What a Duo!
Editors, publishers and parents are not supposed to choose favorites among those they nurture. But it should be fine to celebrate the achievements of people you are qualified to judge. That is my goal here.
Elisabeth Bumiller was one of the first authors I worked with when I arrived as an editor at Random House in the mid-1980s. She is now the Washington Bureau Chief of the New York Times and arguably one of the best writers and news leaders the Times has had in, at least, a generation.
And Paul A. Volcker, the esteemed long-time chair of the Federal Reserve, a towering person in both stature and integrity was among the last authors I guided at the end of my publishing years.
If these two people ever talked or were even in the same room, it was probably at a Washington cocktail party. Aside from any personal characteristics and talents that define them, they had one thing certainly in common: I considered being their publisher and friend a privilege in a life of turning words into books.
A full description of Bumiller by her very close friend Geraldine Baum was rendered here (link) when Elisabeth received an alumni distinction award from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2019.
Elisabeth and I were both at the Washington Post for several years until I left in 1984. A few months later she had to quit her job in the Post Style section because the then editor of the Times decreed that, as a matter of policy, she should not compete with her husband, Steve Weisman, once he assumed the role of New Delhi Bureau Chief. Yes, that is what he said.
Elisabeth was “allowed” to keep writing features for the Post and pursue any other writing projects she chose. My contribution was to tell her that if she decided to write a book on any topic in India, I wanted to be her editor. I gave her a $5000 down payment toward that commitment.
The result in 1990 was May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons: A Journey Among the Women of India. The book is still in print and now as an e-book. Publishers Weekly called it “perceptive.” Library Journal said it was “essential.”
I was a newish book editor and she was a first-time author. Neither of us knew exactly what to expect. The manuscript arrived on time and was so clear and well- written that I don’t recall changing a word. Elisabeth provided the pictures, the fabric that became the jacket image and whatever else was needed to put the book between covers. To myself and eventually at book parties at the time of publication, I would say that Bumiller is the sort of writer who gives editors a bad name. I wasn’t lazy in moving the book along, I just knew how good it was.
Then Elisabeth and Steve went to Tokyo. He was again the bureau chief and she was a contributor to the Post. There she wrote a book called The Secrets of Mariko: A Year in the Life of a Japanese Woman and her Family, published in 1995. It is also still for sale in print and digital editions. The reviewer in the Times called it, “A rich, sustained look at real life in middle-class Tokyo…full of cultural insight.” I knew virtually nothing about the topic and yet found the book as moving as it was revealing.
At some point, the Times came to its senses and hired Elisabeth. She and Steve were now in New York and this former party reporter for the Washington Post became the paper’s City Hall Bureau Chief jousting with mayors and competing with the tabloids for the inside story on Big Apple politics.
Elisabeth’s next book — she had moved on to another publisher — was what can be called of the “self-help” genre which she co-authored with two women doctors. After all there were expenses to be paid and for those in the newspaper business a little extra dough always comes in handy.
When Elisabeth was assigned to the Washington bureau and Steve became a diplomatic correspondent, they moved to what became their long-term home. She took on one major assignment after another, including the White House and the Pentagon. And she wrote a biography of Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush’s national security adviser and Secretary of State, the first Black woman to hold both positions.
Next, Elisabeth became a senior editor and was then named bureau chief, joining a line of panjandrums as far back as the legendarily bumptious Arthur Krock, a sign of how much the role has evolved in the last 75 years. And now in one of the most frenetic news periods, perhaps ever, Elisabeth is an Assistant Managing Editor of the Times and runs a bureau of about 100 people working 24/7 on multiple platforms. Here is a glimpse of how she does it in the work-from-home era. According to Steve, when there were daily briefings on the pandemic led by Donald Trump in late afternoons, Elisabeth would watch while taking advantage of her elliptical, a commitment to the story and her well-being. Weisman is himself a highly accomplished author (his editing of the letters of Daniel Patrick Moynihan for PublicAffairs was superb) and is vice-president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), one of Washington’s leading policy think tanks. He observes Elisabeth from what I have seen with an equal amount of awe and devotion.
