From the Publisher

By Robert L. Miller

Manhattan's frantic avenues might seem light-years away from the simple life, but associate editor Janice Castro, who wrote this week's cover story, found early evidence of the back-to-basics trend in her own West Side New York City neighborhood. "Last year my brother Jim came from California on a business trip," she recalls. "On the third day he took me to a cafe he had found near my apartment, a cozy little no-frills place. As we walked in the door, the woman who runs the restaurant greeted him with a big smile, said, 'The usual?' and started making his breakfast!"

Soon Castro noticed other signs of a sea change in the way Americans ate, dressed, worked and treated each other. Her impressions resulted in a lead Business story that appeared in TIME last summer. By then Janice was convinced she had uncovered nothing less than a fundamental shift in the national psyche. Once the cover project was under way, Castro and senior correspondent William McWhirter, a Kansas City boy, interviewed a spectrum of Americans across the country.

Castro's down-to-earth origins helped. Reared on a northern California cattle ranch, Janice studied English literature and city planning at the University of California, Berkeley. She began as a reporter-researcher for TIME in 1973, then became a writer. She eventually joined the Business section and was promoted last year to associate editor. During the past year, Castro has written major stories on the defense industry, the economic devastation of U.S. airlines and the Matsushita buyout of MCA.

When not writing about the feverish world of business, Janice slows down to smell the flowers. She pitches for TIME's championship softball team and rides her mountain bike around Central Park in the mornings. Castro's healthy proclivities are also apparent in her office, which is crammed with thriving plants, Ansel Adams photographs recycled from discarded calendars, baseball trophies and rolls of earth-friendly gift-wrapping paper. Amid the creative clutter on her desk: a bottle of spring water and a Slinky toy. "I use it sometimes to concentrate when I'm writing," Castro explains. "It seems to work. And it's simple."