In the autumn of 1945, a thirty-one-year-old former navy lieutenant commander began work as a writer on Fortune magazine. Thirty-four years later, he stepped down as the Editor-in-Chief of Time Inc. He had been founder Henry Luce's handpicked successor at Time, and if he wasn't present at the creation, he was around for some of its most exciting and controversial moments. Born and raised in Minnesota in what now seems a halcyon time in this country's history, Donovan spent three years at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar before beginning his career in journalism as a reporter for The Washington Post during FDR's second term. His war service, spent in the Office of Naval Intelligence, broke into that career, but by war's end he was back in journalism, eventually becoming Managing Editor of Fortune. Then, in 1959. Henry Luce tapped him as his deputy, and her served as Editorial Director of Time Inc. until 1964, when he succeeded Luce as Editor-in-Chief. For the next fifteen years, Donovan ran the editorial side of one of the world's largest media operations and, with his partners on the business side, turned it into one of the country's top corporations. If Donovan understood from firsthand experience the professional needs and personal competitiveness of the people for whom he was "the boss," he also understood the demands of a growing, changing organization in a time of stress and turbulence for both the company and the country. His memoir is a wise and engaging insider's account, the story of one man's unflagging zest for journalism. It is also a lively and affectionate account of his colorful colleagues and of his own immense curiosity about the world they covered. - Dust jacket.