“I’ve been reading these cover to cover since the 1960s.” So said foreign policy eminence and novelist Mark Helprin in his interview with the great Barton Swaim in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal. What’s Helprin been reading? Magazines like the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings, Janes Fighting Ships, Strategic Survey, and, in the words of Swaim, “other technical journals one seldom encounters outside university libraries.” Helprin plainly is proud of what he devours, but then that’s seemingly the problem. Simple economics doesn’t seem to intrude on his learning.
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