Obits

Bob Worth, founder of Worth Publishers (now part of Macmillan Learning), has died at 92. He founded the company in 1966. Macmillan Learning CEO Susan Winslow writes, “Bob was one of the educational community greats. I have long been moved by his passion, empathy and deep commitment to advancing students’ learning that goes beyond words. As a young person entering this industry, he was an inspiration to me. He saw that things could be better and he set out to make a difference.”

James Beard–award winning author and notable editor of cookbooks and lifestyle books Roy Finamore, 70, died on May 6 after a brief illness. He was at an editor at Stewart, Tabori & Chang and then Clarkson Potter, where he published cookbooks by authors including Martha Stewart, Ina Garten, Diana Kennedy, Jean Anderson, Anne Willan, Lee Bailey, Carole Walter, Tom Colicchio, Bobby Flay, and Gale Gand. He won the James Beard Foundation Award for Best General Cookbook in 2007 for his second book as an author, TASTY: Get Great Food on the Table Every Day.

Founder and publisher/editor-in-chief of Harper San Francisco (now Harper One), Clayton Carlson, 83, died at home on April 20. Carlson led the relocation of the Harper & Row religion, philosophy and psychology departments from New York to San Francisco in 1976. Titles he published included talks by the Dalai Lama, Paulo Coelho’s ALCHEMIST, Melody Beattie’s CODEPENDENT, and Billy Graham’s memoir JUST AS I AM.

Michael Denneny, 80, died on April 12. He worked as an editor at the University of Chicago Press, Macmillan, St. Martin’s Press, and Crown, and published books including Randy Shilts’s And the Band Played On, Buckminster Fuller’s Critical Path, Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls, and Judith Thurman’s Isak Dinesen. The first openly gay editor at a major publishing house, Denneny was instrumental in publishing gay literature and founded Stonewall Inn Editions at St. Martin’s in 1987. He also founded Christopher Street magazine and wrote three books, including On Christopher Street: Life, Sex, and Death After Stonewall, which published in March.

Anne Perry, 84, died on April 10 in Los Angeles. Perry was the author of more than 100 novels, including the bestselling William Monk series and the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series, and won the Edgar Award in 2000 for her story “Heroes.” Perry’s editor, Ballantine executive editor Susanna Porter, said, “Ballantine Books has had the honor of being Anne Perry’s US publisher for over twenty years. Her novels have collectively spent many months on the New York Times and other national bestseller lists, American readers having embraced her clever and thought-provoking crime writing by the thousands. Anne in turn […]