Henry Grunwald - One Mans America: A Journalists Search for the Heart of His Country

A N A NCHOR B OOK
PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY
a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036

A NCHOR B OOKS , D OUBLEDAY , and the portrayal of an anchor
are trademarks of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

One Mans America was originally published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1997.

Permissions information can be found on .

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of this book as follows:

Grunwald, Henry A. (Henry Anatole).
One mans America : a journalists search for the heart of his
country / Henry Grunwald. 1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Grunwald, Henry A. (Henry, Anatole) 2. EditorsUnited States
Biography. 3. United StatesCivilization1945 4. United
StatesPolitics and government1945989. I. Title.
PN4874.G79A3 1997
070.41092dc20
[B] 96-19629

eISBN: 978-0-307-80075-6
Copyright 1997 by Henry Grunwald
All Rights Reserved

v3.1

For Louise

Sarah Lewis joined me in May 1994 when an eye problem made reading and writing difficult. She became my indispensable link to the computer, working outrageous hours with endless patience. More than that, she was an editorial adviser and critic who asked all the right questions and offered sensitive and smart suggestions. It is almost impossible to imagine how I could have done this book without her.

Eileen Chiu Graham and Katherine L. Mihok were my researchers during essential stages of the work. Digging through my past, they came to know almost more about it than I do. They were also ingenious in tracking down the answers to countless historial questions.

Clare Mead Rosen provided important background reporting, especially on the Middle West and American intellectual history, along with highly stimulating ideas and recollections. She also conducted dozens of interviews with friends and former colleagues, whose names are listed in the source notes. I am indebted to them and to her.

Paddy Colligan and Dorothy Paulsen took over as my researchers for the last lap of this book. Drawing on their past experience at the Time library, they astounded me with their ability to unearth material that everyone else believed no longer existed, if it ever had.

I also had research help in specific areas from Nelida Gonzalez Cutler, Anne Hopkins, Joan Walsh, Karen Cruz and, in Vienna, Traudl Lessing and Caroline Delval.

Nancy Kirk, my erudite, dedicated assistant since 1990, helped this book in more ways than I can enumerate, giving wise advice and encouragement. She shepherded successive drafts and took on many extra projects, freeing me to write. She also ran my office and kept the outside world at bay when possible, and when not, she handled it with charm and resourcefulness.

My wife, Louise, was my first reader and gave me shrewd comments along with loving and unfailing moral support. The book invaded her life, and she considerately made room for it. She patiently tolerated years of dinner table silences while I pondered the next chapter and interminable disappearances behind my study door. She also shared with me the excellent, perceptive journal she kept during the time I served as U.S. ambassador in Vienna.

I am grateful to my children for reading the manuscript. Peter and Mandy Grunwald provided very useful and constructive suggestions. Lisa Grunwald Adler brought her professional editing skills to bear with her zealous attention to grammar, syntax and style. However, she is not responsible for any danglers or clichs that may have reinserted themselves. All three freely supplied their recollections of our family life.

Harry Grunwald provided constant inspiration.

Im grateful to my editors at Doubleday, successively, Herman Gollob, Deborah Futter, Casey Fuetsch and Bill Thomas, for their patient and warm support.

My friend and agent, Mort Janklow, believed in the book from the start and was a wise guide throughout.

Jason McManus, former editor in chief of Time Inc., his successor, Norman Pearlstine, and editorial director Henry Muller allowed me access to the companys library, archives and files, as well as the use of some of my writings from Time Inc. publications. I greatly appreciate their generosity. I am much indebted to many others at Time Inc.: Sheldon Czapnik, director of editorial services; Ben Lightman, chief of the library, and his successor, Lany McDonald; Elaine Felsher, Bill Hooper and Kenneth Schlesinger, keepers of the archives; Nilda Koehne of the biography files; Ben Watson of the tearsheets department; Beth Zarcone of the picture collection and their staffs.

My thanks also to the New York Society Library and its head librarian, Mark Piel, as well as my wizardly computer guru, Bruce Stark.

Many of the people I worked with over the years are mentioned in this book. Many more, inevitably, are not. I wish I could have named them all. But they will always remain in my mind, with intense gratitude for their friendship and support and for the pleasure of their company. It was a great pleasure indeed, and I am proud to have been their colleague.

H.A.G.

O N SOME DAYS , America seems to disappear. Looking out from the widows walk atop my summer house in Marthas Vineyard, I see only the fog hiding Cape Cod. The land is invisible. But I know it is there, stretching from the New England dunes in a vast continuous sweep and out to the sands of the other ocean, bearing towns and cities; clapboard, steel and glass; shacks and towers; the immense fertile plains, the deserts, the timeless rivers, the restless highways. In my mind I reach out to it.

I love America because it took me in as a young refugee from the madness of wartime Europe and allowed me to make it my country. I love America because it did the same for millions of others from everywhere. I love it because it is an experiment in living and governing beyond anything dreamed of before. But Im also disappointed by America because it seems in danger of bungling the experiment.

Loving America is complicated. It means loving not only a place and a people, but an idea; loving not merely what this nation has accomplished, but what it still promises. One should never love America uncritically. Perhaps one should never love anything or anyone uncritically. One loves people despite their faults, even sometimes for their faults. That is the way I love America and why I describe, as best I can, the faults along with the virtues, and the hopes that are still unfulfilled.

My story mingles the personal, the professional and the public. I spent most of my career as a journalist at Time, including nearly a decade as its managing editor and nearly another decade in charge of all of Time Inc.s publications. Thus this account deals with the workings of Time as well as many of the events and people I observed. Always I kept searching for the meaning, the heart, of this countrymy country. Even when I traveled abroad I tried to learn about America and its place in the world.

This is not another book about the decline of the United States. Nor is it a compendium of remedies to cure its ills. It is rather an attempt to retrace my journey to and through America: how I became an American and what America means today.