Few American publishers in the twentieth century achieved the success or international reputation Henry R. Luce did during his sixty-eight years. A controversial yet influential figure, Luce is best remembered as founder of Time, Fortune, Life, Sports Illustrated, and Time-Life Books. Herbert R. Mayes, editor at large of Saturday Review, said of his contemporary: "No man in our time made as forceful an impact on magazine journalism as he did."

Henry Robinson Luce was born on 3 April 1898 in Tengchow, China, where his parents, Henry Winters and Elizabeth Root Luce, were American Presbyterian missionaries and educators. His extraordinary background helped shape his lifelong interest in theology, Christianity, and Far Eastern affairs. These concerns often made their way into the content of his magazines. Luce was an avid reader all his life, and by the time he went at the age of fifteen to the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut...