Ray Long has been called the editor's editor. A speed reader who by his own estimation consumed nearly three hundred million words in search of the most palatable reading for American tastes, he was renowned for exhibiting uncanny precision in satisfying those tastes. As president of Cosmopolitan under owner William Randolph Hearst, Long became the highest-paid magazine editor of his day, and his regular contributors made up a virtual Who's Who of novelists and short-story writers of the early twentieth century.

Long was widely known for the brevity and precision of his communications. He owned five automobiles but did not drive any of them for fear of having an accident. His forty imported suits were all tailored to be too small for him, lest he become overweight. He loved cigarettes, fish chowder, and Scotch, and Irvin S. Cobb called him the greatest poker player in the world. Above...