A magazine is a living thing. The child that Briton Hadden and Henry Luce brought into the world in March 1923 was squally, bratty, brash. The new smart aleck--its voice distinctive, sophomoric, self-assured--thrived, almost from the start: born lucky. The magazine sailed through the 1920s as if the decade were a breezy shakedown cruise.
But the '20s ended traumatically, for almost everyone. In 1929 Hadden came down with a strep infection that reached his heart and killed him at age 31. Luce was left to carry on alone. The stock market crashed a few months later.
And in the years that...
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