My Mistake

A former New Yorker editor and book publisher shares a “ruefully funny insider’s tour of the publishing world” in this delightful memoir (Vogue.com).

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice

Daniel Menaker started as a fact checker at The New Yorker in 1969. With luck, hard work, and the support of William Maxwell, he was eventually promoted to editor. Never beloved by the magazine’s legendary editor William Shawn, he was advised early on to find a position elsewhere; he stayed for another twenty-four years. Now Menaker offers an insightful and intimate account of that wonderfully strange place—as well as the publishing world at large and his own life—in this “tender, smart, and witty” memoir (Real Simple).

My Mistake is a moving, thoughtful meditation on years well lived, well read, and well spent. Full of mistakes, perhaps. But full of effort, full of accomplishment, full of life.

“Energetic and exhilarating  . . . [Menaker’s] clever, fast-paced prose makes you stop and think and wonder.” —New York Times Book Review