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BRITON HADDEN by Noel F. Busch

BRITON HADDEN

By

Publisher: Farrar, Straus

By a first cousin, and one of the original staffers on Time magazine, this is the biography of the man who with Henry Luce was responsible for Time, the snowball success of the 20's. In terms of the magazine's history rather than the man, this records Briton Hadden's short life story, from his premature birth in 1898 to his pre-mature death in 1929, seven years after the inauguration of the magazine. His early writing and editorial activities- literally from the cradle; Hotchkiss- where he was a classmate and a competitor of Henry Luce; Yale where they became collaborators and decided to edit a magazine. Then finally in 1921, the start of their news-focussed weekly; the difficulty of raising the high finance to match their high faith; the first uncertain years, and as Luce developed a public, Hadden's development of the famous idiom and character of the magazine... There's much of the perennial fascination of the American Alger story here- as the energy and enthusiasm of two young men of twenty-four materialized into the magazine dynasty of the century--- and a definite vocational appeal.