

- NPI: Grand Rounds on Humor JUNE 6, 1980

- LA CROSSE, WISCONSIN: Amer. Holis. Medical Association. JUNE 6-11, 1980

- UCLA FACULTY CENTER: Doctoral Alumni Association Graduate School of Education of UCLA. JUNE 5, 1980

- WESTWOOD: American Lupus Society JUNE 3, 1980

- LOS ANGELES: USC - U.N. Reform Conference JUNE 1, 1980

- UCLA: Open House - Dr. Mellinkoff. JUNE 1, 1980

- CLEVELAND: Case Western Commencement MAY 28, 1980

- INDIANAPOLIS: Economic Club of Indianapolis MAY 27, 1980

- PASADENA: Art Center For Design MAY 23, 1980

- LOS ANGELES: UCLA Nursing Alumni MAY 21, 1980

- PASADENA: Throop Memorial Church MAY 18, 1980

- TUCSON, ARIZONA: University of Arizona Medical School. MAY 16, 1980

- BALTIMORE, MARYLAND: Johns Hopkins University MAY 13, 1980

- UCLA FACULTY CLUB: Clinical Faculty Annual Dinner. MAY 14, 1980

- WASHINGTON, D.C.: VA - Dr. Donald Custis MAY 12, 1980

- LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY: University of Louisville School of Medicine Commencement. MAY 11, 1980

- DENVER: University of Colorado Commencement. MAY 10, 1980

- SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, UCLA: Health Services Research Graduate Seminar. MAY 7, 1980

- WESTWOOD: AOA UCLA Honor Medical Society MAY 6, 1980

- POMONA: Pomona Valley Community Hospital MAY 6, 1980

- SAN FRANCISCO: UCSF Psych. Aspects of Med. Practice. MAY 4, 1980

- JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA: Kettering Board MAY 1-2, 1980

- WESTWOOD: Parkinsonians APRIL 28, 1980

- WOODLAND HILLS: Temple Aliyah APRIL 28, 1980

- SAN FRANCISCO: Cancer Advisory Council APRIL 23, 1980

- CHICAGO: AMA 76th Congress on Med. Education. APRIL 24, 1980

- LOS ANGELES: Psychiatry 101 Dinner. APRIL 22, 1980

- SAN DIEGO: National University Extension Association APRIL 21, 1980

- SAN MARINO: USC Friends of Music APRIL 20, 1980

- WEST LOS ANGELES: American Cancer Society APRIL 19, 1980

- UCLA DICKSON AUDITORIUM: Holistic Medicine and Conven. Therapy (Med. and Soci. Forum) APRIL 17, 1980

- UCLA: Patient Education APRIL 16, 1980

- SEPULVEDA, CALIFORNIA: Veteran's Hospital APRIL 15, 1980

- HOUSTON: Dr. Stehlin APRIL 11, 1980

- LOS ANGELES: PDE Medical Fraternity. APRIL 12, 1980

Charles Kettering Foundation

Teacher's College, International Cooperation Year

Saturday Review Clipping files, Correspondence

Air Pollution 1966

International Cooperation Year

U.N. Peace Organizations, United World Federalists 1950's-1970's.

Saturday Review Correspondence, Subscriptions

U.N. Peace Organizations, United World Federalists 1950s-1970s

Trip Files 1976

Trip Files 1969-1970

Trip Files 1971-1972

Trip Files, Trip Files 1969-1970 1972-1973

Trip Files 1973-1974

Trip Files, Saturday Review Possible Investors 1971-1972

Saturday Review Possible Investors

Teacher's College

Kress Foundation

Trip Files 1975

Trip Files, 1974-1975

Trip Files 1977-1979

Trip Files; Trip Files 1976 1977-1979

Saturday Review/World Correspondence

Saturday Review/World Correspondence, Pamphlets, reprints, background materials.

Pamphlets, reprints, background materials

Trip Files 1974, 1977-1979

Trip Files, Charles Kettering Foundation 1974, 1977-1979

Trip Files 1979-1980

background materials and Correspondence 1948

Air Pollution Saturday Review Clipping files, Correspondence 1966,

World/Business

[oversize] Correspondence - fiscal UCLA Library Administrative Manual 1971-72, 1970-71,

Audio Tapes:

I. Palmer discussion - Holes 1-2

II. Palmer discussion - Holes 3-5 + begin 6

IV. Holes 8-9/finish

V. Bermuda Dunes - Holes 1-2 + begin 3

VI. Holes 4-5 + half of 6

VII. Holes 7-9 + finish

Saturday Review Possible Investors, business

Saturday Review/Classifieds

World War II Papers

Vietnam Research

United World Federalists

United World Federalists; UWF/World Government

United World Federalists/World Government

United Nations/United World Federalists

United World Federalists Publications/Charles Kettering Foundation

Old newspapers

International Cooperation Year (FRAGILE MATERIAL)

