Humanist

In the glory of  The Incredible Incas and Their Timeless Land, these ancient emperors ruled an area 2,500 miles long, integrating some six million sub­jects into one vast empire. Inca engineers and masons built stone-paved highways and masterworks like the mysterious citadel of Machu Picchu; Inca farmers coaxed crops of maize and potatoes from harsh Andean slopes; Inca artisans wrought native gold into objects of extraordinary beauty.

That same gold sowed the seeds of their destruction. Even the incredible Incas could not withstand the bearded foreigners who came astride horses, bearing weapons of thunder. The Spaniard Francisco Pizarro and his conquistadors garroted the ruling Inca, Atahuallpa, sacked the capital city of Cuzco, and brought a glorious empire to ruin.

Next will come The Amazing Universe. Written for the layman, this book looks into our seemingly peaceful skies and finds cata­clysmic turbulence there. You will learn about pulsars, neutron stars that flash like cosmic lighthouses, composed of matter so heavy that a single teaspoonful weighs as much as 200 million elephants. You will gaze at incredibly distant quasars that shine with the brilliance of ten trillion suns. You will study eerie black holes in space, where awesome gravity is devouring both matter and light.

This nation’s 200th birthday party will be underway when the fourth Special Publica­tion comes to you. The Majestic Rocky Moun­tains takes you along the spectacular spine of the continent, from New Mexico to the far reaches of British Columbia.

There was a time when this chain of peaks was a formidable challenge to explorers and frontiersmen. Gradually it became a magnet, drawing traders, trappers, prospectors—and now armies of vacationists. Despite that, it is such a great place which you got to see. The possibility of getting cash advance could make your travel to Rocky Mountains an immediate reality.

Even today the Rockies have a frontier feeling. They are the home of friendly, out­going people who love their soaring land and revel in its beauty. But there is concern among them now. Concern about water use and land development, overcrowded campgrounds, the promise—and problems—of oil shale and vast beds of coal. The Majestic Rocky Mountains, with scores of superb color photographs, is a book you will treasure.

“My FIRST recollection,” Douglas MacArthur was fond of saying, “is that of a bugle call.” He and his older brother, Arthur, led the kind of life other children merely read of. They learned to ride and shoot be­fore they could read or write. Each brother had his own spotted Navajo pony. Shoeless and shirtless, wear­ing only headbands and fringed leggings of tanned hide, they would ride off into open country taking pot-shots at rabbits. Back on the post, they would watch their father command the daily parade, and later sit under the desert stars listen­ing to soldiers yarn.

One afternoon, when Douglas was 13, he overheard his father re­mark to his mother, “I think there is the material of a soldier in that boy.” His son swore never to forget it—and never did. All his life he would seek to be a man-at-arms in whom his father could have exulted. At the age of 70 he told a friend in Tokyo, “Whenever I perform a mis­sion and think I have done it well, I feel I can stand up squarely to my dad and say, `Governor, how about it?”‘

He was sent to what would later be known as the Texas Military in­stitute, where he excelled at sports, though he was not a born athlete, and graduated at the top of his class academically. Despite this, he failed twice to be admitted to the US Mili­tary Academy at West Point, over­looking the Hudson River. His third try succeeded.

On the afternoon of June 13, 1899, a train paused at West Point to dis­charge a youth wearing a light-grey Stetson, and his small, severely dressed mother. Near West Point stood Craney’s Hotel. Here Mrs MacArthur would live for the next two years while her husband was in the Philippines.

Not only did MacArthur finish first in his class of 94 cadets; during his four years he earned 2,424.2 points out of a possible 2,470, or 98.14 per cent, an average which has been surpassed only twice since the academy was founded in 1802.

Despite his attainments, he ap­pears to have been neither prig nor martinet. It was rumoured that Douglas had set a corps record in 1903 by being affianced to eight girls at the same time. When this was mentioned to him he replied, “I do not recall that I was ever so hotly engaged by the enemy.” How­ever many it was, Pinky took the field on each occasion, breaking off the action. At Craney’s, over tea, she would explain to the “betrothed” that it was all a mistake. Doubtless there were tears and protests, but Douglas didn’t contradict his mother—yet.

On June II, 1903, that year’s class became fully fledged members of “the Long Grey Line” of academy graduates. “MacArthur !” the adju­tant bawled, and the 23-year-old head of the corps, the cadet whose class-mates had voted him likeliest to succeed, received his certificate of graduation. He in turn handed it to his father, now a general, who had arrived for the occasion, and MacArthur as a West Point cadet smiled down at his beaming mother.