I saw an ad for Real Simple in some glossy magazine. Captivated by the lovely, artfully arranged, silk-looking slippers, I logged on to their Web site and registered for a free introductory issue. A few weeks later, I received a bill from Real Simple which was anything but. I eventually puzzled out that they were billing me for a subscription I had never ordered. It was my option to call and cancel my subscription, which I promptly did. In real simple terms.

I then stuffed my new junk mail into a big envelope under my messy desk, and proceeded to strew sections of the paper around my living room, as if in childish revenge.

-- Meredith Low

I loved Sean Elder's piece on Real Simple. I admit that I was tempted by the concept of this minimalist magazine. But in the end, I elected to simplify ... by not buying a subscription to Real Simple.

-- Catherine Hurley

My jaw was hanging open when I read the piece about the new Real Simple magazine. Just when I think I have seen it all, along comes another amusing example of the relentlessness of American commercial interests. Many Americans do want to simplify their lives, which you would think would dismay the consumer products industry, but with the spunk and resourcefulness that is the hallmark of American commerce, they just cheerfully start marketing products to the living simply crowd. And the thing is, it will almost certainly work. I am sure that we will buy even more stuff in the quest for a simpler life if advertising showing serene attractive people in tasteful settings causes us to associate certain products with the life we wish we had.

-- Andy Flach

Abecedarian delights
BY JIM LEWIS
(03/20/00)

I realize your short list wasn't intended to be exhaustive, but wouldn't it have been appropriate to have included Richard Firmage's "The Alphabet Abecedarium" (1993)? Firmage's book provides much more than a simple typographical history of the alphabet; it also muses on the literary, historical and whimsical effects those 26 letters have had on the various cultures that have used them.

-- Maury Botton

Idea epidemics
BY GAVIN MCNETT
(03/17/00)

Gavin McNett wonders incredulously about the $1.5 million advance for Malcolm Gladwell's book, "The Tipping Point." I too wonder, not about whether such advances are excessive, rather, about the fact that this book seems to be gaining public attention while the original idea and analysis of how tipping points work has remained in relative obscurity. There is a rich irony here because in Gladwell's applications of the tipping point it can be used to explain how some people can take an idea and become rich and famous, while those who did the original work of conceptualization are comparatively unknown.

The first analytical applications of "tipping points" to social behavior were in a 1957 article in Scientific American by Morton Grodzins. However, this social mechanism was more fully developed in subsequent work in 1971 and 1972 by Thomas Schelling. Gladwell does not discuss the originators in the text of his book, but does at least reference Schelling's work in an endnotes section, though it is actually a reference section because citation numbers are not made in the text.

Schelling is a well-known and highly regarded professor who currently teaches at the University of Maryland. More than just developing and extending the idea of tipping points, Schelling has been a creator of many novel ideas and fruitful applications across academic disciplines, though his home is in economics. Usually those who have accomplished groundbreaking work in economics are given the public recognition and honor of a Nobel prize. Gladwell and others can find a gold mine of interesting ideas in Schelling's works to be borrowed and popularized. Their success is welcomed if it will influence the Nobel prize committee to give Schelling the recognition that is long over due.

-- Bruce J. Reynolds

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