History at the Grass Roots

As a historian turned publisher, Earle W. Newton likes to be told he can't do something. Two years ago, he sounded out other publishers on his idea for a magazine to rescue U.S. history from classroom dullness, dramatize it in an illustrated quarterly with at least 16 pages of color. The experts warned him that he couldn't possibly start such a magazine with less than $100,000. Anyway, it would have too limited a market to pay off. Newton raised $2,000 from fellow historians, and went ahead.

Last week 34-year-old Publisher Newton not only had his original $2,000 back, with the ninth issue of his American Heritage, he also had 10,000 readers. And he had convinced the professionals. Curtis Publishing Co.'s distributing subsidiary this week will launch a national circulation drive for American Heritage, the first quarterly it has ever agreed to handle. With the big direct-mail campaign, Publisher Newton hopes to win enough new readers to go bimonthly, trim his price from the current 75-c- a copy to 50-c-.

This isn't the first time Earle Newton has turned a shoestring into a magazine. A graduate of Amherst, where he founded its literary magazine, Touchstone, he served as a Navy historian in World War II, then went back to his job running Vermont's Historical Society. He decided to start a magazine devoted to regional, grass-roots history, try to make it as readable as a good newspaper. The state put up $5,000 to start Newton's quarterly Vermont Life. Fearfully, Newton ordered 11,000 copies for the first issue; it sold out in three days. So did the second issue of 20,000, the third of 25,000. Circulation now tops 50,000. He went on to write a state history, The Vermont Story, with liberal excerpts from Vermont Life.

In his American Heritage, Newton uses the same newsy editorial approach and format he uses in Vermont Life. He still sticks to regional history, but his regions are selected from all over the U.S. Well on his way toward making the past as readable as the present, he tries to keep an even balance between things (Conestoga wagons, railroads, the American eagle), places and people (Garfield's assassin, Lincoln as a horse tamer), and events (Tippecanoe, the Bear Flag revolt). Newton, who is also a director of Massachusetts' famed Old Sturbridge Village (TIME, Nov. 5), puts out the magazine in his spare time with the help of only one paid hand. He wangles free manuscripts from members of the American Association for State and Local History, his chief backer, and name writers, e.g., Carl Carmer, Roger Butterfield, who are also interested in livening up history. Editor Newton's biggest problem is to get his scholarly contributors to write a colorful style instead of "plodding into the facts and proceeding in dull and orderly fashion to the conclusion" and to get the articles in on time. "But when you don't pay," sighs Newton, "you can't be arbitrary about deadlines."

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