Lilian Ross was a - veteran writer for The New Yorker. She, in fact, brought me to The New Yorker many years ago.

I had written a book called "Boston Boy" some years ago, and that took me from the time I could speak, I guess, in Boston through the time when I finally left to come to New York. That book had a number of sort of rites of passage for me.

Sandra Day O'Connor - once she said that there are - there were no public schools in America until the 18th century, and she overlooked my alma mater because we started - I say we - in 1635. And among the people who went there - and they're on - the walls in the auditorium, the names are: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Cotton Mather, Benjamin Franklin, except he split when he was 10 years old to go to work.

My chronology is terrible. [Work with William Shawn] must have some ago. It was after he was fired by Newhouse. After New - when Newhouse bought The New Yorker, he said in one of those grand press

Even on the cable network MSNBC, some of the strongest proponents of [Barack] Obama are now beginning to question, if I may use their words, their "deity."

At least they [people] showed the world we could elect a black president.

[Margot Hentoff] was an editor there for a time as well as a writer.