The Official Rodes Fishburne Hub

A long time ago, and a very happy time it was, I served as the editor of the “The Big Issue,” an annual magazine that asked leading writers and thinkers, from Tom Wolfe to the Dalai Lama, to write personal essays on provocative themes. One year the theme was “Time,” another, “What is True?” another, “The Pursuit of Happiness.” Suffice to say it was extraordinarily stimulating to be working with such interesting and articulate people. And that was just the staff of Forbes ASAP.

Here is the introduction I wrote for the Pursuit of Happiness Issue. We’d been working on it very hard for six months with a publication date in the fall of 2001. Contributors included P.J. O’Rourke, Andrew Sullivan, and all the living Presidents.

Obviously, after September the context of what we’d been working on changed: Big Issue introduction

Here is a small selection of links to Big Issue essays from across the six Big Issues.

Kurt Vonnegut, “Old-Fangled Gadgets” (Big Issue theme “Time”)

Mark Helprin, “The Acceleration of Tranquility” (Big Issue theme “Time”)

Muhammad Ali, “Me . . . We” (Big Issue theme “Convergence”)

Czeslaw Milosz, “To a Hazel Tree, a poem” (Big Issue theme, “Convergence”)

Owen Edwards, “The Honored Dead” (Big Issue theme “What is True?”)

Pat Conroy, “My Heart’s Content” (Big Issue theme “What is True?”)

Reynolds Price, “Dear Harper, A letter to a godchild about God” (Big Issue theme “What is True?”)

Tom Wolfe, “Sorry but your Soul Just Died” (Big Issue theme “Digital revolution”)

To get the full picture, click here to buy the book, The Best of the Big Issues, a collection of Big Issue essays that includes:

Michael S. Malone, William F. Buckley, Scott Adams, Bill Gates, Gore Vidal, Peggy Noonan, Michael Lewis, E.O. Wilson, Chuck Yeager, Charles van Doren, George Gilder, Jan Morris, Stanley Crouch, Tom Peters, Richard Dawkins, Ian Frazier, Carl Hiaasen, Richard Ford, Arthur Miller, Stephen Ambrose, William Vollman, John Updike, and Jaques Barzun.

Tags: Forbes ASAP

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