cover image Albert Schweitzer's Mission: Healing and Peace: With Hitherto Unpublished Letters from Schweitzer, Nehru, Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and Kennedy

Albert Schweitzer's Mission: Healing and Peace: With Hitherto Unpublished Letters from Schweitzer, Nehru, Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and Kennedy

Norman Cousins. W. W. Norton & Company, $16.95 (319pp) ISBN 978-0-393-02238-4

Published in 1960, Cousins's memorable Dr. Schweitzer of Lambarene evoked in depth and with deep personal feeling his visit to Schweitzer's famed hospital in the equatorial African jungle. Now, in the wake of his biographical Anatomy of An Illness, Cousins here presents a meaningful portion of that book to make clear and resonant Schweitzer's significance for our time. Additionally, he offers the sum of his correspondence with Schweitzer predating his 1960 visit to Lambarene, up to JFK's 1963 test-ban treaty with Russia. Other letters included are from Eisenhower, Nehru, JFK and Khrushchev, chiefly related to the 80-odd- year-old Schweitzer's driving theme: nuclear disarmament and peace. Historically valuable, sometimes keenly revealing, the letters bring to full term the moving account of life at Lambarene and Schweitzer's vision that Cousins reissues for a new generation. Foreign rihgts: Norton. November 18