$5 a Pound

Last week Nation's Heritage, the newest, heaviest (more than six pounds), and most expensive ($30 a copy) "magazine" on the market, was unwrapped in Manhattan. It was like an art annual, a camera history, and a college yearbook all rolled into one.

Across the front and back covers was a Grant Wood painting (Stone City), printed in eight colors on linen. Inside were reproductions, many in fine color, of 389 other photographs, paintings, etchings and woodcuts. They covered everything from Thomas Edison to the oil industry, from Yankee clippers to undergraduate life at Princeton. There were no ads, no "think pieces"; there was a bare minimum of text. Explained 30-year-old Editor Robert K. Heimann: "In thumbing through [other magazines] I've often found myself skipping-the solid reading matter . . ." What text there was in Heritage could be skipped also. Example: "A nation's heritage is its people--'the fellers' in for a river swim, a girl waiting for a train . . ."

Heritage had a press run of only 5,000. But 29-year-old Publisher Malcolm Forbes, son of Publisher B. C. Forbes, hoped that his bimonthly magazine would be "visited" by thousands more, at schools, libraries and in reception rooms.

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