World War II photos

World War II photos, pamphlets

United Nations/World Association of World Federalists

International Cooperation Year (DAMAGED MATERIAL)

World Federalists Association; New Directions (1976)

Saturday Review Classifieds

Nuclear Disarmament/Civil Defense

World Association of World Federalists, New Directions

United World Federalists 1953-54

World Association of World Federalists, Pacem in Terris

Samuel Kress Foundation, Charles Kettering Foundation, 1970's

Samuel Kress Foundation, Charles Kettering Foundation 1970's

Microfilms of Saturday Review subscriber lists (one box is empty)

Audio Tapes: Nehru (11 tapes) - 1949

Audio Tapes: Nehru (9 tapes) - plus 3 with no date listed. 1961,

United Nations Association (5 reels) 1965

Gold Key Awards Banquet (2 reels) 1964

Juggernaut (2 reels) and one reel 1963 undated

Oakland United Nations (4 reels) 1964

"Presenting Albert Schweitzer" - WBUR Boston University Radio, 1956

"The Making of Tomorrow" NC talk to Northeast Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, 1959

Last Lecture - Tallahassee, Jan. 31, 1963

Florida Club Interview

Haile Selassie I University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1961

Dorothy Gordon Youth Forum, 1969

Pacific School of Religion, 1959

Centenary College for Women, 1962

Newark State College, 1963

Oberlin College (Schweitzer) 1962

Columbia College, Columbia, SC (Tribute to Albert Schweitzer and Johann Sebastian Bach), 1965

Portland Public Schools, Parts I and II 1962

WBUR Boston University Radio (Albert Schweitzer), 1956

A tape NC brought back from Stanford, re: President Johnson and the Vietnam War [hard to hear]

United World Federalists, Pittsburgh, 1959

United World Federalists, Boston 1963

Speech possibly from the University of Kansas, Lawrence. May 28, 1957

New York to Hiroshima Broadcast, 1973

KPFK Radio, Los Angeles - Program "School for Nursery Years" 1960

NC and Donald Sayles, n.d.

Colorado State University, 1962

Illinois University, 1961

Mills College, California, 1959

Hill Lecture Foundation, 1962

Air War College, Alabama, 1963

"United World Federalists Presents Norman Cousins' `World Report' ", 1963

Address to U.W.F., 1963

NC - Five Spots

Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, 1958

Interview with Mrs. Cato (Women's Suffrage Leader)

NC and Father Morlion, 1963

Williamsville, NY speech 1959

Polish Ladies (1 reel - sent from Redwood City, California. No other identification).

Tex Mc Creary - WOR 1965

"The Space Age Challenges the U.N." - University of Minnesota, 1962

Greenboro College (no other identification), 1962

Emory and Henry College, 1963

North Illinois University, 1960

Hutchins on Zuckerkandle (spoof) sent by Tom Parker

California Elementary School Assoc., 1963

NBC Television - "The Image of America", 1959

Speech by unidentified woman - Japanese interpreter. Refers to NC.

NC - Oct. 6, 1961

WGBH (Cambridge) - Educational material, creative method

NBC Television - "Can Fallout Shelters Save Us?" - 1961

Night Call, 1969

KCET - "Speculation" 1969

WNDT - "Of Men and Ideas" - 1963

"Peace Through Law" 1964

WOR Radio interview with Dick Tobin of World Magazine. 1972

Riverside Radio - WRVR 1963

Brooklyn College Library Associates 14th annual dinner. 1964

Foothill College, Mountain View, CA., 1961

Vellore Hospital, Tape from film sound track. 1963.

Hudson Valley College, Troy, NY. 1962.

T-1XX Sit-Ins - no other information.

Franklin and Marshall, Lancaster, PA - Founder's Day speech by NC

Speech "Environment for World Government" 1970

Reel Number 4 - Ceremony temple music: Interview with Mr. Hessel Tiltman and Joseph Froum; Interview with Col. Schenk; Interview with Gen. Sams.

Reel Number 3 - Kabuki Play; Yokohama Choir; interview with boy and his songs plus his interview with Professor.

Reel Number 5 - Interview with Gen. Sams; Interview with Ashai press and world government people.

Remarks by Dr. Frank Baxter re: "Frames of Reference", 1964

NC Tape Number 2 - Interviewed about the U.N.

AAUN - from Ann Gores of Costa Mesa, CA. 1961.

N.E.A. Education and Editor Conference - NC Speech, 1955

Citizens' Committee for Nuclear Test Ban 1963

Viewpoint - Norman Cousins - MBS Network 1958

British/American Chamber of Commerce, 1961.

Phone interview with NC, Editor-In-Chief, McCall Corp., 1968.

