With the death on Wednesday night of Harold Evans, age 92, the Center has lost a warm supporter over the past two decades. After his years as a journalist in London, he moved to New York in 1984 where he became an author and a publisher.
Evans was the President and Publisher of Random House Trade Group from 1990 to 1997. From 1997 to 1999 he was Editorial Director and Vice Chairman of U.S. News & World Report, New York Daily News, The Atlantic Monthly and Fast Company, a position from which he resigned in January 2000 to devote himself full-time to major writing and television projects.
He authored The American Century (Knopf, 1998) and earlier the book Good Times, Bad Times (Weidenfeld & Nicholson,1983) on his experiences as editor of The Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981, and editor of The Times from 1981 to 1982.
The book of his that might be closest to the interests of those at the Center is the gigantic tome They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine: Two Centuries of Innovators (Little, Brown, 2004), which was the basis of a four-part PBS series The American Experience.
This colorful book on some of the great innovators in America over the 19th and 20th centuries has remained a centerpiece at the long table in the office of the Director of the Center all these years.
The Center offers its sincere condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues. His New York Times obituary is available here.
