The New York Review of Books turns 50
October 21, 2013 9:32 AM   Subscribe

In February 1963, a new publication took advantage of the New York City printers strike and launched with a daring editorial: It does not, however, seek merely to fill the gap created by the printers’ strike in New York City but to take the opportunity which the strike has presented to publish the sort of literary journal which the editors and contributors feel is needed in America. The New York Review of Books is now 50.

Founded by Bob Silvers and Barbara Epstein, it was initially only a print magazine. The NYRB empire now includes blogs, podcasts, an online store, and a stellar book-publishing arm. The New York Review has contributed literary and political coverage spanning Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, the Iraq War, and more.
Some of the magazine's most frequent contributors look back on 50 years on this special blog. The 50th Anniversary issue includes a previously unpublished essay by TS Eliot (paywalled). The cover story of that first issue back in 1963 was on James Baldwin.
posted by mattbucher (7 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
For my sake, I hope Bob Silvers lives to be at least 150 years old.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 9:49 AM on October 21, 2013


The professor of a history class I took in college told us: "If you want to see what a well-written essay looks like, pick up the New York Review of Books and read any of the articles. That's the quality I want you to aim for in your work for this class."

I picked up an issue - 20-some-odd years ago - and I've been subscribing ever since. It's the best thing I read on a regular basis.
posted by crazy_yeti at 10:38 AM on October 21, 2013


The first — Feb 1, 1963 — issue was spectacular. In that one alone you have W.H. Auden, Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Susan Sontag, Alfred Kazin, Adrienne Rich, Elizabeth Hardwick, Norman Mailer, Richard Poirier, William Styron, Gore Vidal, Dwight MacDonald, Mary McCarthy. (All articles are free online.)

I've found the quality to have suffered a bit since then. But in any case we have the amazingly consistent London Review of Books to take up any slack, which was founded in 1979 as an insert in the NYRB, [also] during a lockout. The LRB also has the advantage of its own cakeshop.
posted by zbsachs at 11:08 AM on October 21, 2013 [2 favorites]


I started reading the New York Review of Books during the slow moments, and there were a lot of slow moments, while I was working as a clerk in the Library School Library at Berkeley in 1976. I skipped a few years but I've been a subscriber almost every year since. With the demise of snail mail, it's one thing I'm really happy to get in my mailbox.

The other things I took away from that two-year, part time job were a) library school students were terrible about returning their books on time and b) when working in the basement of the oldest, most unstable building on campus, South Hall, you had to be fatalistic about earthquakes.
posted by Sculthorpe at 11:31 AM on October 21, 2013


I love the nyrb; every time I share an essay from there with anyone, they all agree it's the best thing they've ever read. Why does the New Yorker get all the pub in a world where the New York Review of Books exists?
posted by bluefly at 12:35 PM on October 21, 2013


Still my favorite NY Publication since the demise of the old Observer.
posted by parmanparman at 1:19 PM on October 21, 2013 [1 favorite]


The professor of a history class I took in college told us: "If you want to see what a well-written essay looks like, pick up the New York Review of Books and read any of the articles. That's the quality I want you to aim for in your work for this class."

My mother judged all my writing in high school against the New York Review of Books. Of course, this meant that nothing I wrote was ever good enough.
posted by hoyland at 5:02 PM on October 21, 2013


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