NC remarks re: Hiroshima Exhibit, 1970

NC picnic - 1957

NC - Detroit, 1961

Mary Knoll World - complimentary copy to NC, 1975

NC Project, - Band 1: Paul Newman; Band 2: Steve Allen; Band 3: Paul Newman; Band 4: Paul Newman; Band 5: James Whitmore; Band 6: Steve Allen; Band 7: James Whitmore; Band 8: James Whitmore; Band 9: Paul Newman. 1962

Clean Air Week - NC interview, 1972.

Very small tapes in gold box: 1 to 3: A. Palmer with artist; 4: A. Palmer and Sy Gomberg actual play. 4 boxes total. [in folder 1]

Very small tape in gold box - Puerto Rico, old fort. [in folder 2] 1969

Very small tape in gold box - Mountains of California from plane [in folder 2]

Small tape in black box - NC excerpt from Something to Think About. KVOM Radio, University of Minnesota, [in folder 3] 1955

Wrapped in old notebook paper - "reel 5" [folder 4]

IBM 3" magnabelt tape. No identification [folder 5]

Tape in metal cartridge - Model R.L. No identification. [folder 6].

Correspondence: 1940's - 1950's

H - I - J - K - L

V - W - X - Y - Z

Correspondence: 1960's

California Issue Saturday Review - October 1967

Negotiation Now

Nixon: Manpower

Polk, Benjamin - 1965

Pan American - USSR - 7/15 - 7/19/68

Saturday Review - 40th anniversary

Seaborg, Glenn

Correspondence: 1975

Commission to Study the Organization of Peace

Commission to Study the Negotiation of Peace

Invisible Ink Letters

Iverson, Lalla

Levine, Wendy - 9/24/75

Nesher Correspondence on Arab-Jewish Center

Saturday Review in Great Britain

Saturday Review - Letters: A & B to subscribers

Saturday Review - Recent Promotion Materials and Advertising Rate Card

Strong, Maurice - filed '75 for reference

Strong, Maurice - Williams, David

TV mailing - RLT

UNA Board Meeting

University of Mid-America

Correspondence: 1976

Saturday Review Press

Taylor, Frank - Proposal for SR home TV.

Correspondence: 1977-1978

Ad Agency Dinners

Diary. Thank You Letters

Jackie Lassiter -- Energy

Van Stolk, Mary

Correspondence: 1973-1979

Cosmic Search

Disillusioned Reader Letters

Einstein Peace Prize

Fund For Peace

Himalayan International Institute

Home Swap Clubs Gear Up

National Academy of Sciences. National Research Council

Activities [Poland]

Congress for World Unity (Fathers Sabatino and Mervielle)

