Though many a U.S. publisher would have mortgaged his mother to buy Svetlana Allilueva Stalina's memoirs, Manhattan's genteel Harper & Row won the prize without even trying. Svetlana's lawyer, Edward S. Greenbaum, simply phoned his old friend Cass Canfield, Harper's chairman. The motive, though, was something more than friendship. What helps Harper to beat all competition for big books by big names is a secret weapon named Evan Welling Thomas 2nd—the amiably persistent editor who has polished more books by important public figures than anyone else in publishing.
In his 22 years at Harper, Executive Vice President Thomas, 46, has carved a unique niche in hard-cover journalism. To Svetlana's memoirs, Thomas can add such glittering editorial credits as Maxwell Taylor's The Uncertain Trumpet, Matthew Ridgway's Soldier, John Gardner's Excellence, Chester Bowles's Ambassador's Report, Merriman Smith's Thank You, Mr. President, William Attwood's The Reds and The Blacks, Theodore Sorensen's Kennedy and William Manchester's The Death of a President. Only as a sideline does Thomas edit a few novelists, including John Cheever. As he sees it, "there's something romantic about people dedicated to public service."
Sweet & Sour. Son of Norman Thomas, America's foremost Socialist and perennial presidential candidate, Thomas quit Princeton in 1941 to drive an ambulance in North Africa for the American Field Service, later served aboard a U.S. Navy LST in the Atlantic.
In his first effort as a bright young Harper editor after the war, Thomas edited Coral Comes High, a Pacific battle memoir by Marine Captain George P. Hunt, now LIFE'S managing editor. Ever since, Thomas has tirelessly pursued "instant history." Once he decides a man is worth a book, Thomas never lets him forget it. Well before the Kennedy assassination, he encouraged Theodore Sorensen to write a book. "When Sorensen finally decided to leave the White House," he says, "I was sitting on his doorstep."
Like the late Maxwell E. Perkins, his editing idol, Thomas is famous for close rapport with his authors: "Some you get to know so well that you are aware of what they are going to say before you read their manuscripts." In the Manchester dispute, Thomas learned that rapport can sometimes turn sour. In 1955, Thomas helped persuade a bedridden Senator John Kennedy to turn a couple of his historical essays into a book, Profiles in Courage. He later edited Bobby Kennedy's account of his experiences with the McClellan crime committee investigations, The Enemy Within. But after the President's death, the family got touchier. When Thomas submitted Paul Fay's The Pleasure of His Company for their scrutiny, they demanded all sorts of changes. "Jackie was really the editor," recalls Thomas.