From the Publisher

By Elizabeth P. Valk

Readers of TIME have long been familiar with Robert Hughes' provocative, elegantly expressed art reviews. But the art world has never been enough to hold Hughes; he is one of the magazine's true Renaissance men. In 1987 he published The Fatal Shore, a best-selling, critically acclaimed history of the settling of his native Australia. Next month Knopf will bring out Barcelona, his account of the social and cultural history of the Spanish city. In the pages of TIME, Hughes has had his say on everything from motorcycling to gun control.

Hughes' essay this week, The Fraying of America, is adapted from his lecture series at the New York Public Library titled "The Culture of Complaint," to be published later this year by Oxford University Press. The lectures were inspired by his unhappiness at efforts to remake U.S. school curriculums along politically correct lines. "What angers me is the herd instinct that leads people to suppose that European culture is the fount of all evils in the ^ world," says Hughes. "I don't believe it is."

TIME editors have grown accustomed to Bob's forceful opinions and iconoclastic ways. The magazine hired him in 1970, when he was a free-lance art critic living in London. Senior editor Christopher Porterfield, then our London bureau cultural correspondent, recalls that Hughes expressed two concerns about going to work for TIME. "He wanted to know if he would have to cut his shoulder-length hair," says Porterfield, "and whether he would have to give up his motorcycle."

The hair has been tamed (Bob's choice), but not his restless energy. Hughes, 53, divides his time between a loft in downtown Manhattan and a house on Shelter Island, off New York's Long Island. In between his books and art criticism, he enjoys such hobbies as carpentry and deep-sea fishing. Though he has by no means become bored with the art scene (his next book will be on the painter Goya), Hughes admits a growing passion for history and social issues. "Generally speaking," he says, "the real world interests me more than the art world." Happily, writing for TIME gives him an opportunity to keep an eye on both.