Customer Reviews

The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For me, there were no huge revelations in this book but there were many, many instances that supported the general perception I had formed regarding Luce over the years. Much has been written about Henry Luce. Not a warm and fuzzy type, he avoided intimacies and had few friends. While he wanted to be recognized as a major force in the publishing world and was very successful in that respect, he had an innate sense of what his burgeoning audience wanted. He was reclusive and secretive to certain respect and seemed like an odd choice as a life partner. His second wife Claire Booth Luce seemed to be as ambitious as Luce but far more social; she seemed to be a good choice given CBL's drive and goals and Luce's level of influence. In many ways, it seemed as though their marriage might have been likened to a good business deal. As a parent, he was not of the hands on variety. As with most things, he delegated responsibilities freely when it came to familial duties and parenting.
For an essentially reclusive personality such as Luce, it was interesting just how much information was out there and pieced together to present a complete and fairly consistent picture. What I found of particular interest was Luce's relationship with Time co-founder Britton Haddon. Ostensibly, Haddon was Luce's one and only true friend, but even that friendship dissolved by the time of Haddon's early death in 1929. From that point on, Luce did everything in his power to remove Haddon's name from the history of TIME. It was emotion coldness of this type that ran through this book in relation to Luce and the way he interacted with people. Even his affairs were seemingly bereft of warmth or true intimacy.
What punctuated this book as an exceptionally good bio the level of detail which was dispersed throughout. Supporting this tapestry was solid footnoting and indexing. I often found myself referring to earlier statements made and this was invaluable as I verified information.
While I can't say I liked Luce or had a lot of empathy for this son of missionaries to China, I found his meteoric and sustained success nothing less than fascinating. This book is especially interesting because Luce's career and publications present a detailed picture of 20th century print journalism.

It's time to stand up against the 1-star "reviews" of books that are solely based on the Kindle price. This is an excellent work by one of our leading historians. It deserves reviews based on the content. The 1-star "reviews" are misdirected, mistaken, and damaging.

* First, Amazon sets the price of Kindle editions, not the publisher or author. Amazon doesn't care about your 1-star "review"; the author does. And the author has absolutely no power over price, yet these "reviews" are punishing the author, and the author alone.
* Second, when you have not read the book, yet post a 1-star "review," you mislead other buyers into thinking the content of the book is of low quality. Other consumers can see the price and decide for themselves; what they want is input from people who have read the content.
* Third, the claims that e-books are dramatically cheaper to produce are factually false. Printing and distribution represent only about ten to twelve percent of the cost of each book. That's a buck or two, not half the price of the hardcover. The cost of making of a book is not, in fact, largely in the physical production. There's the author's advance and royalties, the cost of editing, copy editing, design, promotion, and countless other ways in which publishers bring books to the public. These comprise the largest share of the cost. Books like this one take years of full-time research and writing. That's what the book's price represents, not the paper.
* If you want to drive down the book's price, then start buying hundreds of thousands more. The fixed costs of acquisition, editing, etc. must be spread out among the units sold. E-books are currently cannibalizing the market, not making it larger. Therefore, the cost (and price) per book will remain abut the same, e-book or hardcover. That's why bestsellers are cheaper than obscure books. It's not because they use less paper! It's because they sell vastly more units, and so the costs can be thinned out, spread among more books sold--and the price goes down.
* Amazon actually takes a loss on Kindle books priced at $9.99. Why do it? To dominate the e-book market, and encourage sales of the Kindle device.

In other words, these 1-star "reviews" about the Kindle price punish an author for Amazon's decision to not take a loss on this particular book. This is much like your boss giving you a terrible performance review because he or she doesn't like the company's health plan. Misguided reviews like this actually hurt authors--and by hurting sales of their books, ironically will make books more expensive, not less.

A book almost as much on the famous set of magazines (Time, Fortune, Life, and SI) created by Henry Luce as on the man himself. Anyone interested in the history of American publishing should buy and read it.

Alan Brinkley has written a straightforward biography in clear but unexceptional prose. The material is often interesting because Mr. Luce, his times (the Depression, World War II, the rise of American world power), and his political causes (anti-communism, China, freedom) are interesting. At times, however, the book veers too much into detailing the blasted love episodes of this great, if personally flawed, publisher: essentially--who now cares?

While wrong on some things, Mr. Luce was right on many things, including being early to the threat of both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. And he had the courage to trumpet his well-founded international political fears, which served to annoy many a New York City liberal.

Above all, Henry Luce created a commercial magazine empire from scratch: a feat that is unlikely ever to be duplicated.

This is biography as it should be: - the story of an important American written beautifully, objectively and with interest understanding and sympathy by one of America's leading historians.

To those readers to whom Henry R. Luce and Time, Life, Fortune and Sports Illustrated were not part of daily life in the twentieth century this superb biography may come off as interesting history. However, to those of us to whom these magazines were weekly reading during those times it's a trip into the past. The Great Depression, World War II, the Truman years, Eisenhower, the Rise of the Middle Class, The American Century, the "Loss" of China, The Vietnam War and its aftermath were all reported by and pictured in these magazines through the mind and eye of their publisher - Henry R. Luce (1898-1967), the ambitious, bright, driven son of Presbyterian Missionaries in China who, although a bit of a prig and never comfortable with himself, brought his view of the American experience to the American people through the pages of these publications which were his - and his alone - with a missionary zeal and a brilliance unmatched in the media world by any one before or since.

Alan Brinkley has beautifully and accurately recounted these years and Henry Luce's experience for us in this absolutely stunning and very readable biography where we get to know Luce who at 23 was already a skilled writer and was fathering Time along with his school chum Britton Hadden. Then we follow his career, his personal life with its many disappointments (including a disastrous and lengthy marriage to a dysfunctional and slightly goofy Clare Booth Luce) and his business life, his huge success, his enormous influence and his immense wealth. And at the end you have to wonder. If you were in Luce's shoes and having lived his life as he did would you say that it had been worth it? I felt sorry for him. But read the book. That's worth it.

Henry R. Luce, co-founder of Time Magazine, and founder of Life Magazine, Sports Illustrated, People magazine, and architect of the formidable Time-Life empire, arguably exercised more influence than any other media figure over US policy in the Twentieth Century. The question is how effective was the influence? Author Alan Brinkley (son of David Brinkley of the famous network news anchor team of Huntley and Brinkley), Professor of History at Columbia University, does an excellent job of defining the extent (and limits) of Luce's power.

Luce's childhood as a son of an American Missionary in China defines his beliefs and missionary zeal. Luce's father found that the most effective method of winning converts to Christianity was to provide education, and dreams of future wealth. The Luce family's escape from the dangers of the Boxer Rebellion did nothing to sway Henry's belief that the Chinese longed for American wealth, freedom and democracy. The author utilizes an extensive array of historical materials to define the period, and uses Luce family correspondence and interviews to describe the family's escape to Korea from the revolutionaries.

A prescient fourteen-year-old Henry traveled extensively through Europe - by himself - prior to arriving at Hotchkiss Preparatory School in the US. The school was primarily attended by the wealthy, but Henry benefitted from a wealthy benefactor who helped finance his education. Henry excelled in school and in extracurricular activities, especially writing for a school newspaper. He went to Yale, and became a member of the Skull and Bones. During WWI, while many of Henry's classmates went overseas, Henry stayed behind - and wrote angry editorials in the campus paper - criticizing those who chose not to fight.

Luce's business acumen is self-evident. His partner Brit Hadden concentrated on editing, while Luce handled the business side. Hadden's alcohol abuse contributed to an early death - leaving Luce with full editorial control.

The author's description of the most fascinating part of Luce's life - his increasing control over his publications' editorial content, draws the reader. In the early years, Luce's practice of hiring only talented Ivy League graduates acted as a buffer to his desire to control the editorial content of his publications. On multiple occasions Time Inc researchers threatened to walk out over editorial changes to their work. Luce was famous for writing memos pressuring his editors to support the Nationalist Chinese (Chiang Kai-shek appeared on the cover of Time more than Hoover, FDR and Truman combined). Luce's dislike of FDR was well-documented, as the author provides a litany of memos badgering editors to show the President in his worst light. After the war, Luce paid Winston Churchill to write a memoir for Life magazine. Luce wrote a letter to Churchill suggesting that Churchill write that any difficulties at Yalta were attributable to Roosevelt. Churchill ignored the letter. The author points out that Luce lifted Wendell Wilkie to the Republican nomination from non-contention - but no amount of support for Wilkie could defeat the popular Roosevelt. Luce blamed Truman and Secretary of State George Marshall for the loss of China to the communists. But, he was supportive of Eisenhower when he chose not to support the French at Dien Bien Phu. Luce constantly offered his advice to the American Presidents, but the advice was seldom taken.

