Most of Paris's luxury houses are busy chasing newer, younger, richer customers, but the venerable French luggage maker Goyard's latest project is all about reconnecting with its past. A new store across from the company's flagship on the Rue St.-Honoré in Paris, set to open in June, celebrates some of the company's oldest customers: pets. At the turn-of-the century, the Parisian malletier grabbed medals at the World's Fairs in Paris and London for its handsome designs and supplied English Royals, Sarah Bernhardt and John Rockefeller with trunks.

During the dry deliberations at the annual meeting of the American Newspaper Publishers’ Association in Manhattan fortnight ago, two rival oases competed bitterly for the privilege of refreshing weary delegates. Not far from the door of the Waldorf Astoria’s convention chamber, Scripps-Howard’s Newspaper Enterprise Association lifted a banner to proclaim: “N. E. A.—WITH THE ONE & ONLY MAJOR HOOPLE!” Nearby, N. E. A.’s Hearstian arch-rival shrieked back in big black letters: “KING FEATURES— WITH THE ONE & ONLY GENE AHERN!

After eight years’ work in his home laboratory, an obscure New Jersey chemist last week claimed a grand prize in cigarette research: a filter that removes two-thirds of the tar and nicotine that now drifts past conventional filters, yet does not destroy the tobacco taste. Robert L. Strickman, 56, had impressive backing for his discovery. With full fanfare, it was announced by Columbia University’s president, Grayson Kirk, and Dr. H. Houston Merritt, dean of Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons.

A prequel to one of the great novels of the 20th century, Vasily Grossman’s 1960 book Life and Fate, finally appeared in English this year. Stalingrad is an epic novel, Tolstoyan in its proportions and ambition, about a Russian family’s struggles amid the Nazi march on Stalingrad in 1942. It is not quite as perfect as its sequel but stands out as a work of great immediacy and heart—an ideal historical novel for a new generation of readers.

Profession: Director Biography: One of the most popular, successful, acclaimed and influential directors in film history, Spielberg was one of the founding pioneers of the New Hollywood era of the mid-60s to the late-80s. Spielberg's career was launched in the 1970s with films like "Jaws" (1975) which became the highest-grossing film of all time and set the stage for the modern blockbuster. His following films, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"