To Our Readers

By ELIZABETH VALK LONG President

It should come as no surprise that men who served as President of the U.S. have appeared more than 200 times on our cover -- some more often than others. Herbert Hoover was the only occupant of the Oval Office since TIME began in 1923 who was not on our cover, although he was portrayed there before and after his presidency. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who won an unprecedented four presidential elections, was our cover subject a mere nine times. By contrast, two-termer Ronald Reagan was pictured on 44 of our domestic covers.

Richard Milhous Nixon lay near death for four days last week in a Manhattan hospital, after suffering a severe stroke. But even before he died on Friday, we had decided to put him on the cover. Nixon has now appeared there 56 times, more than any other man or woman. This issue contains excerpts from his 10th book, Beyond Peace, to be published by Random House on May 18. In his six most recent works, beginning with The Real War in 1980, the former President dealt primarily with East-West relations. In what he called "probably my last book," Nixon focuses on domestic issues like health care, education and urban decay, arguing that communism's defeat makes it imperative that America live up to its promises. Beyond Peace is the second work by the former President that we have been privileged to excerpt.

Our cover stories on Nixon have reflected both the highs and the lows of his amazing political career. Early on, Nixon caught the eye of TIME's editors as a zealously anticommunist Republican Congressman with a promising future. In August 1952 he first appeared on our cover as the G.O.P. candidate for Vice President. We described him then as a "good-looking, dark-haired young man" who "seems to have everything."

Three times Time Inc. expressed its support for Nixon as President, with endorsements that appeared in LIFE. Twice we chose him as Man of the Year: in 1972, primarily for his historic opening of China, and the following year (in tandem with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger) for forging stable links with the U.S.S.R. and China. In 1973 and 1974, Nixon was on our cover 14 times as TIME meticulously traced the unraveling of the Watergate plot. In November 1973 we published our first editorial, which called upon Nixon to resign for the good of the country.

TIME's coverage of Watergate put the magazine, for a while, on Nixon's ever- expandable enemies list. But he -- and we -- mellowed during his years in self-imposed exile. As he gradually emerged as an elder statesman of the Republican Party, several of our editors, writers and correspondents were invited to intimate dinners, featuring good beef and vintage red Bordeaux, at Nixon's house in Saddle River, New Jersey, where the host talked sagaciously about domestic politics and foreign affairs.

Hugh Sidey, our Washington contributing editor, estimates that he spent nearly half his career observing and reporting on the former President. "Nixon was most comfortable talking about foreign policy," Sidey recalls. "During the Bush Administration, I did a series of television interviews with the four living ex-Presidents, and, no question, Nixon's knowledge and enthusiasm for these issues was far greater than that of the others. He once told me, 'I have always felt that the country can more or less take care of itself. A President's first job is dealing with peace and war.' "

Surely that last sentence deserves to be part of Richard Nixon's epitaph.

Most copies of this week's issue contain, on the opening page of the Chronicles section, an ambitious experiment in customized printing. With the aid of ink-jet technology and the research services of Congressional Quarterly Inc., we have enabled each individual subscriber in the 50 states to read how his or her U.S. Senators voted in last week's controversial approval of full, four-star retirement for Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Frank B. Kelso 2nd. It is intended as the first of many customized congressional features through which we hope to engage TIME's readers more closely in the democratic process.