The 40s

Starred review from April 15, 2014
Make room on the bookshelf. The New Yorker's look at 1940s history, culture, literature and civilization is a book to be read, reread and savored. Divided into seven sections--The War, American Scenes, Postwar, Character Studies, The Critics, Poetry and Fiction--this book shows how founder Harold Ross (1892-1951) could single out the most important aspects of history and culture--and not just of New York, but of the country. As a further bonus, each of the sections features an introduction from a contemporary writer; these include George Packer, Zadie Smith, Susan Orlean, David Denby and Louis Menand. After the war, the magazine, toning down its New York-centric stance, experienced a journalistic awakening. In this book, the editors begin each section with a short explanation of the genre followed by "Notes and Comments" by the eternally delightful personification of the New Yorker, E.B. White. Readers are certain to enjoy the beautiful writing, clever thinking and insightful thoughts across a vast range of topics. To choose an article, poem or short story from this great wealth of writing is beyond difficult: There is Lillian Ross' indictment of the House Un-American Activities Committee; Joseph Mitchell's article on McSorley's Old Ale house, the oldest Irish tavern in New York City; Richard O. Boyer's profile of Duke Ellington, who took jazz from New Orleans bawdy houses to Paris and beyond; and E.J. Kahn's hagiographic profile of the widowed Eleanor Roosevelt. Don't look for cartoons--they've had enough coffee-table books of their own; this is the soul of the New Yorker. An abbreviated list of the contributors includes such luminaries as Edmund Wilson, Rebecca West, A.J. Liebling, George Orwell, W.H. Auden, John Hersey, Langston Hughes, Carson McCullers and William Maxwell. An absolute treat. Hopefully, the New Yorker will continue to publish such anthologies on other decades.

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Starred review from May 15, 2014
This is on its face an anthology of writings from one magazinethe New Yorkerover the course of a single decade. In fact, it is the record of an exceptional magazine fully coming into its own under the editorship of Harold Ross during a crucial decade, constituting a history of a pivotal, war-torn period told through its (artfully selected) pages, an absolutely breathtaking assemblage of some of America's finest and most lasting writing. It includes (for starters) war reportage by A. J. Liebling, Janet Flanner, and, in its powerful entirety, John Hersey's Hiroshima; postwar Europe as seen by Edmund Wilson and Lillian Ross; commentary on the American scene by E. B. White and Joseph Mitchell; portraits of some of the era's most extraordinary individuals by journalists of commensurate stature; criticism, including David Lardner on Casablanca, Wolcott Gibbs on Death of a Salesman, and Lionel Trilling, brilliantly, on Orwell's 1984; poetry by Auden, William Carlos Williams, and Langston Hughes; fiction by Cheever, Nabokov, McCullers, Irwin Shaw, and Shirley Jackson; plus fashion, music, art, and architecture (Lewis Mumford spectacularly wrong about Rockefeller Center). Each section is introduced by one of today's contributors (Zadie Smith on Fiction is particularly good), with the whole introduced by New Yorker editor David Remnick. Time, one supposes, will determine how these new names measure up to their predecessors, but the bar is set impossibly high. This is magnificent stuff, a cornucopia of truly distinguished literature, a near-perfect gift to give and an entirely ideal one to receive.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)