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Genius in Disguise: Harold Ross of The New Yorker
This hugely entertaining biography of the founding editor of The New Yorker tells the diverting story of how Ross and the brilliant group of people he gathered around him--including James Thurber, Charles Addams, Dorothy Parker, and John O'Hara--devised the formula that made the magazine such a popular and critical success. Photos & cartoons.
497 pages, Hardcover
First published March 7, 1995
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March 1, 2018
Ross’s New Yorker changed the face of contemporary fiction, perfected a new form of literary journalism … and became synonymous with sophistication. It replaced convention with innovation.
I found this book to be an enjoyable biography of Harold Ross, the founder and long-time (in effect) editor-in-chief of The New Yorker (TNY) magazine.
Ross was born in Aspen Colorado in 1892 (a silver mining town in those days), to a Scottish-Irish immigrant father (from Ulster) and a “prairie schoolmarm” mother of New England stock, who was born in Massachusetts and raised in McPherson Kansas.
The first part of the book (Child of the West, 1892-1924) deals with Ross’s early years in Colorado, his start of wanderlust in 1910, when he boarded a train headed west to California, his beginnings of a career as a newspaper reporter, his movement from the West Coast to the East (first Georgia, then the Big City – New York) his significant work for the Stars and Stripes, a weekly military publication begun in early 1918 for reading by the American troops in Europe. Of this latter post, Kunkel writes
The second section of the book (A Magazine of Sophistication: 1925-1938) documents the early years of The New Yorker. Tough going at first, maybe that’s typical of a start-up magazine.
The concluding section (Season in the Sun: 1939-1951) documents the years during which TNY rode into the limelight, including the war and post-war years.
Harold Ross Culver Pictures (from the book)
In this portrait from the early forties, Ross’s thin smile masks the wartime stress. “The magazine is running us,” he told Katherine White, “we aren’t running it.”
During the war, the best THY pieces, says Kunkel, “had the full-bodied, three-dimensional quality of literature, with none of the stale whiff of accounts reconstructed from military briefings.” Included among these were John Lardner’s narrative of going ashore with the Allies at Anzio; A.J. Liebling’s “Cross-Channel Trip”, a “masterly three-part account of the invasion of Normandy”; and one of the most remarkable magazine publishing events ever, the issue of August 31, 1946, which contained a usual summer cover, some ads, the Goings On calendar – and John Hersey’s 31,347 word “Hiroshima”.
John Hersey UPI/Bettmann (from the book)
Harold Ross died in December 1951 during an operation to remove one of his lungs. He was 59.
His magazine lives on. Now published 47 times per year, next month will be its 91st birthday. In case you wonder, I'm a big fan.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: 2015 on Goodreads
Random review: The Pagan Book of Days
Next review: Much Ado About Nothing
Previous library review: Arguably essays by Hitchens
Next library review: World Treasury of Science Fiction
I found this book to be an enjoyable biography of Harold Ross, the founder and long-time (in effect) editor-in-chief of The New Yorker (TNY) magazine.
Ross was born in Aspen Colorado in 1892 (a silver mining town in those days), to a Scottish-Irish immigrant father (from Ulster) and a “prairie schoolmarm” mother of New England stock, who was born in Massachusetts and raised in McPherson Kansas.
The first part of the book (Child of the West, 1892-1924) deals with Ross’s early years in Colorado, his start of wanderlust in 1910, when he boarded a train headed west to California, his beginnings of a career as a newspaper reporter, his movement from the West Coast to the East (first Georgia, then the Big City – New York) his significant work for the Stars and Stripes, a weekly military publication begun in early 1918 for reading by the American troops in Europe. Of this latter post, Kunkel writes
More than anyone else on staff, Ross had an uncanny sense of what enlisted men would and wouldn’t read. It was the commoner’s touch, which sprang from his own background as well as his multifarious professional experience. He himself recognized this singular capability and asserted it from the beginning.The section concludes with Ross returning to New York after the war, “the most widely known private in the American Expeditionary Forces”, and “New Yorker”, a chapter about Ross’s first marriage, and the years 1923 and 1924 in which he hatched the idea for his new magazine, found funding for it, and in the fall of 1924 produced the prospectus for the magazine, reproduced in an Appendix, and called by Kunkel “the most famous magazine prospectus in history”.
The second section of the book (A Magazine of Sophistication: 1925-1938) documents the early years of The New Yorker. Tough going at first, maybe that’s typical of a start-up magazine.
The concluding section (Season in the Sun: 1939-1951) documents the years during which TNY rode into the limelight, including the war and post-war years.
Harold Ross Culver Pictures (from the book)
In this portrait from the early forties, Ross’s thin smile masks the wartime stress. “The magazine is running us,” he told Katherine White, “we aren’t running it.”
During the war, the best THY pieces, says Kunkel, “had the full-bodied, three-dimensional quality of literature, with none of the stale whiff of accounts reconstructed from military briefings.” Included among these were John Lardner’s narrative of going ashore with the Allies at Anzio; A.J. Liebling’s “Cross-Channel Trip”, a “masterly three-part account of the invasion of Normandy”; and one of the most remarkable magazine publishing events ever, the issue of August 31, 1946, which contained a usual summer cover, some ads, the Goings On calendar – and John Hersey’s 31,347 word “Hiroshima”.
”Hiroshima” was a sensation. The issue sold out almost immediately, copies being scalped for fifteen and twenty dollars. Broadcasters read from it over the radio. Demand to reprint it came in from newspapers and syndicates around the world (proceeds were donated to Red Cross relief). An instant book was made and snapped up by the Book-of-the-Month Club … Albert Einstein asked for one thousand copies of the issue.
John Hersey UPI/Bettmann (from the book)
Harold Ross died in December 1951 during an operation to remove one of his lungs. He was 59.
His magazine lives on. Now published 47 times per year, next month will be its 91st birthday. In case you wonder, I'm a big fan.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: 2015 on Goodreads
Random review: The Pagan Book of Days
Next review: Much Ado About Nothing
Previous library review: Arguably essays by Hitchens
Next library review: World Treasury of Science Fiction
March 12, 2009
Harold Ross, the famous founder and editor of The New Yorker, was born in Aspen, Colorado. His parents moved as the silver industry failed, eventually winding up in Salt Lake City. Ross was a precocious youngster who read voraciously, and his mother taught him that structure in grammar was important to clarity of communication. The writing addiction hit him first on his school paper and soon his life was constant peregrination, not uncommon for newspapermen in the early twentieth century. Rarely did he stay more than a few weeks in one place. He loved the romance and adventure of the police beat. In California, he became editor of the Marysville Appeal after the sudden death of the editor, but before long he was off to Panama, then New Orleans. The western character never left Ross. His personal taste in reading ran to dictionaries and true-detective magazines. Despite his coarseness and profaneness, "he had a near perfect ear for language" and did not suffer fools lightly. "We don't run our magazine for dumbbells," he was heard to holler on several occasions.
He enlisted during WW I and was assigned to an engineering battalion. The work was cold, wet, and miserable, and when Pershing approved the idea for what was to become Stars and Stripes, Ross applied for transfer. When the orders were not forthcoming, he went AWOL, traveled to Paris and showed up at the newspaper's door. They were so short-handed that his transfer was immediately approved. He became part of an editorial staff that made the paper a rousing success. Immune to the silliness of rank, they always had the enlisted man's welfare at heart, and that was one reason for the paper's immense success.
Harold Ross was a man of contradictions. His personal reading ran to dictionaries of modern usage and detective stories. He was raised in the west and enjoyed profanity but his magazine came to symbolize urbanity and sophistication. He had a gifted ear for language and was a great editor. The New Yorker became a mission for Ross that reflected his keen curiosity and droll humor (although the magazine's first art editor, Rea Irvin , was substantially responsible for developing the humorous art that was to become almost a trademark of the magazine). The story forms that would later find a place in The New Yorker all could be found in the Rossedited Stars and Stripes. It, too, was a weekly and so had to find some way to distinguish itself from the rest of the hard-news-oriented papers. The premium was placed on storytelling, i.e., behindthe scenes, personality, and feature pieces. The twenties were a good time to begin a national magazine (despite Ross's mission to make it metropolitan). Magazines were the true national medium.
Radio was still in its infancy and television was still a gleam in the engineers' eyes. Ross's vision was to realize that New York merchants might pay more to reach a New York audience. Why advertise to the "old lady in Dubuque." His experience at various magazines in the United States had also revealed how the business side could influence the editorial side. He wanted his magazine to be completely independent, with a complete wall between the business and editorial sides. Ross could be such a bizarre combination of debonair, ladies' man and hick. He was immensely appealing to women, liked them the magazine never would have been a success without the likes of Dorothy Parker and Janet Flanner, but had curiously Victorian attitudes toward them. He had three wives, all of whom married again successfully after they divorced him.
Once, when St. Clair McKelway stopped by his office to discuss an upcoming story, he noticed that Ross was fidgeting in his chair and asked what was the matter. "They ought to have covers, wooden or metal covers of some kind around the goddamn radiators." McKelway was confused as there were no radiators in their building, so he asked what Ross meant. Here? "Good God, no, said Ross. "At the Ritz. I had this dame in bed and it got cold so I got up and walked over to the window to shut it. I had to lean over to shut the window and my you-knowwhat dangled down on this red-hot radiator. Feels like a second degree burn, for Christ's sake." During the Depression, The New Yorker suffered little. Ross had always seen it as a humor magazine, and since all his money was tied up in the magazine, he lost no money during the crash. They were severely criticized years later for their distinctly apolitical stance, but that had always been the policy. They had no position on anything.
Raoul Fleischmann, the publisher, of yeast fame, had fronted a huge amount of money to get the magazine going. He ran the business side while Ross handled the editorial. The two entities remained completely distinct, even having separate floors or buildings. There was great antipathy between the two personalities that anecdotally stemmed from a business decision of Fleischmann's during the Depression. He was loath to authorize dividends, wanting to build up a cash reserve. This meant that Ross had to cough up increasingly large sums under the terms of his divorce settlement with Jane Grant that stipulated she would get the income from her share of stock and that Ross would make up the difference between her stock income and $10,000. He never forgave Fleischmann for what was essentially a sound business decision. Separating the two sides of the business meant that editorial was never influenced by business interests, and people still marvel at the freedom Fleischmann gave Ross. Kunkel has a wonderful definition of what makes a good editor or good leader for that matter. "In the narrowest sense, editors lay twitchy hands on someone else's work, fixing it, patching it, polishing it, and generally trying to keep it -upright. In the broadest sense, however, they set the agenda, standards, and tone for a publication. They hire and fire; they pick stories, and the writers to go with them. They must have enough ego to confidently steer talented people, but the will to subordinate it. They must assuage prima donnas, compel laggards, and sober up drunks. Equal parts shaman and showman, they must have an unwavering vision for their publication, convey it to a staff, and then sell it to the great yawning public. For these reasons and many others, editing a magazine is not a job suited to the faint or uncertain, and it is enormously difficult to do well. . . .[Ross:] also believed that talent attracts talent. You get talent if you publish a good magazine, you get tripe if you publish tripe. . . . And talent, the editor understood, was the key. He never stopped searching for it or, once he had found it, nurturing it. Ross had a respect for creative people that bordered on veneration; everyone else, himself included, was meant to be in their service." "Ross's New Yorker changed the face of contemporary fiction, perfected a new form of literary journalism, established the standards for humor and comic art, swayed the cultural and social agendas, and became synonymous with sophistication. It replaced convention with innovation." Nothing symbolized this more than his publication of John Hersey's "Hiroshima" as one complete article. Originally intended to be serialized, Ross and the editors realized that the obligatory short recapitulations required at the beginning of each part of the serial would detract from the content, so, breaking with all tradition, it was published complete in one issue to the exclusion of everything else. All the regular features and cartoons were dropped. The issue became an instant sensation and was said many years later to have been the most famous and important magazine piece ever published.
By the fifties, The New Yorker had become mandatory reading, a status symbol, a cultural beacon. Much of its reputation was due, in part, to critics like Wolcott Gibbs, whose acerbic reviews often made him anathema to theatres, critics, and actors. His considerable influence resulted from his high standing among fellow critics who, even though few liked him personally, knew he was "usually right, and that he didn't settle for dreck. He helped to keep them honest." It was a metaphor for the entire magazine. This is a wonderful biography, filled with delightful anecdotes about a fascinating man and time.
He enlisted during WW I and was assigned to an engineering battalion. The work was cold, wet, and miserable, and when Pershing approved the idea for what was to become Stars and Stripes, Ross applied for transfer. When the orders were not forthcoming, he went AWOL, traveled to Paris and showed up at the newspaper's door. They were so short-handed that his transfer was immediately approved. He became part of an editorial staff that made the paper a rousing success. Immune to the silliness of rank, they always had the enlisted man's welfare at heart, and that was one reason for the paper's immense success.
