Bob Silvers is the editor in chief of the New York Review of Books.

Born on New Year's Eve in 1929, Silvers entered the University of Chicago at age 15, graduated at 19, and went to work as press secretary for Connecticut Gov. Chester Bowles. Drafted into the army in 1950, Silvers was given a research job at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Paris, and he went on to become Paris editor of the Paris Review. Back stateside, he worked at Harper's until the New York publishing strike of 1963, when he teamed up with Barbara Epstein and her husband Jason Epstein, Robert Lowell, and Elizabeth Hardwick to found the New York Review of Books. The magazine was co-edited by Silvers and Barbara Epstein until her death in 2006, at which point Silvers took over as sole editor. He continues to edit using a sharpened pencil and refuses to work on a computer.

The NYRB has always been relentlessly liberal and elitist, and while it's seen better days, it still serves as a literary tastemaker. Writers who have lent their intellectual fortitude to its pages include Susan Sontag, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, Noam Chomsky, Truman Capote, and Gore Vidal. Owned since 1983 by Rea Hederman, what the NYRB lacks in audience size (its circulation is a scant 125,000) it makes up for in audience influence—the readership consists of publishing insiders, media mavens, and leading academics. [Image via Getty, with Joan Didion]