Those who are of the far-right may become defensive with the overall tone of the book. Those of the far-left may well dislike Luce. The author, however, provides deserved balance to the biography, noting that Luce was a leader in the movement toward civil rights, and found Joseph McCarthy's methods to be repugnant. The book is supported with a strong bibliography of Time Incorporated Archives, Luce personal correspondence, and interviews with family and associates of Mr. Luce. It is written in a clear, consistently interesting manner.

To truly understand American publishing and politics in the 40's and 50's, one would be well-served to read this book. I recommend its consideration for any history/biography collection.

This seems like a particularly appropriate time for the writing of an important biography of a pioneer in the magazine industry, precisely when the entire publishing sector is suffering the greatest crisis in their history. In this superb biography of Henry Luce, we not only learn the intriguing details of his life, but also discover the political and social events in the rise of America as a global power during the "American Century" and Luce's impact upon them.

Alan Brinkley, the renowned Columbia University historian, with this volume has added to his impressive resume of books chronicling the post WWI era. In the description of this critical period of U.S. history, we learn the evolving how and why of Luce's worldview, the rise of the general interest magazine industry, and most importantly his significant impact upon its development.

One could make a pretty good case that Luce at the tender age of 24 - with his longtime friend, nemesis and eventual collaborator Britt Haddon - invented the mass produced general interest magazine. After beginning Time Magazine on a shoestring, Luce after the untimely death of Haddon, would go on to create the stunning success of Life Magazine, perhaps the pinnacle of achievement for any mass produced periodical.

By the age of 37 Luce was already a publishing giant, and he would add in short order to his collection Architectural Forum, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated as well as the very popular March of Times weekly film short.

Brinkley does an admirable job of relating the emerging worldview of Luce, from its unique inception being the son of missionaries and growing up in rural China to his hatred of FDR, Communist China, and any iteration of communism. These core beliefs would lead him to take strong positions on issues and people, and subsequently he would use his power to support them in his many influential publications. He thus became an avid supporter of Wendell Willkie, John Foster Dulles, General George MacArthur, Dwight Eisenhower, Chiang Kai-shek, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. But his positions were not always so obvious or partisan, since he was a proponent of civil and women's rights and could not abide the doctrinaire positions of Barry Goldwater.

Brinkley devotes considerable space to dissecting the philosophy, style, target audience and ethos of Luce and his dogged efforts to infuse his publications with those characteristics. It explains his attempts to keep his publishing empire relatively small while many in his organization clamored for expansion to meet the changing economic and demographic times. Luce's unwillingness to change helps explain the demise of the once great Life Magazine in 1972 and his great reluctance to get into book publishing that was finally but reluctantly accomplished with the success of the Time-Life publications. Luce undoubtedly would have been horrified with the success of People Magazine, had he lived to see it.

Brinkley also gives full and appropriate space to the largely unsuccessful personal life of Luce. Luce's first marriage to a wealthy young woman ended poorly due to diverse interests and class differences. His second marriage to the glamorous Clare Booth Brokaw made the reticent Henry into one-half of a celebrated power couple. Clare Booth Luce's successful endeavors as a playwright, politician and diplomat, along with Henry's business acumen, would keep the two in the celebrity spotlight as well in the halls of power. However, the passion of their marriage quickly faded as they both found solace in numerous affairs while just managing to keep their marriage intact. Clearly Henry's successful business career did not have a happy or successful personal component.

Henry's later years would also be shrouded by isolation, bad health, conspiracy theories, and bizarre vendettas. Despite his uncommon success in the publishing world and the significant political power he was able to expend due to it, Luce was surprisingly incapable of winning the battles that were most important to him - FDR would defeat Willkie, Truman would defeat Dewey, Chiang Kai-shek would be soundly defeated, the Korean War would end in a stalemate, the Vietnam War would be lost, and the hated Communist Chinese would gain international recognition and economic viability.

Despite all these major setbacks, Luce's meteoric rise to success was truly phenomenal, and the impact he had in his day on political, social, and business practices were both impressive and significant. Brinkley's beautifully written biography is a fitting encapsulation of a story well worth telling.

"Timmy Mystery Lover"
Not only are being entirely unfair to the author by giving him a one-star rating for his work when he has nothing to do with the pricing. You admit in your review that you have not even READ the book.
Second you are wrong about costs. It only costs a few bucks to print a book, especially one with a big press run like this one. The money is in writing, editing, and marketing.
So be fair to authors and stop doing this.
Thanks,
James McGrath Morris

Alan Brinkley has written an estimable biography of a driven, complicated, not very pleasant man. If, as Robert Graves put it, biography is the "geographical treatment of chaps," then Professor Brinkley has firmly established the coordinates and the topography of Henry Luce the person and of his empire.

In most ways, even in "love," Luce was a loner. Because of that it is more his intellectual and his business life that holds center stage here. His personal life, while whirlagig busy, was not especially fulfilling. Luce was a man of ideas, some of them geopolitical, most of them business oriented. Intuitively, without focus groups, without market surveys, Luce was able to intuit what a magazine reading public wanted before that public knew it. Time, Fortune, and Life followed, later to be followed by such successes as Sports Illustrated. Luce soon learned, however, that he could not control content in his sprawling domain. Despite his constant meddling, his editors learned to steer their own courses, much to the benefit of the magazines.

Luce was widely educated, although always among elites, for his day. He had been brought up in China and had traveled extensively before college, much of it on his own. Accordingly, while he had pronounced political views they were not uniformly those of a conservative reactionary. On the contrary, many of Luce's global views were just that: global. And progressive.

This is a worthwhile book for anyone interested in understanding what the "media" was before it became mostly electronic.

It is hard to imagine in these days of the internet that news magazines were once a national center of information, but so it was in the age of Time, Life and other magazines created by the absorbing mind of its publisher, Henry Luce. For four decades Luce was both a contributor and a manipulator of public opinion... a man whose corporate triumphs were often matched by personal disappointments.
It is said that Henry Luce had many friendships but few friends and Alan Brinkley brilliantly co-ordinates the two aspects of Luce's life. This is a biography that works extremely well on parallel levels. The author's narrative, steady and telling, begins with Luce's life as the son of a missionary in China and sweeps us into his American education leading to the founding of Time magazine in 1923. Brinkley outlines the ideas behind future publications well...the advent of Fortune, Life and Sports Illustrated...all with the company ups and downs of start-up publications.

Luce's attempts to sway his magazines (especially Time) toward his own conservative views are nicely documented in "The Publisher". The reader learns much about Luce's loathing of Roosevelt and Truman and his close, if not overly-admiring, friendship with Eisenhower. Brinkley is quick to remind us that although Luce was a politically robust conservative, he was liberal on social matters...especially civil rights.

The emotion and color enter this book while describing Luce's personal life. His marriage to Clare Boothe was fraught with internal upheavals as he fought to keep some semblance of their marriage together (even through their mutual discussions of divorce) meanwhile carrying on more than one affair. If few ever got personally close to Luce, Brinkley gets us as close as one can.

"The Publisher" is a terrific book about one of the chief shapers of opinion of the early and mid-twentieth century. It is an engrossing and revealing account of Henry Luce's life and I highly recommend it.

I spent way too many hours reading Life magazines in the stacks at my University instead of studying my textbooks. But somehow I think I gained more knowledge about America in the 20th century than I did in any class I took. It continued my passion for media which turned into a career in publishing. It saddens me a bit to know that those bound periodicals have disappeared from the shelves.

I enjoyed reading Brinkley's biography of Henry Luce, the cocreater of Time Magazine, Fortune and Life Magazine. Luce is summed up nicely by Brinkley on the last page, and herein lies the lessons for those of us today, especially those struggling between old and new media. "Luce did not change the world. His most important legacy remains his role in the creation of new forms of information and communications at a moment in history when media were rapidly expanding. ...numbers of Americans in the 1920s and 1930s and helped transform the way many people experienced news and culture. His expansion into radio and film,....Like all powerful media, Luce's innovations had their day and then slowly lost their centrality as newer forms of communication took their place."

I'm in publishing and would recommend this book soley on the lessons in the chapters on the creation of those magazines. But there is also a lot in here for American history buffs--Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War.