Vittorini, Carl

Williams, Ms. Roger

Whetsel and Gresky

Weigel - China

Workshop on World Humor

World Development Newsletter

World Neighbors

Correspondence: 1980-1983

International College

Smallwood, William - Health Data International

Correspondence: 1954 - 1973

Norton Simon Inc. - (1 of 2) 1970

Norton Simon Inc. - (2 of 2) 1970

Norton Simon - 1970

NSI [Norton Simon Inc.] - Museum of Art - 1970

Q (empty) - 1970

Saturday Review - staff memos - 1970

Saturday Review - 1968 - 1970

T - 1968 - 1970

Teachers College - 1968 - 1970

U - 1968 - 1970

V (empty) - 1968 - 1970

W - 1968 - 1970

X - Y - Z - 1968 - 1970

McCall's - 1968 - 1970

McCall's - memos - 1966 - 1969

Mahoney - McCall's - 1966 - 1969

Mc - 1966 - 1969

Norton Simon Inc. - 1966 - 1969

S.R. Health Inc. - 1966 - 1969

McCall's - 1966 - 1969

NSI [Norton Simon Inc.] - 1966 - 1969

NSI Museum - 1966 - 1969

Norton Simon Inc. - (1 of 2) 1966 - 1969

Norton Simon Inc. (2 of 2) 1966 - 1969

English Speaking Union - 1970

Goodell, Charles E. - 1970

Kolodin, Irving - 1970

McCall's Publishing Co. - Presentation - Fullerton, CA. - March 1970

McCall's - Fitzgerald, etc. - 1970

Mahoney speech drafted by NC - Anti-Defamation League October 21, 1971

Norton Simon Inc. - Financial Statements - ending July 31, 1970

Norton Simon Inc. - Financial statements ending May 31, 1970

Norton Simon Inc. - In the News - 1970

Norton Simon Inc. - [Report ] - in binder 1970

Norton Simon Inc. - Board Monthly Data Book - May 4, 1970

Norton Simon Inc. - Board of Directors Meeting - August 11, 1970

Strategic plan for Norton Simon Inc. - Corporate Planning - July 13, 1970

Norton Simon Inc. - Stockholders Meeting - November 10, 1970

Norton Simon Inc. - McCall's - SEC Form 4 - 1970 - 1971

Norton Simon Inc. - Museum of Art - 1970 - 1971

Norton Simon - 1970 - 1971

O - 1970 - 1971

Organs - Re: Allen Organs, Baldwin Organs - 1970 - 1971

P - 1970 - 1971

R - 1970 - 1971

S - 1970 - 1971

Saturday Review - staff memos (1 of 3) 1970 - 1971

Saturday Review - staff memos - (2 of 3) 1970 - 1971

Saturday Review - staff memos - (3 of 3) 1970 - 1971

Saturday Review - financial - 1970 - 1971

Saturday Review Inc. - insurance info - 1970 - 1971

Saturday Review Inc. - NC - contract - September 17, 1971

Saturday Review Inc. - investments - 1970 - 1971

Saturday Review - general - 1970 - 1971

T - 1970 - 1971

Teachers College - 1970 - 1971

Times Mirror - 1970 - 1971

U - 1970 - 1971

V - 1970 - 1971

W - 1970 - 1971

X - Y - Z - (empty) 1970 - 1971

A - 1970 - 1971

B - 1970 - 1971

B - biology and mental disease - schizophrenia - 1970 - 1971

C - 1970 - 1971

D - 1970 - 1971

E - (empty) 1970 - 1971

F - 1970 - 1971

Fareed, Omar - 1970 - 1971

Ford Foundation - medical project - 1970 - 1971

G - 1970 - 1971

H - 1970 - 1971

I - 1970 - 1971

J - 1970 - 1971

K - 1970 - 1971

L - 1970 - 1971

Lindsay, John - 1970 - 1971

Mc - 1970 - 1971

McCall's - Fitzgerald - (1 of 2) 1969

McCall's - Fitzgerald - (2 of 2) 1969

McCall's - Fitzgerald - 1970 - 1971

McCalls's - NC - personal contract - 1967 - 1968

M - 1970 - 971

NC - personal - 1964 - 1971

NC personal - 1970 - 1971

N - 1970 - 1971

Norton Simon Inc. - Interim Report to Shareholders - September 30, 1971

Norton Simon Inc. - Corporate Social Responsibility Clips - No. 5 - 1970 - 1971

Norton Simon Inc. - General Interest Clips, No. 4 - 1970 - 1971

Norton Simon Inc. - Board of Directors meeting - May 11, 1971

Norton Simon Inc. - Compensation-Management seminar, April 8, 1971

Norton Simon Inc. - Strategic Plan for Norton Simon Inc. - 1970

Norton Simon Inc. (1 of 2) 1972 - 1973

Norton Simon Inc. - (2 of 2) 1972 - 1973

Norton Simon Inc. Board Meeting - March 9, 1971

Norton Simon Inc. - Board Meeting - February 9, 1971

Norton Simon Inc. - investment reports - 1970 - 1971

Norton Simon Inc. - Hunt-Wesson Inc. - 1971

Norton Simon Inc. - Annual Report - 2 copies 1971

Norton Simon Inc. - General Interest Clips, no. 3 - 1971

Norton Simon Inc. - Financial statements - September 30, 1971

Norton Simon Inc. - Financial statements - May 31, 1971

Norton Simon Inc. - (1 of 2) 1971

Norton Simon Inc. - (2 of 2) 1971

Norton Simon - Dave Mahoney manuscript - "It's your dream" - 1969

Norton Simon - David J. Mahoney - 1971

Dave Mahoney - speech - 1969

McCall's - "Great events that changed the world" - 1968

Saturday Review - financial - 1971

Saturday Review - 1971

Saturday Review - 1973

Saturday Review - Veronis - August 1972

Saturday - Veronis - February - May 1972

Saturday Review Inc. - 1971

Saturday Review - NC editorial - November 8, 1971

Saturday Review - NC's memo to JV & NHC - October 25, 1971

Saturday Review - market survey - 1971

Saturday Review - market surveys - 1970 - 1971

Saturday Review - editorial program, financial, etc. - 1971

Saturday Review - mockups - 1971

Simon, Norton - 1961

Simon, Norton - 1962 - 1964

Simon, Norton - 1962

Simon Norton - 1963

Simon - Nc - Rich - Murphy - McCall's memo - 1964

Simon, Norton - 1965

Cominsky, Jack R. - 1958

Cominsky, J.R. - 1960

Cominsky, J.R. - 1954 - 1962

Morlion: 1949-1978

Morlion, Andrew

Pezzimenti, Rocco -"Unfinished loves" - manuscript

Cardinal Wright - notes - 1972, 1978

Morlion - 1971 - 1972

Andreotti, Giulio

Morlion - 1972

Morlion - Manifeste de la democratie integrale - 1972

Morlion - 1971

Morlion memo - 1971

NC/Bob Cholla - Vatican Meeting - 1971

Morlion - 1956 - 1966

Morlion - 1963

Pro-Deo Geo Spiritual Year

Father Morlion book - untitled? - 1959?

