Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

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Christopher Lehmann-Haupt (born 1934) is an American journalist, critic and novelist who has worked in the field of books all of his professional career. He began as an editor for various New York City publishing houses, among them Holt, Rinehart and Winston and The Dial Press, from where he moved in 1965 to become an editor on The New York Times Book Review. In 1969, he was appointed senior Daily Book Reviewer for The New York Times, a position he held until 1995, when he became a regular daily book reviewer. From 1965 until 2000, he wrote more than 4,000 book reviews and articles, on every subject from trout fishing to Persian archaeology. In April 2000, he assumed the job of Chief Obituary Writer for The Times and wrote advanced obituaries and occasional daily obits until his retirement on June 31, 2006.

Since that time he has continued to write advance obits as a freelancer for The Times, as well as teach writing at the Marymount College Writing Center and College of Mount Saint Vincent in Riverdale, the Bronx, New York. He was just appointed the Editorial Director of Delphinium Books, a literary small press that publishes works of fiction.

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on June 14, 1934, Lehmann-Haupt was educated at the Ethical Culture Fieldston Schools, The Putney School, and Swarthmore College. He did postgraduate work at the Yale University School of Drama, from which he graduated in 1959 with a Master of Fine Arts degree in theater history and dramatic criticism.

Along with several dozen then-prominent writers and political activists (including James Baldwin, Jules Feiffer, Norman Mailer, Susan Sontag and Gloria Steinem) he signed the Violence in Oakland essay, condemning police violence against Black Panther Party members in Oakland, California on April 6, 1968 (violence that included the killing of 17-year-old Bobby Hutton and the wounding of Eldridge Cleaver).

Lehmann-Haupt has taught and lectured widely and has written articles on a variety of subjects, including fly-fishing and bluegrass banjo-picking, two of his occasional avocations. His first book, Me and Joe DiMaggio: A Baseball Fan Goes in Search of His Gods, was published in 1986 by Simon & Schuster. His first novel, A Crooked Man, was published by Simon & Schuster in 1995. His second novel, The Mad Cook of Pymatuning was published by Simon & Schuster in the fall of 2005. He is now at work on a memoir of a year he spent living in Berlin, Germany, from 1947 until 1948.

Lehmann-Haupt lives with his wife, the writer Natalie Robins, in the Riverdale section of The Bronx.^[1]