Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber (born 1924) excelled as a journalist and writer on public affairs. His efforts to revive the Radical-Socialist Party in France succeeded temporarily, but he discovered that one cannot breathe life into moribund entities.

Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber was born on February 13, 1924. His parents, Emile Servan-Schreiber and Denise, née Bresard, lived in the fashionable 16th arrondissement of Paris. His father, in partnership with his uncle, had founded Les Echos, the first financial newspaper of France, and it might be said that Jean-Jacques was born to become a journalist. He carried out his secondary studies at the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly in Paris and graduated from the Lycée de Grenoble. He then returned to Paris, where he entered the Ecole Polytechnique, one of the grandes écoles that were the cradles of France's intellectual elite. In 1947 he graduated and also married Madeleine Chapsal on September 18. That marriage...