The New Yorker magazine is arguable America's most revered cultural institution. The best work of virtually every prose giant of the century first appeared in its pages. For more than 7 decades, it has been the embodiment of urban sophistication. This book tells the fascinating story of how a tiny humor magazine, founded in the Jazz Age on champagne vapors, grew into a literary enterprise of epic proportion. Yagoda made extensive use of the New Yorker's archives -- 3,000 boxes of correspondence & interoffice memos. Includes interviews with more than 50 people, including the late Joseph Mitchell, William Steig, Roger Angell, Calvin Trillin, Pauline Kael, John Updike, & Ann Beattie.