Notes
REASON is now on the air in 155 cities. To be more precise, it's the Reason Foundation's new public affairs radio program, Perspective on the Economy, that is being heard daily—on KFSG in Los Angeles, KNBR in San Francisco, KASA in Phoenix, KIKI in Honolulu, WIAN in Indianapolis, KSGL in Wichita, WUCF in Orlando, WCRB in Boston, WDTR in Detroit, WCSB in Cleveland, KOCC in Oklahoma City, WDUQ in Pittsburgh, KTCU in Fort Worth, KXL in Portland, KBLE in Seattle, and more than 100 other stations. (Write to us in Santa Barbara, and we'll let you know the nearest station for your area.) Perspective provides a one-minute commentary on a different economic issue each weekday, by one of five commentators: Tom Hazlett, John McClaughry, Jennifer Roback, Rich Wilcke, and myself. If you'd like your favorite station to start broadcasting Perspective, write to us for a brochure to pass along (or have the station write).
The magazine you're reading was the nation's fastest growing magazine of ideas during 1983. That's the finding of the Alternative Educational Foundation, which reviewed the 1982 and 1983 publisher's statements filed by 33 current affairs/opinion magazines, left, right, and libertarian. Of all of them, REASON had the largest increase in paid circulation—16.7 percent. Many of the others lost circulation in 1983, including Mother Jones, The Progressive, Inquiry, Human Events, Commentary, and National Review. Our loyal readers have stood us in good stead.
Sam Cohen's controversial March issue cover story on a nuclear wall against war for Israel has generated a lot of mail from readers (see page 8). It has also generated considerable media attention, from as far away as the London Daily Telegraph and the Jerusalem Post. Cohen has done interviews with a number of radio stations, including KXL in Portland and WXYZ in Detroit. And Harper's is reprinting a condensed version of the article. Cohen also had an incisive review of Harold Willens's book, The Trimtab Factor, in the Wall Street Journal.
Correction: In the March editorial we missed a typographical error and thus reported that the Social Security program contributes $17 billion a year to the federal government's budget woes. In fact, it's a $117-billion-a-year (and growing) headache.
—R.W.P.
REASON's next issue will be a special double issue—and the annual financial issue, now an 11-year-old tradition. Expect it in your mailboxes in June, with such delights as an interview with "international man" Doug Casey, advice on avoiding gold and silver scams, stock market tips from William F. Rickenbacker, the debut of REASON's new Money columnist, and much more. Plus all of REASON's regular features and departments.
This month's cover story is excerpted from a fascinating new book by Edith Efron. After a comedy of errors on the part of the USPS, the page proofs finally arrived in February and I took the 500-odd pages home for the weekend to "skim through" for a possible excerpt. Once I picked up the book, I could hardly put it down. Skimming was out; the book is not light reading, but the appalling story told by Efron propelled me from one page to the next.
Then came the difficult task of selecting a particular section of the book for our readers' enlightenment. Ms. Efron calls the book a detective story, and in a very real sense, it is. Because the case builds as the story progresses, sections early in the book didn't seem to offer enough, standing alone, and sections later in the book are woven around interlocking clues, constantly reaching back to the evidence laid out piece by piece in the earlier chapters.
In conjunction with the author, we settled on one of the later chapters, trusting that readers would rather mull over a substantial piece than get a taste of the book from lighter fare. The article, which begins on page 22, takes up a controversial issue that is crucial to the science of cancer prevention. What is at stake, we leave the reader to discover.
Edith Efron is no stranger to REASON's pages. For a time, she was a regular Viewpoint columnist, and in 1975 we published an insightful article of hers, "The Free Mind and the Free Market," that was later to inspire the "tag line" that goes hand in name with the name REASON. We welcome Edith back.
—M.Z.