Culture Is Their Business

"Our field is 'the arts'--not just the traditional seven, but the entire span of mankind's creative talents." So rings the challenging prospectus of Horizon-a proposed U.S. magazine that every other month "will be edited for intelligent, college-educated people . . . not the all-day watcher of television, or those whose aspirations begin, or end, with the solid gold Cadillac."

Last week 100,000 American families reading through these ego-pumping lines of Horizon's advance mailer came across a cunning warning: "Such a cultural package will not lead to material profit." Perhaps not for the subscriber. But making a profit out of culture is the special business of the American Heritage Publishing Co., Horizon's publishers-to-be. Despite its ban on advertising, the company has made a financial success out of its American Heritage, a book-size, hard-cover bimonthly that treats of specialized aspects of American history at the highly specialized price of $2.95 a copy.

Help from the Pros. "What we've done is to apply pictorial journalism techniques to history," explains Editorial Director Joseph J. Thorndike Jr., 44, onetime (1946-49) managing editor of LIFE. So well have these techniques backed up fact-solid, colorful writing that the small company is fast becoming biggish business. This week the editors prepared three new projects: Horizon (planned for September at $18 a year); a compendium of the first six issues of American Heritage, to meet the constant demand for back copies (price: $15); and The American Heritage Book of the Revolution (price: $12.50), due this summer. In addition, last fall's American Heritage Book of Great Historic Places ($12.50), the company's first book, so far has sold 193,000 copies and is still going strong.

Heritage had its start in 1954. The American Association for State and Local History was looking for help for its modest, nonprofit quarterly called American Heritage. The Society of American Historians wanted to put out a magazine of history. Help and know-how came from a magazine-consultant firm run by Thorndike and two other old associates: wiry, pugnacious James Parton, 45 (onetime business editor of TIME), and Oliver Jensen (onetime text editor of LIFE).

The two history societies are sponsors of American Heritage, own stock in the magazine, but do not tamper with the content. The team of Thorndike, Parton and Jensen controls the company through their stockholdings. In all, it took just $64,929.60 to get into business. Publisher

Parton, the driving force behind the deal, was the largest investor, with $8,000. From the start, the editors decided to make pictures as important as text. (Current issues carry color cuts on about 30 of their 112 pages, at a cost of some $20,000 an issue for engraving alone.) The team put American Heritage between hard covers, made it a bimonthly, brought in Newsman-Historian Bruce Catton, 58, as editor, and took aim at "anyone who has an interest in American history." The target turned out to be bigger and more responsive than they had dared hope. When the first issue appeared in December 1954, all 80,000 copies were whisked away overnight. Today's circulation: 300,000.

Pressurized Professor. Although he is banging away at half a dozen outside projects, Pulitzer Prizewinning Civil War Historian Catton (A Stillness at Appomattox) is no figurehead editor. Catton and Managing Editor Jensen have gradually won over skeptical professional historians, now have no trouble getting the experts to relax and write articles. One pro who turned out to be a high-speed journalist: Columbia's scholarly Allan Nevins, the magazine's chief adviser, who once rattled out 5,000 words in 24 hours to beat a deadline. Some recent samples of Heritage articles: an interview with the Sioux warrior who shot General Custer; an eyewitness report of the Civil War naval battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac] an account of Karl Marx's writing stint for Horace Greeley's New York Tribune (TIME, April 15).

Such crisply written stories have earned American Heritage a devoted following. Three-quarters of the magazine's charter members are still on the list, and 98% of the subscribers are saving every copy. From one exuberant female reader came the supreme compliment: "I am a great passer-arounder of magazines, but I'd just as soon pass around my husband as my copies of American Heritage."

-No kin to Cyril Connolly's British Horizon, which died in 1949.

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