Avid Reader

by Robert Gottlieb

Winner of the Anne M. Sperber Prize A spirited and revealing memoir by the most celebrated editor of his time. After editing The Columbia Review, staging plays at Cambridge, and a stint in the greeting-card department of Macy's, Robert Gottlieb stumbled into a job at Simon and Schuster. By the time he left to run Alfred A. Knopf a dozen years later, he was the editor in chief, having discovered and edited Catch-22 and The American Way of Death, among other bestsellers. At Knopf, Gottlieb edited an astonishing list of authors, including Toni Morrison, John Cheever, Doris Lessing, John le Carré, Michael Crichton, Lauren Bacall, Katharine Graham, Robert Caro, Nora Ephron, and Bill Clinton--not to mention Bruno Bettelheim and Miss Piggy. In Avid Reader, Gottlieb writes with wit and candor about succeeding William Shawn as the editor of The New Yorker, and the challenges and satisfactions of running America's preeminent magazine. Sixty years after joining Simon and Schuster, Gottlieb is still at it--editing, anthologizing, and, to his surprise, writing. But this account of a life founded upon reading is about more than the arc of a singular career--one that also includes a lifelong involvement with the world of dance. It's about transcendent friendships and collaborations, "elective affinities" and family, psychoanalysis and Bakelite purses, the alchemical relationship between writer and editor, the glory days of publishing, and--always--the sheer exhilaration of work.

Unknown Binding

About the author

Robert Gottlieb is Professor Emeritus of Urban and Environmental Policy and the Founder and Former Director of the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College. He is the author and co-author of fourteen books, including his most recent book, Care-Centered Politics: From the Home to the Planet. He is the editor of two MIT Press series, "Urban and Industrial Environments" and “Food, Health, and Environment” and the recipient of numerous prizes for his contributions to the fields of urban planning, environmental studies, environmental history, food studies, and urban policy, including the Carey McWilliams Lifetime Achievement Award from the California Studies Association. A long time environmental and social justice activist, Bob has been engaged in researching, writing, and participating in social movements for nearly 60 years.