On author Madeleine L'Engle:

"Madeleine’s adult books-- including the autobiographical titles
that eventually would be grouped together as the Crosswicks Journals-- A Circle of Quiet (1971), The Summer of the Great-Grandmother (1974), The Irrational Season (1976), and Two-Part Invention
(1988)-- were edited by Robert Giroux. If Roger Straus was FSG’s [Farrar, Straus & Giroux's] worldly
sophisticate presiding over editorial meetings, Bob Giroux was the
white-haired, rosy-cheeked favorite uncle (if you happened to have an
erudite uncle who had edited T. S. Eliot, Robert Lowell, Isaac
Bashevitz Singer, Elizabeth Bishop, Flannery O’Connor, and Walker
Percy)."

-- Sandra Jordan, School Library Journal, November 1, 2007

On Robert Giroux, who died early this morning:

"the gold standard of literary taste."

For a less demanding standard, see today's previous entry.

For Mike Hammer

Block That Metaphor

"Michael Hammer, an engineer and author on management
who helped popularize the 're-engineering' movement in the 1990s, died
Thursday [Sept. 4, 2008].

A spokesman for Mr. Hammer's consulting firm, Hammer
and Co., said Mr. Hammer died from cranial bleeding that began Aug. 22
while he was vacationing in Massachusetts. He was 60 years old.

Mr. Hammer was the co-author of the bestselling
management book Reengineering the Corporation and founder and
president of Hammer and Co., Cambridge, Mass."

-- The Wall Street Journal

"An engineer by training, Hammer focused on the operational nuts and bolts of business.

Hammer's relentless pursuit of 'why?' drove his entire career. 'My
modus operandi is simple,' he once wrote, 'though not always easy to
carry out. I take nothing at face value. I approach all business issues
and practices with the same skepticism: Why?'

A funeral will be
held at 9:30 a.m. Friday, Sept. 5 in Stanetsky Memorial Chapel, 1668
Beacon St., Brookline. Interment will follow at the Shaarei Tefillah
Section of the Chevra Shaas Cemetery at Baker Street Jewish Cemeteries
in West Roxbury."

-- web.mit.edu

Related material:

From Feb. 12: