This ad in the New York Review of Books in 2000 made an essential point about buying books in stores: ask for it. This was seven years before the arrival of Kindles, the iPhone, and downloadable audio, which made digital books easily accessed. If you don’t see the print book in your favorite store, have it ordered. That works for any book whose author, title, and ISBN identfier you know. A major development for books.
A photo from the 1950s on the Playhouse Porch. Facing the water. The power of genes.
A building known as the Lieb Osnos tenement in downtown Warsaw was the only building inside the territory of the ghetto which survived World War ll. It has been designated a national monument but it is in serious disrepair with no plans to restore it except this one: An AI enhanced reminaging which turned up in of all places X, where it has received 5,800 views.
Read A creepy building or a piece of art? – Abandoned building in the center of Warsaw — In December 2025, Gwyn Osnos found this trove of material about the Lieb Osnos Tenement in downtown Warsaw, for the first time uncovering it as a place where there were stores, offices and spacious apartments, another glimpse of the life for the family before World War II and the almost total obliteration of a way of life.
A Life Well Lived
In May 2025, Hachette Book Group rebranded PublicAffairs with a new colophon and this “About” description of the imprint. The importance of this change is that after 27 years, PublicAffairs is in a new era, but it will carry on with a publishing mission.
On April 28, 2025, our New York based friends toasted and in my case roasted Susan and me as we prepare to relocate to Bethesda, and the next chapter in life. I entertained the group singing, more or less, Sondheim’s “Old Friends” a capella.
Jaime Leifer started at PublicAffairs around the millennium as an assistant and her final day was May 31, 2024. She was Associate Publisher. Her farewell email and links reflects her experience over so many years. Espirit de corp and more!
The Greenwich house and property over the decades,A classic. Stood proudly at 272 Round Hill Road from 1756 until 2016.
A toast to Kyra Darnton and David Grann at their wedding, probably around 2004.
Alvin Shuster in Hanoi with General Giap, 1995.
Poem by Doctor Seuss sent us by Bob Bernstein, 1990s.
Eli Segal profile in Business Week after Clinton election in 1992.
Lev and Raya Kopelev, Moscow friends, mid-1970s.
Nina Darnton poem for Suze in 1997.
Letter from Peter Jennings after his cancer diagnosis in 2005.
Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter on Eli Segal, 2006
Letter from Brandeis housemate Mike Oberman.
Letter from Craig Whitney on wedding present that went astray.
Celia Gilbert thank you letter for arranging Izzy Stone memorials, 1989
With HDS Greenway in the garden on the Charles in Needham.
Morley Safer, aka, Hungary’s “Minister of Poultry” — to Suze, a running gag who misheard Minister of Culture.
Oliphant cartoon on death of I.F.Stone.
With David and Kate Epstein on their wedding date, 1977.
Photo of daily briefing in Saigon, (Four o’clock follies).
Herogram (very rare) from Foreign Desk in 1977.
National desk send off when leaving for London 1982.
Telex from International Herald Tribune Murray Weiss to his editors in Washington
