Bob Schwartz

If you were reading the TV Guide for the Week of August 26, 1961 you would see two ads from Better Homes and Gardens magazine:

Best Home Ideas of 1961
The editors of Better Homes and Gardens scour the country to give you the best in 1961 house plans and ideas. See them in the September issue.

and

How Your Family Can Fight Communism
Learn what you are battling to save, how you and your children can save it—read the September issue of Better Homes and Gardens.

This is not to say that having a better home and fighting Communism were the only concerns of Americans in August 1961. But they were high on the list.

Does that seem strange more than sixty years later? Is it surprising that the hopes and fears of some—many?—Americans haven’t changed that much, minus the hammer and sickle?

The second ad promises that you will “Learn what you are battling to save” as if maybe readers weren’t sure what they were fighting for. What are you battling to save?