Robert B Silvers

Robert Silvers, whose long career as an editor included terms at The Paris Review, Harper's and, most notably, as co-founder of The New York Review of Books, died in March 2017 at his home in Manhattan. He was 87. Silvers launched The New York Review of Books in 1963 with Barbara Epstein, intending to raise the standard of book reviewing. In its pages, a given book under consideration could be little more than a jumping-off point for an extended essay that directly engaged the political and cultural moment. When he had a pacemaker installed in 2011, there was widespread speculation that he might step down as editor of the publication. (His co-editor Epstein had died in 2006.) But he continued to serve. Robert Benjamin Silvers was born on Dec. 31, 1929, in Mineola, N.Y., a village on Long Island. His father, James, was a businessman who left Manhattan to live the rural life. His mother, the former Rose Roden, was the music critic for the The New York Globe, long since disappeared. A precocious student, he left high school in Rockville Centre at 15 and enrolled in the University of Chicago. He pursued an accelerated two-year program, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1947. Mr. Silvers spent three semesters studying law, without enthusiasm, at Yale. In 1950, he entered the Army and was assigned to the intelligence library of NATO military headquarters in Paris. He studied at the Sorbonne and Sciences Po. After completing his military service, he remained in Paris, living on a houseboat on the Seine with the future bandleader Peter Duchin. An introduction to George Plimpton led to a post as managing editor of the newly created Paris Review, a journal in some disarray and badly in need of an editorial guiding hand. John Fischer, the editor of Harper’s, hired Mr. Silvers at the recommendation of Mr. Plimpton’s father, Francis, a corporate lawyer, to oversee literary articles and book reviews at the magazine in 1958.