SOMETIMES he felt like that twelve-year-old boy who spent nine days and nights at the fair, sleeping in one pavilion or another and scrounging enough money for food by picking coins out of the fountains. But Writer John McPhee spent ten days there and only part of the nights and he ate--as the editorial business manager will discover--without dipping a finger in a fountain. In fact, he ate his way through such delights as soft-shelled crab on a bun, walnut fried Boston sole, partridge with grapes of Almeria, banana dogs, smoked eel of the river Tagus, Kambing Masak Bugis and A jam Panggang--and one ham on rye to go. Followed, on occasion, by antacid tablets.

McPhee's mission was to do what no one else had done about the New York World's Fair. It had been previewed, opened, featured, highlighted and was even beginning to produce its own cliches. But there had been no intensive critique of it in the sense that, say, a theater critic reviews a play. McPhee and Researcher Nancy Gay Faber went to and from Flushing Meadow by car, subway, train and hydrofoil, walked and rode through the grounds, stood in the longest lines, went to literally every pavilion, park and exhibit. One day McPhee took two of his daughters, aged three and five, and stayed for more than ten hours. "They were so continuously fascinated," he said, "that they never disintegrated into some of their more conventional behavior patterns."

On the visual side, the color projects team was something of an advance party, covering the grounds earlier for days to put together the eight color pages. Nudged by the demands of engraving deadlines, Associate Editor Peter Bird Martin noted somewhat nervously one day that the demograph on the Equitable Life pavilion registered an increase of 165 souls while he was casing just one exhibit. Artist Boris Chaliapin, departing somewhat from his usual style, treated the cover with a touch of the abstract, a suggestion of pop and a shade of Moses.

The result is what the editors set out to provide for TIME readers: a definitive answer to the question, Should I go?, and a confidential, exhaustive guide to what is great, good, bad, indifferent and just Fair.

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