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Review by Roger Bishop
Henry Grunwald has lived an extraordinary life. When the Nazis came to power in his native Vienna, he fled with his parents, eventually settling in the United States. After college, he worked as a copy boy at Time and advanced through the ranks becoming managing editor of the newsweekly and then editor-in-chief of all Time publications. In 1988, he returned to Vienna where he served for two years as U.S. ambassador to Austria.
Grunwald shares his unique and absorbing story in One Man's America. The book is compelling on a personal level, in particular the difficulty Grunwald's parents had in adjusting to America, the death of his first wife, and his remarriage. But he admits that his work was at the center of his life. He takes us inside the world of a popular and influential newsmagazine, bringing to life the personalities and issues that engaged his attention for over 40 years. He became editor of Time in 1968.
"All in all it was a tragic year, but it was also, in cold-blooded hindsight, a perfect year to become editor of a newsmagazine." There was the Tet offensive in Vietnam in January, Lyndon Johnson's announcement in March that he would not seek reelection, the assassinations of Martin Luther King in April and of Robert Kennedy in June. In August, the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia, and the tumultuous Democratic convention was held in Chicago. There was also the presidential election that fall. One of the major attractions of the book is the author's concern about how to understand and report the major issues -- civil rights, the Vietnam war, the women's movement, Watergate -- as they developed.
He was often in contact with many of the major newsmakers. Among the many personalities we glimpse are Andrei Sakharov, Fidel Castro, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Henry Kissinger, Bishop J. Sheen, and Marilyn Monroe. Early in her career, Marilyn Monroe shared with Grunwald her enthusiasm for J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. He notes a link between her and Holden Caulfield: "She had that same quality of intelligent naivete, the willingness to ask ingenuous questions. . . . like Holden, Marilyn was a rebel against the meanness of the world; unlike him, she knew how to compromise with it and use it." Of Castro, he writes: "I could not help liking him, in spite of what he stood for. He was a mixture of passion, shrewdness, sincerity and Party-line nonsense." About Kissinger, he says "more than any other exile from power I have known, including some former presidents, Kissinger managed to maintain his celebrity status."
It is fascinating to see how the magazine was put together each week and to learn first-hand about the tensions between correspondents in the field and the editors. Grunwald explains "the essence of Time was not words but structure."
The author deals with philosophical and religious issues, appropriate for one who changed his major at New York University from journalism to philosophy and enjoyed classes with stimulating and controversial professor Sidney Hook. He raises questions about Judaism and once considered Catholicism. "Despite centuries of persecution and violence in the name of God, I believed that Christianity offered more of a universal and loving spirit than Judaism." But, "Especially after the Holocaust, I felt that it would be shameful to try to deny my heritage."
Grunwald notes that the single most important quality about Henry Luce, Time's founder, was his curiosity. That could be said of Grunwald as well. As his subtitle indicates: "Always searching for the meaning, the heart of this country -- my country. Even when I traveled abroad I tried to learn about America and its place in the world."
Roger Bishop is Contributing Editor to this publication.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.