Born June 24, 1912; died Nov. 30, 1990
Britannica –
“American essayist and editor, long associated with the Saturday Review.
Cousins attended Teachers College, Columbia University, and began his editorial career in 1934. From 1942 to 1972 he was editor of the Saturday Review.
Following his appointment as executive editor in 1940, he introduced essays that drew a connection between literature and current events, whereupon circulation of the magazine increased 50 percent. Unafraid to criticize, Cousins was outspoken and his articles sometimes bitter. At times he criticized the U.S. government, but he felt strongly that a unique potential for greatness existed in America; he wrote The Good Inheritance: The Democratic Chance (1942) to explore this idea. Cousins felt modern problems stemmed from the absence of a collective voice and from Americans’ inability to see their social and political dilemmas clearly… In 1980 he was named “editor emeritus.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/140951/Norman–Cousins (accessed March 2, 2009)