It is impossible to consider either the few successes or the many failures of the regional magazine in America apart from the career of Laurence W. Lane of Sunset, the transplanted Kansan who studied the American West with a scholar's eye and then grafted Sunset to the contours of the western topography and life-style. Lane was the founder of Lane Publishing Company, which is still the publisher of Sunset magazine, the Sunset Book series, and, more recently, Sunset films. He was remarkable, not only for the prosperity of his publishing ventures, but also for the stern integrity of his vision of the regional magazine as the faithful servant both of readers and advertisers.

Born in Horton, Kansas, on 5 March 1890, Lane was raised first in Illinois and then in Iowa by his mother, Estella Louise Lane. His father, William Earl Lane, died when Lane was two. Lane redeemed his...