Morlion - Revolution of undestanding & esteem

Morlion - 1966 - 1967

Morlion - 1969

Father Morlion re NC - [with notes and articles, 1949 - 1964]

Father Morlion - Radiation Conference - 1962 - 1963

UNA Meeting - March 18, 1965

Morlion - 1962 - 1964

Vatican - misc. (empty)

Cardinal Slipyj - 1968

Father Bruno - 1968

Father Morlion - 1976 - 1978

Morlion - 1977 - 1978

Morlion - Freedom's Challenge - 1977

Father Morlion and film man Tellini

Pope Paul - Morlion - VW Test Ban - World Law Section - 1965

James Douglas - Morlion

Father Morlion - post trip & BEA?

Cofidential report from FM - July 24, 1963

Morlion - recent [1963]

Morlion - recent [1964 - 1965]

Morlion - human rights - 1964

Morlion - 1962 - 1963

Father Morlion - pre-trip plus reports - 1962

Morlion - Rome - 1964

Saturday Review: 1973-1976?

Subscription lists - computer printout

Connecticut Education: 1944-1951

Annual Report - Commission of Education - 1948 - 1949

Governor's Fact-Finding Commission on Education - October 7, 1949

Weber, C.A. Organization & Administration in Public School Districts... June 6, 1950

Education in Connecticut, January 3, 1951

Survey of School Buildings, October 1, 1949

Agenda - meetings - 1950

Dinner meeting

Citizens' Advisory Committee

College Legislative Committee - 1949

Connecticut Advisory Committee - 1949

Connecticut Education Association - 1950

Governor's Education Study Commission - [Studying our schools] - October 1949

Fact-Finding Commission Reports - 1949 - 1950

Do Citizens and Education Mix? 1950?

Planning Conference - 1949 - 1950

International Racial Commission - 1949 - 1950

New Haven Taxpayers Research Council

Leipzig Study - 1950

Connecticut Education - Higher - 1944 - 1951

Senate Investigating Committee - 1947?

History and purpose of Commission

News Releases - 1949 - 1951

Programs - 1949 - 1950

Administration & Organization

Publicty - 1949 - 1950

Personnel Study, Teachers - 1950

Service letters

State of Connecticut - 1950

Office files: 1942 -1973

Education - fine arts programs in colleges

Education - Connecticut Citizens for Public Schools - ca. 1952?

Education - Citizens and Their Schools - 1952 - 1953

UWF - Washington Convention - June 1954

Kecskemeti, Paul - Whitehead and the report against metaphysics

Schulyer, Robert Livingston - Macaulay and his history - a hundred years later

Netherlands East Indies - bibliography

Spier, Henry O - World War II in our magazines and books

Books - chart of objectives for booksellers

Books - Gold Star list of American fiction

Book publishing and bookselling

Farnsley, Charles - Democracy vs. Platonism

WAWF - Proposals/new ideas, etc.

Donald Keyes - speeches/testimonials

Medical topics - articles

History of American magazines

United Nations Univesity

Quincy Conference on human survival

Public schools crisis

UCLA files, speeches, travels: 1981-1983

American Psychiatric Association - New Orleans - - cancelled May 14, 1981

Einstein Awards Luncheon - Washington, D.C. - - NC cancelled May 19, 1981

Cal State University graduation - Long Beach - - cancelled May 27, 1981

Grand Rounds - Ob/Gyn - Dr. Assali - UCLA-CHS - - NC cancelled May 29, 1981

State U. of N.Y., Downstate Med. Ctr. - - Brooklyn, N.Y. - cancelled June 2, 1981

U. Oklahoma College of Medicine Commencement - Oklahoma City - - cancelled June 7, 1981

U. of Health Sciences/Chicago Med. Schl. - Chicago - - cancelled June 11, 1981

American Heart Asso. Symposium (with Omar Fareed) - L.A. Hilton Hotel - June 12, 1981

Major Stress-related Diseases Symposium - Century Plaza Hotel - June 13, 1981

VA Special Medical Advistory Group - Washington, D.C. - June 24 - 25, 1981

St. Mary Med. Center - Grand Rounds - Long Beach - - NC cancelled June 26, 1981

Christian Churches International Meet. - Anaheim - August 3, 1981

American Psychological Association - Los Angeles - September 7, 1981

Ruth Mott Fund Board Meeting - Flint, Michigan - September 28, 1981

Menninger Foundation Board Meetings - Topeka, Kan. - September 30 - October 2, 1981

McEnerney Lecture - U.C. Berkeley - - cancelled October 1981

Center for Chinese Medicine - Los Angeles - October 13, 1981

Amer. Academy of Psychiatry and Law - Coronado, - NC cancelled Ca. - October 17, 1981

Reiss Davis Child Study Center - Los Angeles - - cancelled October 21, 1981

Alliance for Survival - Beverly Hills - October 22, 1981

Pritikin Center - Miramar - Santa Monica - - cancelled October 23, 1981

Cancer Advisory Council - San Francisco - - didn't go October 28, 1981

National Center for Health Education - Board - San Francisco - - cancelled October 29 - 30, 1981

Calif. Institute for Cancer Research - Pasadena - - p.m. November 1, 1981

CBS Cable - KCOP - Hollywood - 915 N. LaBrea - - a.m. November 3, 1981

Cable News Network - Los Angeles - - p.m. November 3, 1981

UCLA Extension Series: Scientific Problems - Wandsworth VA - Nov. 4, 11, 18, 23, Dec. 2, 1981

Kettering Foundation - November 5 - 6, 1981

Aesculapian Dinner Dance - Century Plaza - November 7, 1981

Hour of Power - Dr. Robt. Schuller - Garden Grove, CA. - November 8, 1981

Veterans Admin. SMAG - Washington, D.C. - November 9 - 10, 1981

Ruth Mott Fund Board - Committee Meeting - Los Angeles - November 11 - 12, 1981

Teachers College dinner - Santa Monica - November 19, 1981

Brown for U.S. Senate - L.A. Museum of Science & Industry - Los Angeles - November 20, 1981

Pharmacology Lecture - UCLA - November 24, 1981

Soviet - American Writers Conference - Kiev, U.S.S.R. - November - December 1981

Cal Poly Pomona - Pomona - - NC cancelled December 1, 1981

CBS Radio - Face to Face - Hollywood - December 4, 1981

Vision of Today - Taping - Cable TV - Los Angeles - December 5, 1981

Ruth Mott Fund Board - Flint, MI - December 7, 1981

Larry King Show - Arlington, VA. - December 7, 1981

Congressman Albert Gore - Author Series - Washington, D.C. - December 8, 1981

Collection Overview
Restrictions on Access
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Preferred Citation
Provenance/Source of Acquisition
Processing Information
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General note

I was desperate to have a second baby because I disliked being an only child

I've always felt I missed out because I was an only child.
When it came to having kids, I wanted a big, noisy family.
Despite many obstacles, I was determined to keep going until my daughter had at least one sibling.

I wasn't always an only child ; I became one when I was 4 and my brother, who was 18 months old, died. I was too young to remember him, but I always longed for the brother I didn't get to grow up with.

With the tragedy of his death too much to bear, my parents divorced soon after, and my mom became a single mom. We moved in with my grandparents, and although I adored them, I often got bored and lonely. I did get pretty good at entertaining myself, racing frogs from the pond in our yard, helping my grandfather in his vegetable garden, or talking to make-believe fairies in the apple orchard.

Three of my cousins lived on the farm next door, and I spent as much time there as possible, grateful for the company of my own age. Even when we moved to a nearby town, I constantly pestered my mom to see them. It was way more fun hanging out with them, playing backyard games , and enjoying noisy dinners than when the two of us were in our quiet house.

My first birth was traumatic

The birth of my first daughter was traumatic as I developed symptoms of HELLP Syndrome , a life-threatening illness considered a variant of preeclampsia. This resulted in me needing a C-section under general anesthesia and a 10-day stint in hospital for both of us. Thankfully, we were both OK.

A year later, I got pregnant but miscarried. After two more miscarriages, D&Cs , fertility testing, and even surgery to remove scar tissue after being diagnosed with Asherman's Syndrome, which is a rare condition that can affect the ability to stay pregnant, it seemed like the odds of having more kids were stacked against us.

"Perhaps you're only destined to have one child," my mother said one day. It came from a good place, as she could see the toll it was taking on me and my husband. Desperate for my daughter not to be an only child , I couldn't give up.

Despite the challenges, I didn't want to give up trying for another child

Three years after my first daughter was born, I got pregnant again, and this time, it stuck. After what happened the first time, I lived in constant fear something might go wrong again. But my fears were unfounded, and we were blessed with a healthy baby girl — and a sibling for my daughter.

I was thrilled, but I wanted more children. However, my husband thought we were lucky to have two healthy daughters, so why push it? For the sake of my health, marriage, and sanity, I agreed we should stop there.

Almost 15 years ago, we moved from the UK to Singapore and then New York. My dad eventually remarried and had kids who are much younger than me, but my mom didn't remarry and lives alone. As the years go by, and she gets older and her grandkids, whom she adores, grow up fast, I feel increasingly guilty that we live far away. Despite the distance, we have a close bond, and I'm thankful for that.

Although I don't love being an only child, it did have some benefits, from always being the favorite to never having to share toys or deal with sibling rivalry. These days, when my kids are driving me mad because they're arguing, getting angry when one takes the other's phone charger, or accusing us of having favorites, I remember how lucky I am to have them and remind them how lucky they are, too.

Watch: The truth behind the experimental therapy that kids say starts with 'legalized kidnapping'

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Guest Essay

Speaking Russian in America

An illustration with nesting dolls, a sunflower, Cyrillic script and a tank.

By Sasha Vasilyuk

Ms. Vasilyuk is the author of the novel “Your Presence Is Mandatory.” She wrote from San Francisco.

