The New York Observer writes about The Man Time Forgot: A Tale of Genius, Betrayal, and the Creation of Time Magazine, by Isaiah Wilner. It tells the story of Brooklyn Heights native Britton Hadden who led Time magazine until his sudden death in 1929.
New York Observer:Time's True Progenitor—Luce’s Rival Resurrected: Hadden was one of those gifted sons of privilege who reaped the full benefits of the age before meritocracy. In a world where rich men’s dull sons swarmed Ivy League campuses (while mute, inglorious Miltons struggled to escape the Midwest), his eccentric brilliance shone doubly bright. Hadden frequented speakeasies, wore torn sweaters to high-society functions and liked to organize baseball games as a break from intellectual labor. His stubborn refusal to be turned down for a job by New York World editor Henry Bayard Swope—“Mr. Swope, you’re interfering with my destiny”—well captures both his delusions and his grandeur. Only a fatal case of streptococcal infection, which killed him at 30, interfered with that destiny, throwing control of Time Inc. to his partner, freeing him to become the Luce of legend.
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