Jason Epstein, publishing editor and innovator, dead at 93

By HILLEL ITALIE
AP National Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Jason Epstein, a publishing innovator and bon vivant who helped put the classics in paperback, co-founded The New York Review of Books and worked with such novelists as E.L. Doctorow, Vladimir Nabokov and Philip Roth, has died. He was 93. Among the many books edited by Epstein: Doctorow’s Depression-era novel “Billy Bathgate,” Jane Jacobs’ classic of urban studies “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” and Norman Mailer’s CIA epic “Harlot’s Ghost.” Epstein admittedly passed over the occasional best-seller, although he was proud of rejecting Shirley MacLaine’s New Age favorite “Out on a Limb.”