In January 2022, I was planning a summer trip to Ukraine and Russia for my 4-year-old son and me.

I spent half of my childhood in Ukraine and half in Russia before moving to the United States when I was a teenager. When I became a parent, my one, obsessive goal — as a mother raising a child in America with a man who spoke only English — was to teach my son Russian. It wasn’t about his future résumé; it was because Russian forms such a deep-rooted part of my immigrant identity that I couldn’t imagine talking to my child in another language.

I spoke to him exclusively in Russian and found him a Russian-language day care. For three years, his Russian was better than his English. But when he turned 4 and made English-speaking friends, it started to slip. He started inserting English words in otherwise Russian sentences and talking to himself in English while playing alone.

Then, after a Christmas break with his American grandma, he spoke to me in English. I panicked. I decided he needed a full immersion as soon as possible.

A visit to Ukraine and Russia would allow him to see that his mother’s native language wasn’t a quirk of hers but something normal for millions of people. I told him he’d eat piroshki , see the circus and finally meet his cousins in Kyiv and Moscow.

One month later, Russian forces poured into Ukraine.

I did not immediately tell my son a war had started. I believe in telling children the truth, but I couldn’t even explain to myself why one of my homelands was invading the other, why my cousins in Kyiv were hiding in bomb shelters, why my cousins in Moscow were fleeing the country. Maybe I’d tell him once I had a better grasp of what was happening or, better yet, when it was over. I was certain that it wouldn’t — couldn’t — last long.

For two days, I called family in Ukraine in the early morning, before he woke up, and reserved my tears for nights. On the third day, we were hiking in a park when two American women approached and asked what language we were speaking. When I said, “Russian,” their faces contorted, and one of them said, “Oops,” as if they’d caught me doing something wrong.

If I’d been on my own, I might have said that the Russian language, spoken by many in Ukraine and other former Soviet republics where Russian was mandated, is not an indicator of political or moral affiliation with the actions of Vladimir Putin. But I wasn’t on my own, and I didn’t want my son to see his mother having to defend herself. We hurried on down the hill. When he asked me why that lady had said “Oops,” I said I had no idea.

Afterward, I grew self-conscious at stores and playgrounds and tried not to speak Russian to him too loudly.

One of Mr. Putin’s bogus reasons for the invasion was to protect Russian speakers in Ukraine, even though many Russian speakers — like my family — had felt perfectly safe in their bilingual country. As tanks rolled toward Kyiv, I thought about the effort and resources I’d expended teaching my son a language that was being used as an excuse for violence. I’d entangled him in a mess that he did not have to be a part of.

Many people in Ukraine vowed to stop speaking Russian, but that didn’t feel like the right solution for us. I decided to carry on as we were and say nothing about the war until and unless he asked.

I read articles by psychologists that recommended never lying to your children, even about distressing events; they cautioned that it’s important to dole out the truth in a limited, age-appropriate manner. I found an article that said to “ask yourself whether you are lying to benefit your kids or lying more to benefit yourself.” I had a hard time separating the two. I knew that compared with my relatives in Russia and Ukraine, I was lucky to have the choice to lie at all.

I’ve read reports of parents in war zones going to extreme lengths to hide the brutality of war from their children, even as they live it. Part of me thinks that this merciful lying is a biological instinct, that it’s somehow better for the survival of the species to allow our children to believe the world is better than it is.

But it can also be cultural. Soviet history, for example, contains a lot of private grief under a gilded collective exterior. My grandfather was a prisoner of war in World War II. He hid it from us his whole life because in the twisted moral code of the Soviet Union, P.O.W.s were considered almost traitors . My family learned of his secret only after his death, when we discovered a confession letter in which he begged the K.G.B. not to tell us because he didn’t want to traumatize us with his shame. I never really understood that until Russia invaded.

As the war dragged on, the summer of our planned trip came and went. My son didn’t notice, and I thanked his child brain’s nebulous sense of time for sparing me the need to explain. That November, he turned 5. I increased his dose of Russian-language cartoons and started to teach him to read in Russian.

Then one day he came home from day care and asked, “Mama, is there a war in Ukraine?”

A mix of panic and relief washed over me. We went to the world map on the wall of his bedroom, designed by a friend from Kyiv. I showed him the outline of Ukraine, with its little cartoons of borscht and onion-domed churches. I said something about tanks, about how terrible war was. He nodded silently. I kept it limited and age-appropriate. I also omitted a crucial piece: He did not ask me who started the war, and I didn’t tell him. I could not bring myself to volunteer that it was Russia.

A few months later, I saw my son make a beeline for a Russian-speaking family on the beach. When I caught up, they were asking him — and then me — where we were from. Their tone was urgent, insistent. They needed to know we weren’t from Russia; they had recently arrived in the United States from Kherson, Ukraine. As soon as I heard “Kherson,” I sent my son off to play. Their son was just a few years older, and he seemed to be traumatized, alternating between staring into space and angry outbursts at his grandma. I listened to how the family had survived a brutal six-month Russian occupation and watched my son play in the distance.