Harold Ross was a man of contradictions. His personal reading ran to dictionaries of modern usage and detective stories. He was raised in the west and enjoyed profanity but his magazine came to symbolize urbanity and sophistication. He had a gifted ear for language and was a great editor. The New Yorker became a mission for Ross that reflected his keen curiosity and droll humor (although the magazine's first art editor, Rea Irvin , was substantially responsible for developing the humorous art that was to become almost a trademark of the magazine). The story forms that would later find a place in The New Yorker all could be found in the Rossedited Stars and Stripes. It, too, was a weekly and so had to find some way to distinguish itself from the rest of the hard-news-oriented papers. The premium was placed on storytelling, i.e., behindthe scenes, personality, and feature pieces. The twenties were a good time to begin a national magazine (despite Ross's mission to make it metropolitan). Magazines were the true national medium.
Radio was still in its infancy and television was still a gleam in the engineers' eyes. Ross's vision was to realize that New York merchants might pay more to reach a New York audience. Why advertise to the "old lady in Dubuque." His experience at various magazines in the United States had also revealed how the business side could influence the editorial side. He wanted his magazine to be completely independent, with a complete wall between the business and editorial sides. Ross could be such a bizarre combination of debonair, ladies' man and hick. He was immensely appealing to women, liked them the magazine never would have been a success without the likes of Dorothy Parker and Janet Flanner, but had curiously Victorian attitudes toward them. He had three wives, all of whom married again successfully after they divorced him.
Once, when St. Clair McKelway stopped by his office to discuss an upcoming story, he noticed that Ross was fidgeting in his chair and asked what was the matter. "They ought to have covers, wooden or metal covers of some kind around the goddamn radiators." McKelway was confused as there were no radiators in their building, so he asked what Ross meant. Here? "Good God, no, said Ross. "At the Ritz. I had this dame in bed and it got cold so I got up and walked over to the window to shut it. I had to lean over to shut the window and my you-knowwhat dangled down on this red-hot radiator. Feels like a second degree burn, for Christ's sake." During the Depression, The New Yorker suffered little. Ross had always seen it as a humor magazine, and since all his money was tied up in the magazine, he lost no money during the crash. They were severely criticized years later for their distinctly apolitical stance, but that had always been the policy. They had no position on anything.
Raoul Fleischmann, the publisher, of yeast fame, had fronted a huge amount of money to get the magazine going. He ran the business side while Ross handled the editorial. The two entities remained completely distinct, even having separate floors or buildings. There was great antipathy between the two personalities that anecdotally stemmed from a business decision of Fleischmann's during the Depression. He was loath to authorize dividends, wanting to build up a cash reserve. This meant that Ross had to cough up increasingly large sums under the terms of his divorce settlement with Jane Grant that stipulated she would get the income from her share of stock and that Ross would make up the difference between her stock income and $10,000. He never forgave Fleischmann for what was essentially a sound business decision. Separating the two sides of the business meant that editorial was never influenced by business interests, and people still marvel at the freedom Fleischmann gave Ross. Kunkel has a wonderful definition of what makes a good editor or good leader for that matter. "In the narrowest sense, editors lay twitchy hands on someone else's work, fixing it, patching it, polishing it, and generally trying to keep it -upright. In the broadest sense, however, they set the agenda, standards, and tone for a publication. They hire and fire; they pick stories, and the writers to go with them. They must have enough ego to confidently steer talented people, but the will to subordinate it. They must assuage prima donnas, compel laggards, and sober up drunks. Equal parts shaman and showman, they must have an unwavering vision for their publication, convey it to a staff, and then sell it to the great yawning public. For these reasons and many others, editing a magazine is not a job suited to the faint or uncertain, and it is enormously difficult to do well. . . .[Ross:] also believed that talent attracts talent. You get talent if you publish a good magazine, you get tripe if you publish tripe. . . . And talent, the editor understood, was the key. He never stopped searching for it or, once he had found it, nurturing it. Ross had a respect for creative people that bordered on veneration; everyone else, himself included, was meant to be in their service." "Ross's New Yorker changed the face of contemporary fiction, perfected a new form of literary journalism, established the standards for humor and comic art, swayed the cultural and social agendas, and became synonymous with sophistication. It replaced convention with innovation." Nothing symbolized this more than his publication of John Hersey's "Hiroshima" as one complete article. Originally intended to be serialized, Ross and the editors realized that the obligatory short recapitulations required at the beginning of each part of the serial would detract from the content, so, breaking with all tradition, it was published complete in one issue to the exclusion of everything else. All the regular features and cartoons were dropped. The issue became an instant sensation and was said many years later to have been the most famous and important magazine piece ever published.
