Customer Reviews

The Man Time Forgot: A Tale of Genius, Betrayal, and the Creation of Time Magazine

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Isaiah Wilner's new biography, The Man TIME Forgot, does for Time Magazine what Time Magazine did for the news - it is less concerned with "how much it includes between its covers - but in how much it gets off the pages into the minds of its readers." Wilner indeed gets his remarkable story off the pages - and how! Though the conflict and tragedy at the core of the book help make it a page turner, what really marks this book as a must-read are Wilner's stylistic innovations. He fuses the pioneering sumptuousness of Indian author Arundhati Roy's God of Small Things and the irreverence of the 1920's "Timestyle" in a way that transforms what might otherwise be a dry corporate history into a poetic delight. He's bringing the beauty of the Roy style to non-fiction, paying as much attention to the art of writing as to the information he's relating. But the style never obscures the fascinating epic at the core of the book. Instead, the sparkling sentences illuminate how the titanic personal and professional battle between Time's two founders generated a creative tension that was a prerequisite for Time's transformation of American journalism and the 20th century mind.

At the heart of Wilner's book is the story of the nearly-forgotten Britton Hadden, who along with the currently far more famous Henry Luce, founded Time in 1923. Despite Luce's later greater fame, it was Hadden who, as early as his grade school days, dreamt up the idea of a publication that would synthesize the infinite information available in the modern world into a series of pithy and irreverent stories full of personality and pictures. Hadden believed that such a presentation would break through the information overload afflicting Americans as early as the 1870's, and result in a more enlightened nation.

Of course, transforming such an idea into reality wasn't simple, even for two well-born Yale graduates who were members of the Skull and Bones secret society. Launching a national magazine was an expensive venture. Wilner's writing gives Hadden and Luce's hunt for capital the thrill of a hunt for a ticking time bomb. Under the spell of Wilner's prose, I found myself hanging on every meeting with a financier or wealthy family friend - hoping they'd raise the money to keep the magazine going, even though I already knew that they'd succeed.

But as Wilner details in this extraordinarily well-researched volume, Time had to overcome more than the skepticism of aging plutocrats to keep the magazine afloat. The thirty years prior to the founding of Time had seen an explosion of newspapers and magazines, and new media like movies and radio were beginning to compete for the populace's attention. Though nothing quite like Time existed, Hadden and Luce had to convince people who had never heard of their magazine that their product was different and better. They barnstormed the country, giving local chambers of commerce and university students a current events quiz, showing the local bigwigs, in front of their friends and colleagues, how uninformed about the world they were. In doing so, they almost embarrassed their audience into subscribing to Time. Hadden and Luce (and especially the more daring Hadden) also started publishing articles that attacked small and mid-size communities around the country, sometimes for racism, sometimes for corruption, and sometimes for sheer orneriness. When the local papers picked up Time's attacks, Time could count on an explosion of subscriptions, if not affection, in that city.

But the marketing strategy that resonates most is their concerted effort to make sure their readers were intimately engaged in the magazine; seventy years before the blog, Hadden recognized that winning a readership's loyalty would require readers to feel like they could have input into the magazine. Wilner relates how Hadden invented the modern letters-to-the-editor section and how he relished in particular letters attacking Time, figuring they would produce controversy and interest like his attacks on small-minded cities. Hadden even went so far as to invent letter writers when the real correspondents weren't provocative enough. He'd then publish mutual attacks of real and imagined letter-writers for weeks, creating an ongoing controversy within the paper.

Threaded throughout the extraordinary historical analysis of Time and its success is the gripping tale of the Hadden-Luce rivalry. From the moment they first met at the prestigious New England prep school Hotchkiss, Luce was always the leader of the two, and recognized as such. He had charm, wit, and a daring luminosity that drew peers, professors, and hordes of women to him. At Hotchkiss, he served as editor in chief of the school paper, while Luce worked under him. At Yale, he likewise bested the more reserved and conservative Luce in the contest for chairmanship of the Yale Daily News. And after graduation, it was he who invited Luce to join him in creating Time, and who came up with nearly all of the ideas that launched Time, and its sister magazines Life, Sports Illustrated, and many others to awesome success. But when Hadden died at the age of 31 as a result of a bacterial infection likely made worse by years of chain-smoking, heavy drinking, little food and little sleep, Luce betrayed him - largely writing him out of the history of Time magazine, and maneuvering to gain control of his Time stock against the wishes he expressed before his death. For the first time, Wilner exposes the betrayal and the complex emotions that underpinned it - delivering a story that redeems Hadden from his undeserved obscurity, and a style that should inspire readers and writers alike.

I found The Man Time Forgot on a friend's recommendation, picked it up and could not put it down. Read it in less than a day. I think it's going to be a huge success. It's a suspenseful narrative that grabs you from the start--a deathbed scene--and never lets you go right up til the end, a party that has to rival Truman Capote's "black and white party" as the best of the century.

The book revolves around the friendship and rivalry of Briton Hadden and his classmate and business partner, Henry Luce. It turns out that Luce, the most famous publisher of the 20th century and the man who ran Time Inc all those years, actually did not shape the magazine or the company in its founding days. Luce stole the credit from Time's true innovator and genius, Briton Hadden, after his tragic and mysterious death at the age of 31--a stunning decline, death and betrayal that is expounded upon in heartbreaking detail.

The writer apparently got access to a Time Inc. archive and found a private cache of letters and documents that had been concealed for half a century. It has been a long time since I've read a book that has carried me away to a different time and place.

Reading this book, I felt like I could actually see what was going on. The characters came to life on the page and I felt like I was transported back to the Roaring Twenties.

The Man Time Forgot is a true pleasure to read. It's hard to fathom that the history of such an important organization could be lost, but who knew that its rediscovery could be such fun? Wilner has crafted a truly fascinating tale, elucidating the enigmatic relationship between the modern mass media's arguably two most important figures. Well researched and even better written, the anecdotes almost turn the pages themselves and the argument resurrecting the legacy of Briton Hadden is even more compelling.

This book by a first-time author is sensational, I enjoyed every page of it. The story should be read by everyone working in the media today. Stylistically, it is a true innovation. He brings to life every major event in Hadden's life, and gives a fair assessment of Henry Luce's cover-up. I recommend this book to everyone. It was a quick, enjoyable weekend read. Very educational.

Isaiah Wilner has obviously done his homework. A graduate of Yale and a worker himself on the famed Yale Daily News that Hadden and Luce once worked for, Wilner adds credibility to a story that leaves no stone unturned in the amazing record of how Time really began.

Vivid details and interesting quotes fill the pages that tell the complete, complex stories of both Britton Hadden and Henry Luce, from childhood to death. Within their accounts are riveting details about the entire creation of Time magazine, including early workers, tricks of the trade, and an excellent picture of society at the time.

This book is excellent for journalists and entrepreneurs, but it is also a good depiction of how two men chose to spend their lives. Luce lost his passion for God in the midst of Time's reign in his life, and Hadden lost his life by choosing satisfaction in things that ultimately let him down. Personal applications can be drawn from this account as well as business and journalistic lessons.

Well done, Isaiah Wilner. Your time was well-spent.

This is a very well written book. Would highly recommend it. Interesting and informative.