Cliff Fadiman Biography Quotes 6 Report mistakes

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Born as	Clifton Paul Fadiman
Occup.	Author
From	USA
Born	May 15, 1904 New York City, New York, USA
Died	June 15, 1999 New York City, New York, USA
Aged	95 years

Early Life and Education
Clifton Paul Fadiman, known to the public as Cliff Fadiman, was born on May 15, 1904, in Brooklyn, New York, to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents. A precocious and bookish child, he found in the public library both refuge and direction, and early on developed the lucid, companionable voice that would later make him one of the best-known American explainers of literature. He attended Columbia College in New York City and graduated in the mid-1920s. The intellectual atmosphere of Morningside Heights, steeped in the Great Books and in rigorous debate, shaped his conviction that serious reading could be both demanding and delightful.

Early Editorial Career
After college, Fadiman entered publishing at Simon and Schuster, where he proved an agile editor and literary talent scout under the firm's founders, Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. He learned the practical art of shaping manuscripts for broad audiences and the commercial realities of midcentury American publishing. This apprenticeship trained him to bridge high culture and popular taste, a skill that later defined his work as a critic, anthologist, and broadcast host.

The New Yorker and Literary Criticism
By the 1930s, Fadiman had joined The New Yorker as its book columnist and reviewer. Working with editor Harold Ross and alongside colleagues such as E. B. White, James Thurber, and Katherine S. White, he helped codify the magazine's urbane, witty approach to literature. His reviews were admired for their clarity, breadth, and generosity toward readers: he preferred explanation to score-settling, and he saw the reviewer's role as a guide rather than a gatekeeper. This period confirmed his national reputation as a critic with both high standards and a welcoming manner.

Radio, Television, and Information Please
Fadiman entered broadcasting in the late 1930s as the moderator of Information Please, the celebrated radio quiz program that made erudition feel like a parlor game. Week after week, he presided with light authority as panelists such as John Kieran, Franklin P. Adams, and Oscar Levant turned arcana into entertainment. The show's success, and its later television incarnations, broadened his audience and proved that a wide public would tune in for quick wits and cultivated talk. The Information Please Almanac extended that brand into a trusted reference, further entwining Fadiman's name with accessible knowledge.

Anthologies, Guides, and the Championing of Reading
As an editor and anthologist, Fadiman sought to give readers durable, pleasurable compasses to literature. He compiled many collections across genres and ages, including The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes and The World Treasury of Children's Literature. His most famous guide, The Lifetime Reading Plan (later updated as The New Lifetime Reading Plan with coauthor John S. Major), introduced generations to essential works from antiquity to the modern era, pairing context with counsel on how to read closely without losing joy. He also wrote about wine with the New York wine merchant Sam Aaron in The Joys of Wine, approaching the subject with the same conversational erudition he brought to books. For decades he served on the Book-of-the-Month Club's editorial board, helping select titles that could reach a national audience without compromising quality.

Personal Life and Circle
In 1950 he married the journalist Annalee Jacoby, who had earlier achieved acclaim as coauthor, with Theodore H. White, of Thunder Out of China. Their home life bridged journalism, literature, and a lively salon-like spirit. They raised two children: Kim Fadiman, who pursued anthropology, and Anne Fadiman, who became a distinguished essayist and reporter in her own right. Family conversation and correspondence, recalled vividly by Anne in later writings, reveal a father who loved clarity of expression, treasured the exact word, and treated books as companions through all stages of life.

Later Years and Continuing Influence
In his later decades, Fadiman remained visible as a lecturer, anthology editor, and cultural commentator. He introduced classics for new editions, wrote prefaces and forewords that guided readers into demanding texts, and continued to appear on broadcasts and at public events that celebrated language and ideas. He sustained long professional friendships from his New Yorker years and from Information Please, reinforcing his image as a genial ringleader of the American life of the mind.

Death and Legacy
Clifton Fadiman died on June 20, 1999, in Sanibel, Florida, at age 95. His legacy rests on a rare balancing act: he was at once a gate-opener and a standard-bearer, a public humanist who believed that ordinary readers could meet great books on equal terms if given sympathetic guidance. Through his work with panelists like John Kieran, Franklin P. Adams, and Oscar Levant, his collaborations with Sam Aaron and John S. Major, his long association with the Book-of-the-Month Club, and his years alongside figures such as Harold Ross, E. B. White, James Thurber, and Katherine S. White, he helped create a midcentury American culture in which knowledge felt like a shared adventure. The anthologies he assembled and the reading plans he authored continue to lead newcomers toward the literature he championed, sustaining his central belief that reading widely and attentively enlarges both mind and character.

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