From the Publisher

By Robert L. Miller

During the climactic hours of the gulf war, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney was briefing President Bush on the strategy of the ground assault. There was no map of the Middle East war zone readily available in the White House family quarters for Cheney to refer to. "Oh, I have a map," responded the President. He reached over and spread out the one appearing in that week's issue of TIME.

When the President's photographer David Valdez recounted the incident on ABC's Good Morning America, TIME's graphics director Nigel Holmes had reason to be pleased. Early in the war a commercial map company had proposed to TIME and other publications that they purchase reprint rights to the firm's maps of the area. Managing editor Henry Muller preferred to rely on our in-house team led by Holmes, whose wizardry with graphics has graced the pages of TIME since he came to the magazine in 1978 from London.

TIME's mapmakers keep busy every week: witness the display on the Kurds' struggle against Saddam Hussein that accompanies this issue's cover stories. But the gulf pullout was the most complex map TIME had ever undertaken. Working with Holmes were cartographer Paul J. Pugliese, illustrators Steven D. Hart and Joe Lertola, map researcher Deborah L. Wells and artist Nino Telak. Thanks to computers, all six staff members were able to work on the map simultaneously. Even so, the costly project took them a total of 10 days. (In addition to the pullout maps enclosed in the 6.9 million magazines that were sent to domestic and foreign subscribers and sold at newsstands, more than 400,000 copies have been requested by readers.)

The 14 1/2-in. by 19 3/4-in. pullout in the Feb. 25 issue was based on a design that Holmes had devised for the detailed maps that appeared in TIME every week after the war began. Holmes chose to depict Iraq in bold blood red and the seas in black to convey the starkness of war. The back of the map showed the weaponry being used by both sides.

With most of the maps that are published in TIME week by week, says Holmes, the staff's challenge is to "pare things down." The battle map provided a welcome opportunity to do the opposite. "We decided to put in lots of information and let people spend some time with it. It was very nice to know that people wanted our services."