Archie K. Davis speaks with W. Robert Connor, 1989 (Photo: Jean Anne Leuchtenburg)

t our age are we still learning to read? There is nothing more sustaining for the inquiring mind, and nothing more conducive to good ideas.

This special issue of Ideas--a double issue--tries, as always, to give a picture of the intellectual life at the National Humanities Center: the lectures we hear, the issues we are arguing about, the quilts that brighten our walls, the poems our colleagues are willing to share with us. But reading, and reading well--that simplest and most challenging of humanistic disciplines--is at the core of this issue as it is at the Center itself. As we keep trying to read with greater understanding and alertness, it helps to have at hand the skillful critic, alert to nuance, to social setting, to the way texts illuminate one another and are illuminated by material in other media. We are fortunate to have some master readers with us and delighted to be able to share them with you through this issue of Ideas.

This issue is dedicated to the memory of Archie K. Davis, whose efforts were crucial in bringing the National Humanities Center to North Carolina. He raised the funds for its splendid building, and, as a glance above will show, pointed out to its directors the paths of discretion and responsibility. This Center is very much his center and will be for many years to come.

Finally, a word of thanks: If you have enjoyed reading Ideas, you, like the rest of us, are in debt to Jean Anne Leuchtenburg. She transformed the Center's newsletter into this journal. For each issue she selected and edited the manuscripts, designed the pages, chose the illustrations, pried permissions from museums and publishers around the world--in short, created Ideas. This is the last issue she will edit, but not the last that will reflect her understanding that humanistic scholarship of uncompromising excellence means good reading.

W. Robert Connor, Director