Reviews
Praise for The Editor
“Essential” —The New York Times
“Some biographers allow their subjects too much slack and are hesitant to find fault with them. Others have difficulty making convincing assessments possibly because they are too smitten with whom they are writing about. But Sara B. Franklin, in her new outstanding biography The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America seems to hit just the right note.” —The Boston Globe
“The Editor presents [Judith Jones] as both a case study and an agent of change in American conceptions of femininity inside and outside the home. But it also reads, most often than not, like a love story: a great, sweeping seven-decade romance between a woman and her work.” —The Atlantic
“An intimate but clear-eyed portrait that clips along like a fast-paced novel…an indelible picture of the grit, guile and passion for finding the right words.” —Rux Martin, Seven Days Vermont
“Jones is an exhilarating subject, and Franklin has done her justice in this expert, involving, and radiant biography.” –Booklist, Starred Review
“In the world of publishing, especially cookbook publishing, Judith Jones was a legend among legends… A singular book about a singular woman.” –Dorie Greenspan
“Buoyant… a must-read for anyone who appreciates culinary history, but it’s engaging enough to sway even those who aren’t usually drawn to nonfiction.” –Eater.com
“A thorough and humanizing portrait” —Kirkus
“Sara B. Franklin pulls back the curtain and casts a penetrating light on Judith Jones, a consummate editor, a connoisseur of food and fiction, a sophisticated, determined, and secret force who worked in publishing for half-a-century, cooking up and shaping so many books that shaped us. The Editor is a surprising, granular, luminous, and path-breaking biography.” –Edward Hirsch, Guggenheim Foundation President, former Chancellor of the American Academy of Poets
"Judith Jones has, at long last, found a worthy biographer in Sara B. Franklin. Her kaleidoscopic portrait of Jones, anchored in deep research but written with crisp clarity, honors every complication of Jones's character without losing sight of the remarkable imprint she left on America’s literary landscape—far beyond the realm of food." —Mayukh Sen, author of Taste Makers
“Through her editorial work, Judith Jones changed the perception of what it meant to be a woman who cooks. Through The Editor, Sara B. Franklin gives shape and weight to a career that could have continued on as a footnote; in doing so, she proves Jones was too good and influential to live on like that.” –Alicia Kennedy, author of No Meat Required
“A meticulously researched and fondly written biography.” —Publishers Weekly
“Tenderly written and meticulously researched… The Editor retrieves Jones from the margins of publishing history and affirms her essential role in shaping the postwar cultural landscape, from fiction to cooking and beyond.” –The Millions
An “intimate and illuminating biography…revelatory… stirring…an exceptional feast for bibliophiles and foodies alike.” –Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“If you’re curious about how stories get told and who decides on which stories get told, this is for you… A fascinating look at a fascinating woman.” –In Style Australia
“‘The Editor’ is an unusual book; it’s unusual for an editor who never ran an institution or was in any way a public figure to be the subject of a biography, let alone such a detailed, sympathetic one. ‘The Editor’ draws on interviews [Franklin] conducted in 2013, when Judith, then in her late eighties, had finally retired from Knopf, after fifty-six years there. No editor could have had a more patient, Boswellian biographer nor a more heartening protector.” “Mastering the Art of Making a Cookbook” by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker