Christopher Latham Sholes receives a patent for his mechanical writing machine, the “Type-Writer.”

I admit it, I am a twentieth-century person, which means my reading life has twentieth-century roots. I grew up with a city newspaper which, before it went Gannett, bore an allegorical drawing of Progress or somesuch atop its front page, with a couplet from Lord Byron (“With or without offence to friends or foes/I sketch your world exactly as it goes.”)


When I came to National Review, I used a Royal Office Manual typewriter, and a couple of times I took the copy to what we called “the plant” in Connecticut where it was set in type, by linotypists using linotype machines.

So this is all new to me. But so was America in 1493.

If you sign up for NRPlus, you get the best of what magazines now are — delivery systems for all the items and articles they print and put online. But you will also get many additional ones, plus contact with the writers and your fellow — readers? Plussers? Whatever the noun du jour may be, partakers of what we have to offer, and believers in the causes we believe in.

Think of it as like getting the equivalent of two or three magazines and going on an NR cruise — without having stacks of stuff to store or throw out, and without having to renew your passport or stock up on seasickness medication.



We will endeavor to inform, provoke, delight, and connect. You will have stage seats.

Sounds good? Roll the presses.