To Our Readers

What are you doing New Year's Eve? By now that question must sound familiar. It was the title of a charming 1947 Frank Loesser song and, according to an Internet search, the headline on 352 recent newspaper stories about the looming millennium. Mercifully, I won't labor the point here, discuss which champagne is best for the occasion or examine Y2K readiness in the banking system. But I would like to tell you about the rich menu of special issues TIME will be offering over the next few historic weeks: The Best of 1999. As we do every year, we're going to look back at the most, least, best, and worst of business, sport, cinema, design, technology, scandals and other realms of human endeavor. We'll celebrate the Machine of the Year, select the Pictures of the Year and generally place in context one of the busiest 365-day periods in memory. Look for our lists in the issue dated Dec. 20, on sale Dec. 13.

Man of the Year. And you thought we'd forgotten, what with all the hype about Person of the Century (see below). There will indeed be an MOY this year, as there has been annually since 1927, when we first selected the person who did the most to shape the year, for good or ill. This time he, she or it will be announced in our Dec. 27 issue, on sale Dec. 20.

Person of the Century. The big one, the journalistic milestone you've been waiting for. And voting for--our Internet poll is busier than ever, at www.timeasia.com. (Elvis Presley remains in the lead, followed by Yitzhak Rabin and Adolf Hitler; results aren't binding, though we'll look at them.) The Person of the Century issue--packed with enough good reading for another 100 years--will be dated Dec. 31, 1999 (of course). It will hit newsstands Dec. 27 and remain on sale for several weeks.

The Millennium Issue. The century's final midnight will be an event to remember, but for what--heroic partying, technological meltdown, mass panic? To record the dawn of a new millennium, we're deploying an army of reporters and photographers across the time zones. Our special souvenir issue, dated (what else?) Jan. 1, 2000, will go on sale Jan. 3.

And then? We should all take a rest, but the news won't wait. TIME will be there to record it, with a regular issue dated Jan. 17, on sale Jan. 10. Indeed, we'll be chronicling what you and the world will be doing not only in the next few historic weeks but, as Frank Loesser would have put it, for the rest of your New Year's Eves too.