A Letter From The Publisher, Jul. 16, 1945

Dear Subscriber

Three books, so the story goes, were on the desk of TIME'S editor when TIME'S first issue went to press — the Bible, Xenophon's Anabasis, and the Iliad.

Of the three, the Iliad seemed to have the most immediate influence on TIME writing. Homer's "wine-dark sea" and "far-darting Apollo" were the parents of "jampacked bowl," "spade-bearded anthropologist" and many another space-saving phrase in TIME.

TIME'S telescoped nouns —"socialite," "radiorator," "guesstimate" — were similarly coined to get one word to do the work of two or more. This kind of economy led us to...

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