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| Elisabeth Sifton | |
Elisabeth Sifton, "a widely respected book editor and publisher who burnished manuscripts by many of the 20th century's literary lions," died December 13, the New York Times reported. She was 80. Sifton was also an author, "affirming in a memoir that it was her father, the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who had popularized what became known as the Serenity Prayer."
Nicholas Lemann, one of many notable writers Sifton worked with, described her as "one of the few people in publishing who's also a prominent public intellectual." Her other authors included Isaiah Berlin, Don DeLillo, Ann Douglas, Susan Eisenhower, Carlos Fuentes, Philip Gourevitch, Michael Ignatieff, Stanley Karnow, Stephen Kinzer, J.R. MacArthur, Robert MacNeil, Peter Matthiessen, Jules Witcover and Victor S. Navasky.
"I can't recall a single author who wasn't over-the-moon grateful for the work she did on their manuscripts," said Altie Karper, editorial director of Schocken Books.
Sifton began her literary career in 1962 with Frederick A. Praeger Publishers. In 1968, after the company was sold, she joined the Viking Press as an editor, and was named editor in chief in 1980. She was executive v-p of Knopf from 1987 to 1992, and then joined Farrar, Straus & Giroux as senior v-p & publisher and editor at large of its subsidiary Hill & Wang.
Her book The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Times of Peace and War was published in 2003. With her husband, Fritz Stern, a leading historian of Germany, she also wrote No Ordinary Men: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans von Dohnanyi, Resisters Against Hitler in Church and State (2013).
As an editor, Sifton "had read deeply enough in literature and history that she could immediately see what was fresh, or why the question investigated or thesis proposed was urgent and necessary," recalled Dan Frank, the editorial director of Pantheon. "There was no area of inquiry or idea that did not engage her curiosity and intellect."
Author Philip Gourevitch tweeted: "Elisabeth Sifton crackled with intelligence and curiosity, and was generous with both. She didn’t suffer fools gladly. She celebrated what inspired and excited her and demanded more of it. She was funny, too, and she had a great, life-giving laugh. RIP."