Larger Than Life

Daniel Longwell began his career in journalism as a "publisher's young man" at Doubleday Publishing Company where he represented a number of outstanding twentieth century authors, including Edna Ferber, Sinclair Lewis, and Kenneth Roberts. In 1934, Henry Luce hired him to investigate and create a "picture magazine" that was launched as LIFE magazine in 1936. As the idea man at LIFE for nearly twenty years and editor for ten years, Dan, with his wife, Mary Fraser Longwell, took LIFE through World War II and into the postwar years. Dan was the catalyst for LIFE's publishing the "Memoirs of Winston Churchill" and Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea." The Longwells retired to Neosho, MO, in 1954 where Judith Haas Smith came to know and love them. Larger Than Life traces an amazing period in publishing and photojournalism and reincarnates two outstanding journalists who left a lasting legacy to the world of magazine publication.