THE leading story in this week's issue talks of death and renewal --of a death that cannot be forgotten, and of a life that must go on. Short weeks ago, one event dominated everything. It still echoes--but the weight of other issues and places is felt again--the settling-in of the new Administration, the troubles of NATO, a kidnaping in Nevada and another in Bolivia.

South Viet Nam, uncertain under its new military junta, requires a new look on the scene by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara--and gets another in advance from TIME Correspondent Murray Gart, who flew on 26 helicopter missions in five days to gather his story.

The WORLD BUSINESS section gets its first cover story--on the liveliest member of the legendary Rothschild family. Boris Chaliapin flew to France to paint Guy de Rothschild in an appropriate setting--against a sumptuous red silk brocade wall in the 18th century Rothschild town house in Paris. The Rothschilds are discreet as bankers and reticent as a family, and it took a heap of interviewing (and 120,000 words of research) for the story that Marshall Loeb wrote. A new and thorough job of reporting was necessary, for, as Researcher Kathleen Cooil discovered, the books on the subject not only often seem to be wrong, but to repeat one another's errors.

Also special in this issue: an entire 7-column BOOKS section, written by Tim Foote, taking up the new young Soviet novelists who are trying under a suspicious dictatorship to say more than their elders dared say.

Among the thousands of letters we have received in recent weeks was one from Mrs. Eleanor Cowan, whose letter appeared in the Dec. 6 issue of TIME. "The city of Dallas paved the way for a tragic event here," she wrote. "Being a Dallasite, I am so ashamed." Mrs. Cowan is 25 and a fourth-grade teacher in Dallas.

Several days after the letter appeared, Mrs. Cowan was summoned by Superintendent W. T. White and questioned about it sentence by sentence. She was told she had no right as a teacher to write such a letter, was suspended from her job and told to report back the following week. The story leaked out (not from her: she wanted no publicity) and got considerable attention in the Dallas papers, including a sympathetic editorial in the Times-Herald. As the story spread across the nation, in news reports and on TV, Mrs. Cowan got so many telephone calls that she had her phone disconnected, and we got a whole wave of letters coming to her support.

Apparently distressed by all the national publicity, or perhaps undergoing a change of heart, Dr. White called Mrs. Cowan in and they had a "very pleasant informal conference. We are pleased that she will return to the classroom tomorrow." And that is where Mrs. Cowan is well pleased to leave it, too: happy to be back teaching.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.