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- <text id=91TT2648>
- <title>
- Nov. 25, 1991: From The Publisher
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Nov. 25, 1991 10 Ways to Cure The Health Care Mess
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- FROM THE PUBLISHER, Page 6
- </hdr><body>
- <p> When we at TIME decided to issue a collection of Hugh Sidey's
- essays on U.S. Presidents, there was never a doubt as to who
- would be the publisher. A 1989 winner while at Harvard of one of
- our College Achievement Awards, Luke Ives Pontifell is a member
- of the extended TIME family. He received his prize for founding
- Thornwillow Press, an enterprise that is dedicated to issuing
- limited editions of exquisitely designed, hand-printed books.
- "The goal is to create beautiful, durable books that can carry
- inspiring events and exciting ideas into the future," says
- Pontifell, 23. "Today's primary means of communication, like
- newspapers and television, are effective but ephemeral. We don't
- want today's ideas to become tomorrow's trash."
- </p>
- <p> Pontifell's philosophy was shaped early. From his mother,
- a sculptor, he learned a reverence for craftsmanship, and from
- his father, an advertising creative director, he derived a love
- for the written word. Growing up in a 200-year-old farmhouse in
- West Stockbridge, Mass., he made toys and wrote poems in
- calligraphy.
- </p>
- <p> In his teens Pontifell took a printing course and promptly
- fell in love. "There's nothing like running your fingers over
- the letters on a newly printed page," he says. "It enhances the
- way you experience the words." At age 16 he leased his own
- letterpress, and Thornwillow was born. His first coup was
- printing historian William L. Shirer's memoir of the U.S.
- bombing of Hiroshima. Since then Thornwillow has published works
- by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Helmut Kohl. This week it brings
- out The Presidency by Hugh Sidey. The book is available through
- Thornwillow Press in New York City; $300 leather, $75 cloth.
- </p>
- <p> Pontifell and Sidey were delighted by the collaboration.
- "I had read Hugh's essays for years and leaped at the chance to
- print them," says Pontifell. For Sidey, meeting Luke recalled
- his youth as a printer at the Iowa newspaper his great-
- grandfather founded. "I consider Luke an adopted son," he says.
- Sidey believes TIME co-founder Henry Luce would also feel an
- affinity. "Luce complained each week about putting out the
- magazine, but when he got a copy fresh off the presses, he would
- lift it, smell it, riffle the pages. For a while, all was well
- with the world."
- </p>
- <p>-- Elizabeth P. Valk
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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