SOURCE: "The New Yorker's Golden Age," in The New Republic, Vol. 140, No. 26, June 29, 1959, pp. 19-20.

In the following review of James Thurber's The Years with Ross, Salmon reflects on what he considers the "golden age" of the New Yorker.

An over-zealous younger editor of The New Yorker could, if he tried, find material for at least half a dozen of that magazine's "Newsbreaks" in James Thurber's The Years With Ross. There are obvious candidates for the "Forgetful Authors" Department and others that could be twisted into one of the "Infatuation With the Sound of" Series. And one shudders to think what the current crop of the magazine's book reviewers could say about Thurber's organization, which has all of the faults that are frequently to be found in a book that derives from a series of articles originating in a magazine—in this case in The Atlantic. Such a...