Elisabeth has had quite a career trajectory. And aside from all else, she found time to lead her daughter, Madeleine’s, Girl Scout troop.
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In 1992, I published Paul Volcker’s Changing Fortunes: The World’s Money and the Threat to American Leadership, co-authored with Toyoo Gyohten, then the Chairman of the Bank of Tokyo. The book was based on a series of lectures the men had given at Princeton rendered into accessibility by Lawrence Malkin, an experienced economics journalist. The book was well received. Yet every time I saw Volcker thereafter, he would tell me that he hadn’t done enough to promote it. I agreed.
In 2006, PublicAffairs published Volcker’s report on corruption in the United Nations program to provide oil for food program in Iraq. I remember three things about that book:
1-Paul and his collaborators received a $10,000 advance for the book. On the same day it was announced Alan Greenspan was receiving six million dollars for his memoirs as Fed chair, a career that bounced into ignominy when the financial crisis of 2008 happened.
2-When Volcker visited our offices for an editorial session, he polished off an entire plate of chocolate brownies.
3- I wrote an email to him “beseeching” him to be more personal in his introduction to the book. Anke Dening, Paul’s assistant and his wife said it was thereafter known as the “beseechment memo.” He did a bit to comply.
In late May 2017, as I was preparing for my wife’s birthday party, I received a call from Paul. His opening was something like, “You still working?” I assured him that I was. He allowed that he was going to be 90 and that it was time to write his memoirs, but that he didn’t think he could summon the motivation. I took that as an invitation to persuasion and met with Paul to see how far I could get. His challenge was to find the right person to work with him on the project, a co-author, researcher and all-around partner.
Sometimes being a publisher comes down to a single decision. That was the case with Volcker. I had met Christine Harper, a senior editor at Bloomberg News, specializing, broadly, in financial issues. Somehow, I sensed that Christine would appeal to Paul. She was smart, very personable, a good listener and a Volcker fan.
As soon as they were introduced, I knew this would work. I began to say that watching Paul and Christine together was like watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance. Their editor at PublicAffairs, John Mahaney, was highly knowledgeable and soon aware that Volcker wanted assistance and not orders. The only moment of tension in the process came when John suggested that his colleagues at PublicAffairs might have a different title in mind from the one Paul wanted: Keeping At It: The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government. As you can imagine, no one was going to tell Paul Volcker what to call his book.
Christine was impressed with Paul’s own writing and she did her best to provide context, fact check and buoy Volcker’s confidence. The manuscript was completed in summer 2019 with publication scheduled for the following March. To Paul that seemed a very long time to wait. I agreed but the timing was not up to me. Then, alas, Paul was diagnosed with prostate cancer and it was serious enough to raise the question of how he would feel in the months ahead. The book was rescheduled for November and Paul wryly observed that his publisher was counting on him to make it that long.
He more than did. At the book party hosted by Michael Bloomberg with a room full of prominent guests, Paul was in a wheelchair. When the time came for him to answer the toasts, he said “I can either stand or I can talk. I can’t do both.” He delivered his remarks sitting down.
The reviews of the book and the interviews with him were everything you might expect for so admirable a person. “Paul Volcker is the greatest man I have known. He is endowed to the highest degree with what the Romans called Virtus (virtue) moral courage. Integrity, sagacity, prudence and devotion to the service of country,” wrote Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, as eminent a columnist in the relevant fields as there is.
In their Christmas card to friends and family, Paul observed that not everyone gets to read their own eulogies.
The book seemed to enhance Volcker’s spiritual and physical strength. He succumbed on Dec. 8, 2019. His memorial service, like the book party, was a gathering of hundreds of people who would attest that Paul was not only a great public servant, he was to us irresistible. In my copy of his book, Paul wrote, “It’s your fault.”
What a duo.
