Following are reminiscences of Robert B. Silvers by some of the Reviews writers. Anne Applebaum Christopher de Bellaigue Christopher Benfey April Bernard Jeremy Bernstein Glen Bowersock Sarah Boxer Stephen Breyer David Bromwich Peter Brown Andrew Butterfield Roberto Calasso Michael Chabon J. M. Coetzee Robert Darnton Natalie Zemon Davis Elizabeth Drew Freeman Dyson Helen Epstein Martin Filler Jonathan Freedland Jamey Gambrell Robert Gottlieb Stephen Greenblatt Michael Greenberg Alma Guillermoprieto Sue Halpern Joshua Hammer Simon Head Richard Holmes Pico Iyer Morten Hi Jensen Diane Johnson David Kaiser Daniel J. Kevles Enrique Krauze Jeri Laber Hermione Lee Perry Link Jeff Madrick Hilary Mantel Avishai Margalit Michael Massing Jessica T. Mathews Edward Mendelson Adam Michnik Ivan Nabokov Thomas Nagel Jay Neugeboren Geoffrey OBrien Tim Parks Thomas Powers Julia Preston Francine Prose Ahmed Rashid Nathaniel Rich Marilynne Robinson Kenneth Roth Ingrid D. Rowland Malise Ruthven Luc Sante Orville Schell Frederick Seidel Adam Shatz Tamsin Shaw David Shulman Samuel Silvers Charles Simic Peter Singer Annie Sparrow Patricia Storace Colin Thubron Helen Vendler Garry Wills Paul Wilson. April 2. 6, 2. 01. Bob was a very important figure in my life. Only someone truly open to new ideas, no matter how unfashionable, could have published in 1. Animal Liberation from a young and little known philosopher. The very idea of animal liberation was unknown and liable to be met with ridicule, and indeed The New York Review of Books was ridiculed for publishing the essay. But Bobs decision to publish that essay led directly to my book of the same title, which Bob edited and published. I will always be thankful for what Bob did. He played a vital part in triggering the modern animal rights movement, and thus in reducing the suffering of billions of animals. Peter Singer. My fondest memory of Bob is from a tropically warm day in June 2. New York City had recently installed a public bike sharing system, and Bob had asked me, as the Review intern, to sign him up for it. When the key finally arrived in the mail he got up from his desk and said, Alright, lets go. I followed him with disbelief down onto the street and over to the nearest bike station. Christ, I thought, now Im going to have to teach an eighty three year old how to ride a bike. With a sigh, I showed him how to work the key and retrieve a bike from its little rack, and then looked on as he struggled to get up on the seat. Eventually he succeeded and very quickly gained speed. I jogged behind him until I couldnt keep up any longer. There I stood and looked on as my octogenarian boss raced down the street, through the red lights of an intersection, and down toward the Westside Highway, where he banked right and disappeared from view. It didnt take long for me to begin rehearsing the speech I would give when I later had to explain to my colleagues that it was my fault the editor of The New York Review of Books had been flattened by a truck. Ten minutes passed, feeling like ten hours. Then came Bob from the opposite direction, as confident and lithe as a Tour de France contender, a broad grin on his face. He suavely alighted from the bike and slipped it back into its rack. Ok, he said. Back to work. Morten Hi Jensen. The first time I saw Bob Silvers was in London in the Sixties, at a party. I was too shy to talk to him, but fell in with everyone else when he decreed that the whole group should go see somethingI forget whatand led us all trooping behind him through the London night, with me wondering why we were all following the pied piper and what we would find or see. I always meant to ask him if he remembered that night. He was that kind of leader whom people trusted and would follow, a quality he brought to the Review and to life. Diane Johnson. Bobs friendsindeed all who read his reviewswill remember with gratitude Bobs learning, his talents, his dedication, and his sense of humor. Bob committed his working life to the transmission through the Review of a traditionof human culture, of critical thought, and personal liberty. And Bob succeeded. He created a forum that helped us separate sense from nonsense, and that directed our time and attention to books and articles that deserved them. He insisted on substance written without neglect to style. His legacy, embodied in the Review, will live on sometimes I think, like that of Ionas monks, through times that require it. Justice Stephen Breyer. I first got to know about Bob and his extraordinary talents as an editor in a rather unusual way. In the winter of 1. I was sent to Vietnam as a correspondent for The Far Eastern Economic Review. At that time the Johnson administration was still fighting the war flat out and to win. The US Army was at its peak strength of 5. US aid officials and CIA operatives working under the acronym of CORDSCivil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support. As conceived by LBJ, CORDS was the New Deal parachuted into East Asia, flooding the Vietnamese countryside with good works and so winning Vietnamese hearts and minds away from the Viet Cong. Visiting correspondents were given minders to set up their opening rounds of interviews. When I turned up for my first interview I found myself in the company of a fellow journalist who had also just arrived in Saigon and had been assigned the same minder and the same slate of meetings as I had. The journalist was Mary Mc. Carthy, the very special correspondent of The New York Review of Books. I owe a big debt of gratitude to Mary Mc. Carthy because as we made our way from one American office building to the next amid the noise and chaos of downtown Saigon, she was generous to the point of saintliness in answering my flow of questions about the war, the Review, and the significance of the interviews with US officials we had just sat through. She opened up for me a vision of what the best kind of reporting could be like. This vision was Bobs as much as hers. He had sent Mary Mc. Carthy to Vietnam and paid for it a big investment for the Review in those days because he was confident that her approach to writing about the war would be close to what he wanted, and he was right. Rereading her Vietnam pieces exactly fifty years after they first appeared one is struck by how brilliantly they bring together the skills of the reporter, the scholar, the public intellectual, and the novelist. Running through all the pieces is that kind of acute moral sensibility best described by Tony Judt, who also worked closely with Bob a collective self questioning and uncomfortable truth telling the contrarian quality of awkwardness and dissent. These qualities were Bobs as much as they were Mc. Carthys and Judts. Bob was himself a public intellectual of distinction but, unlike any of his peers, he devoted these qualities entirely to achieving excellence in others. Simon Head. He was a brilliant, demanding, funny, painstaking, and inspiring editor, a walking chronicle of postwar literary political history, an intimidating sweetheart, and very dear to me. At the end of an editorial session, once he had identified all your pieces weaknesses, evasions, and missed opportunities, he would close with a brusque, even peremptory, but always, somehow, hopeful, See what can be done. In the world according to Bob Silvers, there was always something to be done. Michael Chabon. Robert Silvers drawing by David Levine. I was not exactly courted by Bob. My first encounter, which left me breathless, happened ten years ago, when I sent him an essay Id written on George Herriman and Saul Steinberg. Bob said he wanted only the Herriman half. CIA Site Redirect Central Intelligence Agency. The Office of Public Affairs OPA is the single point of contact for all inquiries about the Central Intelligence Agency CIA. We read every letter, fax, or e mail we receive, and we will convey your comments to CIA officials outside OPA as appropriate. However, with limited staff and resources, we simply cannot respond to all who write to us. Contact Information. Submit questions or comments online. By postal mail Central Intelligence Agency. Office of Public Affairs. Washington, D. C. By phone 7. 03 4. Open during normal business hours. By fax 5. 71 2. Contact the Office of Privacy and Civil Liberties. Contact the Office of Inspector General. 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