A Letter From the Publisher

To answer some of the questions our subscribers have been asking about how TIME gathers, verifies, writes and distributes its news.

Picking the Man of the Year for TIME's first January cover has become such a tradition with TIME's readers that you might be amused to learn that the whole thing began because the first week of January 1928 was so dull.

No one had done anything newsworthy enough to put his picture on TIME's cover, so somebody suggested that we stop looking for a Man of the Week and pick a Man of the Year. Choice of the Man of 1927 was easy: Hero Charles Augustus Lindbergh, then busily hopping all over North America giving people a look at the youngster who had soloed the Atlantic in only 33 hours and 30 minutes.

The Man of the Year idea caught on with a bang and, somewhat surprised, we decided to make it an annual event. The choice is in no way an accolade or a Nobel Prize for doing good. Nor is it a moral judgment. (Al Capone came close to being runner-up in riotous, bootleg 1928). The two criteria for the choice are always these: Who had the biggest rise in fame; and who did most to change the news for better (like Stalin this year) or for worse (like Stalin in 1939, when his flop to Hitler's side unleashed this worldwide war).

Thirteen different men have been chosen in sixteen years--with one man picked three times and one man twice.

In 1928 we passed up Herbert Hoover, newly elected to put two chickens in every pot--because 1928 was the businessmen's year and Walter P. Chrysler was their symbol. When Business crashed in 1929 we passed by Hoover again, skipped over Explorer Byrd and Peace-Pacter Kellogg in favor of Owen D. Young, just back from Paris with his hopeful plan for settling Europe's troubles.

Man of 1930 was in jail when his selection was announced in TIME: Mohandas K. Gandhi had just launched civil disobedience to get the British out of India. Next year was "a lean year for everybody," as old Ramsay MacDonald put it: Man of 1931 was Pierre Laval, chosen for having steered France prosperously through twelve months which had meant breadlines and apple sellers in almost every other land. (Laval is one choice we're not very proud to look back on.)

Franklin D. Roosevelt was picked for the first time for 1932--for winning a landslide election on a program of government economy and a balanced budget. He was Man of the Year again in 1934, but not for economy. In between came NRAdministrator Hugh Johnson, then flying high with the Blue Eagle.

Man of 1935 was a surprise to some. We picked him because during that year he had "carried his country up & up into brilliant focus before a pop-eyed world." He was Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, Power of Trinity I, King of Kings, Elect of God, Light of the World and Conquering Lion of Judah. Man of 1936 was a Woman--Wallis Warfield Simpson, first to make a King of England swap his throne for a woman -- and 1937's choice was a couple: Generalissimo and Mme. Chiang Kaishek.

No one but Hitler could be Man of 1938, for in that year he twice brought Europe to the brink of war (in Austria and Czechoslovakia). Despite Hitler's victories, Winston Churchill proved himself Man of 1940, and Franklin Roosevelt was chosen for the third time in 1941, after Pearl Harbor made him America's sixth wartime President.

Helping us pick the Man of the Year seems to give subscribers a lot of fun, for every year the flood of their nominations grows greater. But the people who seem to like the idea best are the moviemakers. Gary Cooper played the "Man of the Year" in 1941's "Meet John Doe" --I think Jack Haley made it too, as The Average American Male in a movie called "Thanks for Everything"--and of course last winter Katharine Hepburn strutted her way through one of her most memorable roles as "Woman of the Year."

Cordially,

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