Norman Cousins (June
24, 1915 – November 30, 1990) was a prominent political
journalist, author, professor, and world peace advocate.
Cousins was born in
Union City, New Jersey. At age 11, he was misdiagnosed with
tuberculosis and placed in a sanatorium. Despite this, he was an
athletic youth, and he claimed that as a young boy, he had “set
out to discover exuberance.”
After graduating
from Union Hill High School, he received a Bachelor’s degree from
Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City.
He joined the staff
of the New York Evening Post (now the New York Post)
in 1934, and in 1935, he was hired by Current History as a
book critic. He would later ascend to the position of managing
editor. He would also befriend the staff of the Saturday Review
of Literature (later renamed Saturday Review), which had
its offices in the same building. He would later join the staff of
that publication as well by 1940. He was named editor-in-chief in
1942, a position he would hold until 1972. Under his direction,
circulation of the publication would increase from 20,000 to
650,000.
Cousins’
philosophy toward his work was exemplified by his instructions to
his staff, “not just to appraise literature, but to try to serve
it, nurture it, safeguard it.” Cousins believed that “There is a
need for writers who can restore to writing its powerful tradition
of leadership in crisis.
Politically,
Cousins was a tireless advocate of liberal causes, such as nuclear
disarmament and world peace, which he promoted through his writings
in Saturday Review. In a 1984 forum at the University of
California, Berkeley entitled “Quest for Peace,” Cousins
recalled the long editorial he wrote on August 6, 1945, the day the
United States dropped the bomb in Hiroshima. Titled “The Modern
Man is Obsolete,” Cousins, who stated that he felt “the deepest
guilt” over the bomb’s use on human beings, discussed in the
editorial the social and political implications of the atomic bomb
and atomic energy. He rushed to get it published the next day in the
Review, and the response was considerable, as it was
reprinted in newspapers around the country, and enlarged into a book
that was reprinted in different languages.
Cousins also wrote
a collection of non-fiction books on the same subjects, such as the
1953 Who Speaks for Man? , which advocated a World Federation
and nuclear disarmament. He also served as president of the World
Federalist Association and chairman of the Committee for Sane
Nuclear Policy, which in the 1950s, warned that the world was bound
for a nuclear holocaust if the threat of the nuclear arms race was
not stopped. Cousins became an unofficial ambassador in the 1960s,
and his facilitating communication between the Holy See, the Kremlin
and the White House helped lead to the Soviet-American test ban
treaty, for which he was thanked by President John F. Kennedy and
Pope John XXIII, the latter of which awarded him his personal
medallion. Cousins was also awarded the Eleanor Roosevelt Peace
Award in 1963, the Family Man of the Year Award in 1968, and the
United Nations Peace Medal in 1971. His proudest moment by his own
reckoning, however, was when Albert Einstein called him to Princeton
University to discuss issues of nuclear disarmament and world
federalism.
Cousins also served
as Adjunct Professor of Medical Humanities for the School of
Medicine at the University of California, where he did research on
the biochemistry of human emotions, which he long-believed were the
key to human beings’ success in fighting illness. It was a belief
he maintained even as he battled heart disease, which he fought both
by taking massive doses of Vitamin C and, according to him, by
training himself to laugh. He wrote a collection of best-selling
non-fiction books on illness and healing, as well as a 1980
autobiographical memoir, Human Options: An Autobiographical
Notebook. Late in life Cousins was diagnosed with a form of
arthritis then called Marie-Strumpell's disease (Ankylosing
Spondylitis--although this diagnosis is currently in doubt and it
has been suggested that Cosuins may actually have had Reactive
arthritis). His struggle with this illness is detailed in the book
and movie Anatomy of an Illness.
Told that he had
little chance of surviving, Cousins developed a recovery program
incorporating megadoses of Vitamin C, along with a positive
attitude, love, faith, hope, and laughter induced by Marx Brothers
films. "I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine
belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least
two hours of pain-free sleep," he reported. "When the
pain-killing effect of the laughter wore off, we would switch on the
motion picture projector again and not infrequently, it would lead
to another pain-free interval."
Cousins received
the Albert Schweitzer Prize in 1990. He died of heart failure on
November 30, 1990 in Los Angeles, California, having survived years
longer than his doctors predicted: 10 years after his first heart
attack, 16 years after his collagen illness, and 26 years after his
doctors first diagnosed his heart disease.
He and his wife
Ellen raised five daughters.
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