The Time of Their Lives: The Golden Age of Great American Publishers, Their Editors and Writers (St. Martin’s Press, 2008), the recent book by Al Silverman, will be celebrated by New York University’s Fales Library on Wednesday, February 4, at 6:30 p.m. The event, which features a reading by Silverman, takes place at Fales, on the third floor of the NYU Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South. It is free and open to the public. For further information and to RSVP, call 212.992.9018; email: rsvp.bobst@nyu.edu.
Silverman entered the publishing industry in 1972 as CEO of the Book of the Month Club, after working for Sport magazine for 12 years. Later, he became president and editor-in-chief of The Viking Press, then a part of Penguin USA. In this book, Silverman tells us with utter certainty that the golden age of book publishing began in 1946 and lasted into the late 1970s and early 1980s. He sets out to prove this sweeping statement by relying on the eyes and ears and memories of the men and women who were there creating publishing history.
Michael Korda says of The Time of Their Lives: “Of course Al Silverman is both a ‘bookman’ par excellence and also the ultimate publishing insider, so it almost goes without saying that he is exactly the right person to write the story of book publishing since the Second World War, in the now bygone age of independent publishers and bigger-than-life editors.”