Let his little brain know about suffering. But not about Russia’s betrayal. Not yet.

Sasha Vasilyuk is the author of the novel “ Your Presence Is Mandatory .”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Explore. Featured Essays Essays on the Radio; Special Features; 1950s Essays Essays From the 1950s Series; Browse by Theme Browse Essays By Theme Use this feature to browse through the tens of thousands of essays that have been submitted to This I Believe. Select a theme to see a listing of essays that address the selected theme. The number to the right of each theme indicates how many essays ...
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Norman Cousins - Beverly Hills, California. In the face of nuclear war and ultimate annihilation, writer and editor Norman Cousins wonders about the destiny of man. In his essay from the 1950s, Cousins believes we have the resources to overcome our fears and welcome a new golden age of history. 00:00.
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In the face of possible nuclear war and ultimate annihilation, writer and editor Norman Cousins wonders about the destiny of man. In his essay from the 1950s, Cousins believes we have the resources to overcome our fears and welcome a new golden age of history. Click here to read a transcript and to hear the audio of his "This I Believe" essay.
I believe that we are all cousins!
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Cousins, Norman (1915-1990)
Norman Cousins died on November 30, 1990, following cardiac arrest, and having lived years longer than doctors more than once had predicted: ten years after his first heart attack, sixteen years after his collagen illness, and twenty-six years after his doctors first diagnosed heart disease. In American National Biography, Cousins's life is ...
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Norman Cousins
Norman Cousins (June 24, 1915 - November 30, 1990) was an American political journalist, author, professor, and world peace advocate. Early life [ edit ] Cousins was born to Jewish immigrant parents Samuel Cousins and Sarah Babushkin Cousins, in West Hoboken, New Jersey (which later became Union City ). [2]
'This I Believe' Essay Writing
Overview. Presented in five consecutive standard-period classes, students are invited to contribute to the This I Believe essay-writing project by writing and submitting a statement of personal belief. This is a challenging, intimate statement on one's beliefs and one's own daily life philosophy, considering moments when belief was formed ...
Norman Cousins
Norman Cousins (born June 24, 1912, Union Hill, N.J., U.S.—died Nov. 30, 1990, Los Angeles, Calif.) was an American essayist and editor, long associated with the Saturday Review.. Cousins attended Teachers College, Columbia University, and began his editorial career in 1934.From 1942 to 1972 he was editor of the Saturday Review. Following his appointment as executive editor in 1940, he ...
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Laughing All the Way. Author and scholar Norman Cousins' pioneering research on the impact of humor on health continues through the center that bears his name. Dan Gordon '85. July 1, 2019. B y the time he joined the UCLA faculty in 1978, Norman Cousins was a giant in 20th-century America — known as a writer, as editor in chief of the ...
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Norman Cousins's essay and book won millions of readers in the United States and beyond. His works compelled people to look beyond the understandable jubilation about the end of the Second World War and to consider how the atomic bombs which helped bring the conflict to a conclusion also entailed a new terror: the prospect of humanity's ...
Norman Cousins
Cousins, Norman (June 24, 1915 — November 30, 1990) — was a prominent and highly influential political journalist, author, professor, world peace advocate, and healing arts visionary. He was ...
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Cousins was born on June 24, 1912, in Union Hill, N.J. After graduating in 1933 from Columbia University, he worked for such publications as the New York Evening Post and Current History magazine before joining what was then called the Saturday Review of Literature in 1940. He soon introduced essays that drew a connection between literature and ...
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Book Review: "Norman Cousins" by Allen Pietrobon
In August 1945, 12 days after learning of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Norman Cousins, the American editor of the small circulation Saturday Review of Literature, wrote a forceful essay titled "Modern Man Is Obsolete," describing his fear of "forces man can neither channel nor comprehend.". The essay gained attention and set Cousins ...
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High school essays, letters. box 1226. High school newspaper: The Square Deal. Scope and Contents note (NC editor) box 1154, folder 6-8 . High school ... Letters to Norman Cousins from friends and readers of SR 1941-1969. box 1307. NC scrapbook 1974. box 1307, box 1308. NC scrapbook: Jan-May book I, June-Dec. book II 1973.
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Three of my cousins lived on the farm next door, and I spent as much time there as possible, grateful for the company of my own age. Even when we moved to a nearby town, I constantly pestered my ...
What Sentencing Could Look Like if Trump Is Found Guilty
Norman L. Eisen investigated the 2016 voter deception allegations as counsel for the first impeachment and trial of Donald Trump and is the author of "Trying Trump: A Guide to His First Election ...
I Hid the War in Ukraine From My Son
One month later, Russian forces poured into Ukraine. I did not immediately tell my son a war had started. I believe in telling children the truth, but I couldn't even explain to myself why one ...