Avid Reader by Robert Gottlieb

Avid Reader by Robert Gottlieb

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 Carre, 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.

Photograph of Bob Gottlieb (c) by Jill Krementz

Robert Gottlieb has been editor in chief of Simon & Schuster, Alfred A. Knopf, and The New Yorker. He has edited books by such dance luminaries as Margot Fonteyn, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Natalia Makarova, and Lincoln Kirstein. He served for many years on the board of directors of New York City Ballet, working closely with Kirstein and Balanchine, and is the author of George Balanchine: The Ballet Maker. He has been for a decade the dance critic of the New York Observer, and writes frequently for The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. His previously anthology, Reading Jazz, was acclaimed as a unique contribution to the jazz literature, and his Reading Lyrics (edited with Robert Kimball) has become a treasured resource for lovers of American popular song.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781250141057
ISBN 10	1250141052
Title	Avid Reader
Author	Robert Gottlieb
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	St Martin's Press
Year published	2017-09-12
Number of pages	368
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable