Readers Digest - Best of Readers Digest Vol 3 -Celebrating 100 Years

The Best of Readers Digest Volume 3

Heartwarming Stories, Dramatic Tales, Hilarious Cartoons and Timeless Photographs

A READERS DIGEST BOOK

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ISBN 978-1-62145-840-1 (retail hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-62145-838-8 (dated hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-62145-839-5 (undated hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-62145-841-8 (e-pub)

Component numbers 116600107H (dated); 116600109H (undated)

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Photo Credits: Front Cover, Top: Billy Hustace/Corbis Documentary/Getty Images; Front Cover, From Left: David Turnley/Corbis Historical/Getty Images, Hum Images/Universal Images Group/Getty Images, Ariel Zambelich, Webguzs/Istock/Getty Images; Back Cover, From Left: Mark Alcarez, C.F. Payne, Jason Grow, Justin Rogers/Rogers Photography

Cover Design: Anna Jo Beck

Text, photography and illustrations for The Best of Readers Digest are based on articles previously published in Readers Digest magazine (rd.com).

Before there was a magazine, there were stacks of three-by-five-inch slips of paper onto which Readers Digest founder DeWitt Wallace would jot notes and quotes from everything he read. After he returned from serving in World War I, Wallace decided to share his condensed versions of articles. He and his wife, Lila Acheson Wallace, worked together on the first issue of Readers Digest, published in February 1922. It contained 33 articles, all condensed from other publications, and sold for $3 a year through direct mail subscriptions.

Since then, Readers Digest has grown through the decades, showcasing original stories from then-emerging writers, such as James Michener and Mary Roach; influencing public health campaigns including those against tobacco and drunk driving; and curating the best articles from other magazines around the country and the world. The first foreign edition of the magazine was launched in 1938; it is now available in more than 43 countries and 19 languages, and continues to bring readers stories that inform, inspire and entertain.

Four million reprints of this storywhich described in graphic detail the preventable carnage of a car wreckwere handed out with license plates at motor vehicle departments around the country.

But its influence reaches beyond the magazine. Readers Digest was instrumental in supporting the research that went into two enormously influential and successful books: Cornelius Ryans The Longest Day, a journalistic account of D-Day, published in 1959, and Alex Haleys Roots, a novel about a young slave and his descendents, published in 1976. Since 1950, Readers Digest has also been publishing condensed versions of popular books. And nonprofit organizations founded by the Wallaces support literacy and art.

As we set out to put together a collection to celebrate and honor 100 years of publishing history, we strove to include stories that our readers have enjoyed most over the years: stories that make us laugh until we cry; stories that show ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances; stories that move and inspire us and remind us that we have more in common with each other than not.

Along with these curated stories, Readers Digest has nurtured several beloved columns, including Laughter, the Best Medicine, Quotable Quotes and Your True Stories, and this material has been incorporated here as well. Since publishing its first two-color illustration in 1939, the magazine has also featured many artists and photographers. In this volume youll find selections from C.F. Payne, who drew an exclusive series of illustrations for Readers Digests back covers; Glenn Glasser, who documented some of the unique Faces of America; and many others.

In this popular health series, which ran from 1967 to 1990, readers heard detailed accounts from 36 body parts of Joe and his female counterpart, Jane.

We know youll be moved by the story of the prospector who earns a trapped wolfs trust in order to save her pups from starvation and release her from a hunters snare; you might laugh unexpectedly at a comedy writers last moments with her dying father when, true to form, he makes sure to remind her and her siblings of joy, even in his passing; and your heart will race when a high school principal puts his life on the line to stop a school shooter from inflicting more harm. In addition to these stories, weve also included award-winning photographs that will take your breath away, make you think and feel, and expose you to a world beyond your own.

Originally reprinted from Guideposts in 1983, this timeless story about an acquaintance who knows just how to help someone in mourning was reprinted again in 2017 and went viral on rd.com.

We hope that as you read through this collection, youll feel a sense of connection in being part of the Readers Digest legacy. After all, it is the readers who have inspired us for over 100 years to find the best stories, jokes, cartoons and images. Enjoy this volume that highlights the best of the best, as we look forward to bringing you powerful, thought-provoking and entertaining stories for another 100 years.

The Editors of Readers Digest

When Does Education Stop?

by James A. Michener

It doesnt. A noted author offers convincing evidence that to learn is to live.

T he war had passed us by on Guadalcanal in 1945, and we could see certain victory ahead. Relieved of pressure, our top officers in the South Pacific Force could have been excused if they loafed, but the ones I knew well in those days used their free time to educate themselves in new fields. One carrier admiral studied everything he could get on tank warfare. The head of our outfit, Vice Admiral William Lowndes Calhoun, spent six hours a day learning French.

I asked him about it. Admiral, whats this big deal with French?

How do I know where Ill be sent when the wars over? he replied.

A few nights later I happened to participate in an officers study group. As we were breaking up, the leader asked me, By the way, Michener, what are you studying? The question stunned me, for I had been studying exactly nothing.

As I walked back to my quarters, the challenge implicit in his probably idle question touched in me a profound response, and that very night I started work on something that I had been toying with for months. In a lantern-lit, mosquito-filled tin shack, I began writing