By the fifties, The New Yorker had become mandatory reading, a status symbol, a cultural beacon. Much of its reputation was due, in part, to critics like Wolcott Gibbs, whose acerbic reviews often made him anathema to theatres, critics, and actors. His considerable influence resulted from his high standing among fellow critics who, even though few liked him personally, knew he was "usually right, and that he didn't settle for dreck. He helped to keep them honest." It was a metaphor for the entire magazine. This is a wonderful biography, filled with delightful anecdotes about a fascinating man and time.
September 1, 2017
Great book about first 25 years of New Yorker and its founding editor Harold Ross. I have roughly 20 pages of notes to recur and work with.
January 27, 2019
New Yorker magazine has been part of the American intellectual landscape for nearly a century. Kunkel has written a biography of Harold Ross, the founding editor. It is less a personal biography of the man than the first 25 years of the New Yorker. There is a lot to dish, and Kunkel obviously enjoys the anecdotes he has assembled about Ross, the artists, writers --- who included Dorothy Parker, James Thurber, Alexander Woollcott, Frank Sullivan, Helen Hokinson, Peter Arno and scads of others --- and the editors who kept the magazine's standards high to an extent that has been unrivaled in American journalistic history. Ross was responsible for a great deal of the initial push for excellence, although Kunkel is quick to note contributions from the aforementioned editors, and even Raoul Fleischmann, the "publisher" who bankrolled the New Yorker. He allowed Ross extraordinary latitude, and despite a problematic personal relationship with his junior partner, rigorously observed the demarcation between the business side of the magazine and its creative staff. All of the Ross/Fleischmann clashes are juicily recorded in this book, as is the feud between Ross and gossip columnist Walter Winchell, who was furious at a profile the magazine ran on him.
Ross was opaque to most people during his lifetime, and while he had some close friends among the contributors and staff, none were spared his acerbic temperament. As an editor, he was well-nigh perfect. Kunkel produces the body of one story he edited, and also the notes with which Ross covered the manuscript. They are fantastic, and it is no wonder that writers rarely complained about reworking their material for him; he was an editor who worshiped good writing, and there was general recognition that the point of his criticism was always a better article. He was also a polymath. Despite an inferior education that ended early when he became an itinerant reporter, Ross wound up being mildly expert in so many things that it is stunning. His only "specialty" may have been grammar, about which Ross could be extremely persnickety. But he was equally at home editing a profile or a political article, although he turned over things like creative writing and music to editors who were better able to deal with those areas. He had started as a reporter, and his meat and drink were the factual articles. In time, the profiles became a pillar of the magazine, as did investigative journalism. Current writers like Ronan Farrow are the latest in a long line of important New Yorker contributors to the cultural and political discourse of the nation.
What started as a magazine that wasn't going to be written for the "little old lady from Dubuque" according to its prospectus had, by the time Ross died in its 26th year of publication, turned into one of the leading critical voices not only in the United States, but the world.
That being said . . . this is a specialized book (although the writing itself is entertaining; Kunkel frequently gives the impression that he is a kid in a candy store) that is only really interesting if you read the New Yorker. If you are, go for it!
Ross was opaque to most people during his lifetime, and while he had some close friends among the contributors and staff, none were spared his acerbic temperament. As an editor, he was well-nigh perfect. Kunkel produces the body of one story he edited, and also the notes with which Ross covered the manuscript. They are fantastic, and it is no wonder that writers rarely complained about reworking their material for him; he was an editor who worshiped good writing, and there was general recognition that the point of his criticism was always a better article. He was also a polymath. Despite an inferior education that ended early when he became an itinerant reporter, Ross wound up being mildly expert in so many things that it is stunning. His only "specialty" may have been grammar, about which Ross could be extremely persnickety. But he was equally at home editing a profile or a political article, although he turned over things like creative writing and music to editors who were better able to deal with those areas. He had started as a reporter, and his meat and drink were the factual articles. In time, the profiles became a pillar of the magazine, as did investigative journalism. Current writers like Ronan Farrow are the latest in a long line of important New Yorker contributors to the cultural and political discourse of the nation.
What started as a magazine that wasn't going to be written for the "little old lady from Dubuque" according to its prospectus had, by the time Ross died in its 26th year of publication, turned into one of the leading critical voices not only in the United States, but the world.
