THE politicians winked and the lawyers shuddered when Herbert Brownell Jr., as professional a politico as ever there was in the U.S., was appointed Attorney General of the U.S. in 1953. But Brownell dropped from politics and public sight, went to work with a tough will and a legal flair. By now the legal eagles across the land rate this least-known member of the Eisenhower Cabinet as one of the best Attorneys General in U.S. history. See NATIONAL AFFAIRS, Back-Room Man Out Front.

THE Russians are now willing to let Americans fly over most of Siberia to see what's going on--in exchange for our letting the Russians overfly all the U.S. west of the Mississippi. This is the Soviets' reply to Eisenhower's open-skies plan. Whether to regard it as outrageous (the Pentagon view), grounds for guarded optimism (the State Department view), or simply a Russian attempt to resume the international conversation that Budapest interrupted, is assessed in FOREIGN NEWS, Pieces of the Sky.

SECRETARY Marion Folsom of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare says that the U.S. has a shortage of 159,000 classrooms. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce refuses to believe there is a critical shortage at all. Senator Knowland thinks that federal aid for school construction will inevitably lead to federal control, but Democratic Representative Augustine Kelley has declared it "urgently needed." How do the 48 states feel about it? For the answer, see TIME's survey of all 48 states in EDUCATION, Federal School Aid--Do the States Want It?

A WOMAN is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke--or is it? Could it be, in psychological reality, a preconscious device to impress that woman with one's virility? This, at any rate, is the view held by practitioners of a new offshoot of depth psychology known as Motivation Research. For an account of the mass psychology that has the whole U.S. economy on its analyst's couch, see MEDICINE, Psychology & the Ads.

LITTLE Del Northway, 4, his parents and his dog Peggy were social outcasts in Houston last week. For a cruel situation that may become commonplace in the Atomic Age, see SCIENCE, Plague of Iridium 192.

YOU see more movie stars at CBS and NBC than at any [movie] studio." says Gossip Columnist Hedda Hopper. The TV set, once trimmed with skunk by a movie mogul who desired to show his contempt for the new medium, now can be ordered in mink from a Hollywood furrier. Even in the executive dining rooms of some of the movie studios that once swore war to the death against the invasion, television sets now play through lunch. These and many other signs suggest how television, with its voracious demand for stories, actors, film and filmmakers, has become the star of a new Hollywood and reduced the movies to the role of a supporting player. See TV & RADIO, The New Hollywood.

THE Paris meeting brought the rustle of robes, the glitter of pectoral crosses; it took place with doors firmly shut to publicity. Behind the pageantry and behind the closed doors, it was easy to miss the real significance of the third plenary assembly since World War II of the Roman Catholic Church in France. TIME Correspondent George Abell did not miss it, cabled a full report on what occupied the 114 assembled French cardinals and bishops--nothing less than a serious and chronic crisis of the French church. See RELIGION, Rebellious Eldest Daughter.

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