Norman Cousins

Editor, author, and peace advocate; editor of the Saturday Review (1940-1978); adjunct professor at UCLA (1915-1990).

Norman Cousins was the longtime editor of the Saturday Review, one of America's most influential literary and cultural magazines, which he helmed from 1940 to 1971 and again from 1975 to 1978. A prominent advocate for nuclear disarmament and world peace, Cousins was also known for his writings on the connection between mind and body, particularly his 1979 book Anatomy of an Illness. Under his editorship, the Saturday Review published the "What I Have Learned" series — a collection of reflections by leading thinkers inspired by four lines from historian Charles Beard — to which R. Buckminster Fuller contributed a characteristically wide-ranging meditation on self-disciplined learning.

Relationship to Fuller

Relationship: contemporary. Cousins's connection to R. Buckminster Fuller was editorial and intellectual. As editor of the Saturday Review, he published Fuller's contribution to the "What I Have Learned" series, providing a prestigious platform for Fuller's reflections on a lifetime of progressive, self-disciplined learning. Fuller valued the relationship: when Gene Keyes wrote his 1970 essay-review pairing Fuller's Utopia or Oblivion with Robert Pickus's To End War, Fuller sent a handwritten letter urging Cousins to publish the piece — a gesture that indicates Fuller saw Cousins as a sympathetic and influential editorial ally. Both men shared a concern for planetary survival and a belief in the power of individual initiative to address global challenges.

See Also

• What I Have Learned — the series he edited that included Fuller's contribution
• Gene Keyes — author of the essay Fuller urged Cousins to publish

Sources

• What I Have Learned — compiled topic page for the anthology series