That being said . . . this is a specialized book (although the writing itself is entertaining; Kunkel frequently gives the impression that he is a kid in a candy store) that is only really interesting if you read the New Yorker. If you are, go for it!
March 7, 2007
This is a biography of The New Yorker magazine's founder and first editor, Harold Ross. It's a great book that paints a well-researched and informative picture of an eccentric guy with a sort of famous demeanor.
December 12, 2007
Great biography of the man who created The New Yorker.
April 23, 2024
Enjoyed all 454 pages. Why? Because I was interested in knowing how a South westerner with a tenth grade education could champion urbane The New Yorker magazine? Because I wanted to peek at life possibly enjoyed in miniscule, by my grandparents?
A few quotes stand out. "his fundamental conviction that his job was to let intelligent people write about what interested them in a clear, entertaining way". And, "The New Yorker had come to represent less a city than a certain cosmopolitan state of mind."
A few quotes stand out. "his fundamental conviction that his job was to let intelligent people write about what interested them in a clear, entertaining way". And, "The New Yorker had come to represent less a city than a certain cosmopolitan state of mind."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 15, 2017
Harold Ross. The name is unknown to most people, but to those of us in the editing biz, he's the face on our Mount Rushmore. Ross is the editor we wish we had as writers. Ross is the editor we want to be as editors.
Harold Ross made history in the journalism field twice. He's most famous as the founder and editor of the New Yorker magazine. But as a doughboy in World War I, he put together a camp newsletter that he built into The Stars and Stripes, the American Soldiers' Newspaper.
Harold Ross made history in the journalism field twice. He's most famous as the founder and editor of the New Yorker magazine. But as a doughboy in World War I, he put together a camp newsletter that he built into The Stars and Stripes, the American Soldiers' Newspaper.
June 30, 2018
A thorough biography on a complex man, full of quips, quotes, photos, and illustrations. It covers his life from beginning to end, personal to professional, focusing mostly on the New Yorker. Publication was quite a trial, but also a labor of love.
Well informed, with a friendly slant, and an enjoyable read.
Well informed, with a friendly slant, and an enjoyable read.
January 8, 2022
Well researched and hard to put down. I have the utmost respect for how Ross followed his gut, gave creatives a covetable amount of freedom, and voiced his opinions without caring what others had to say about him.
January 29, 2022
I raised my review to 3 stars from 2. It is not the author’s fault that I have no interest in Harold Ross or the origins of the New Yorker. Kunkel covers every aspect of Ross’s life including details about his friends/coworkers/enemies/wives etc. The last chapters about his death are good. Ross would not approve of the word “good.” LOL
November 3, 2023
90/100
5 stars - 90/100
4 stars - 80/100
3 stars - 70/100
2 stars - 60/100
1 star - 50/10
5 stars - 90/100
4 stars - 80/100
3 stars - 70/100
2 stars - 60/100
1 star - 50/10
July 5, 2021
Wonder!
Loved this insightful, entertaining book of Ross and the New Yorker. The author masterfully captures the man, the people and events that created a great magazine.
Loved this insightful, entertaining book of Ross and the New Yorker. The author masterfully captures the man, the people and events that created a great magazine.
November 15, 2011
The book works as a series of funny and interesting stories about Harold Ross and the New Yorker, but the author, a newspaper writer, has added his own very thoughtful interpretations of how events and social trends changed publishing, readership of magazines, and the very notion of literary celebrity during the 25 years that Ross edited the magazine. The result is a believable explanation of Ross' paradox: how could a small-town westerner with a tenth grade education shape a magazine that, by the 1950's, was widely believed to embody "sophistication?"
September 26, 2014
A fascinating and enjoyable biography of the founder of The New Yorker. I admit I have a love-hate relationship with the magazine but I greatly enjoyed this book. I got to meet the author when this was published--it turns out he lives in my hometown! So maybe there's a small bias but I strongly recommend this.
November 30, 2011
It is not where you begin but where you end that tells the whole story of your life. This book about Harold Ross, the founder of New Yorker is something on those lines. A great read with well researched facts.
February 11, 2009
I wish I was Harold Ross.
July 7, 2011
A fascinating read. Great subject--great writing. Wonderful background on many other personalities of the time as well.
Read
July 3, 2015made me appreciate the New Yorker as the singular magazine it is even more!
November 16, 2016
Very interesting. Could have been 50 pages shorter. And the chronology seems a tad muddled in a few spots.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews