Romantic Journalist

The World of Time Inc.: The IntimateHistory of a Publishing EnterpriseVolume II: 1941-1960 By Robert T. Elson Atheneum, 496 pp., $10 Henry Luce was one of the last of the romantics of mass journalism and the most successful of all. This second volume of company history by Robert T. Elson, a company man, centers on Luce, and its publication reinforces the common assessment of Volume I: This is probably the best account of a major media enterprise ever published in this country.

Elson’s basic method is simple. He lets Luce speak for himself. Throughout the man’s life he was an unceasing fountain of memoranda—notes which were garrulous, personal, ebullient, witty, polemical, sometimes bitchy, always well crafted. Reflected in them were the episodes that gave Time Inc. its repute, good and bad.

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About the Author

William Porter

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The World of Time Inc.: The IntimateHistory of a Publishing EnterpriseVolume II: 1941-1960 By Robert T. Elson Atheneum, 496 pp., $10 Henry Luce was one of the last of the romantics of mass journalism and the most successful of all. This second volume of company history by Robert T. Elson, a company man, centers on Luce, and its publication reinforces the common assessment of Volume I: This is probably the best account of a major media enterprise ever published in this country.

Elson’s basic method is simple. He lets Luce speak for himself. Throughout the man’s life he was an unceasing fountain of memoranda—notes which were garrulous, personal, ebullient, witty, polemical, sometimes bitchy, always well crafted. Reflected in them were the episodes that gave Time Inc. its repute, good and bad.