WHILE last week's Vanguard explosion was blamed officially on "loss of thrust," there was no lack of thrusts at the U.S. Newspapers from Mexico City to Moscow, and at home as well, dubbed the dud a stallnik, latenik, flopnik, pfftnik, goofnik. For other press comment, ranging from derision to bitter disappointment, see JUDGMENTS & PROPHECIES.

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IT was General Dwight Eisenhower more than any other individual free-world leader who forged and welded the framework of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Next week in Paris, its framework subject to the greatest strains, internal and external, in its history, its heads of government will meet, at the call of President Dwight Eisenhower, for NATO's most important conclave. In Eisenhower's former role as NATO Supreme Commander is a U.S. Air Force general named Lauris Norstad. For a report on NATO, its leaders, its strengths, its doubts and its future, see FOREIGN NEWS, The View at the Summit.

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THE cover portrait of General Norstad was painted by Italy's Pietro Annigoni in three two-hour sittings while the general listened to Tchaikovsky on his hi-fi set. Said Annigoni of Norstad: "Very intelligent, very sympathetic, very American." Said Norstad of Annigoni: "A no-nonsense kind of pro."

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IN the post-Sputnik drive to meet the challenge of the Soviet Union's massive educational drive, the Houston school board asked the University of Houston and Rice Institute to help beef up the city's science teaching; Chicago upped the required academic courses for high school students from six to ten; Seattle plans advanced work for bright seventh graders; Nobel Prizewinner Harold Urey called for a 5 1/2-day school week and a ten-month year. But from M.I.T. last week came evidence that the Soviet school system has faults of its own. For a report on the flaws in the Red system, see EDUCATION, The Dark Side of the Moon.

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ONE of the nation's largest newspaper chains is one of its least known, and the man who built it was a stranger in most of the 17 cities his 22 newspapers serve. Practicing maxims taught him by his mother, Frank Gannett fashioned a newspaper empire but declined ever to be its emperor (though he did want to be President of the U.S.). For how he lived, and died, see PRESS, The Chain That Isn't.

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IF a man had read 30 books every I day this year, he might have plowed through all the books published in the U.S. during 1957--an experience more than likely to induce a nervous breakdown. TIME'S chief book critic, Max Gissen, and his four colleagues try to avoid that fate, but they do more than enough reading to know America's literary output as well as a broker knows the market charts. For their pick of 1957, see BOOKS, The Year's Best.

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