The International Herald Tribune: The First Hundred Years

The Paris edition of the now-defunct New York Herald was established a century ago by James Gordon Bennett, Jr., the quixotic, mercurial, overindulged son of the newspaper's founder. The bureau was intended principally to cover the rich, so even in the midst of the intellectual ferment of the 1920s little attention was given to the Left Bank expatriates who were making literary history. During the 1930s, the editorial policy skirted perilously close to fascism, yet the bureau had to close from 1940 to 1946 under the Nazi occupation. The paper's greatest crisis, however, was not its suspended publication, but the demise of its New York parent paper, the Herald Tribune, in 1966. As related here, it's an exciting story, with an all-star cast that includes James Thurber, Walter Kerr, Eric Sevareid and Art Buchwald. Smith College history professor Robertson has done a bang-up job. Photos not seen by PW. (October 28)