Dan Frank (March 27, 1954May 24, 2021) was an American editorial director at
Pantheon Books
Pantheon Books is an American book publishing imprint with editorial independence. It is part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.Random House, Inc. Datamonitor Company Profiles Authority: Retrieved 6/20/2007, from EBSCO Host Business Source ...
.
Early life
Frank was born in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
to parents Joan () and John Frank. His mother "produced TV shows for Hallmark and was director of publicity for the nonprofit Central Park Conservancy" while his father "ran a travel agency."
When Frank was in high school, he began taking night classes in philosophy at
The New School
The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...
, auditing
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt (, , ; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a political philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor. She is widely considered to be one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century.
Arendt was born ...
's lectures and reading texts found on her syllabi. After graduating high school, he attended
Haverford College
Haverford College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Haverford, Pennsylvania. It was founded as a men's college in 1833 by members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), began accepting non-Quakers in 1849, and became coeducational ...
, where he received a degree in philosophy in 1976. Afterward, he earned a master's degree "from the interdisciplinary program the
Committee on Social Thought
The John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought is one of several PhD-granting committees at the University of Chicago. It was started in 1941 by historian John Ulric Nef along with economist Frank Knight, anthropologist Robert Redfield, and Univers ...
at the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
."
He attended Haverford College and received a master's degree from the University of Chicago.
While working as an editorial assistant at
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Harcourt () was an American publishing firm with a long history of publishing fiction and nonfiction for adults and children. The company was last based in San Diego, California, with editorial/sales/marketing/rights offices in New York City an ...
, Frank met a Lowy, whom he married in 1982.
Career
Viking Books
Frank served as the editorial director at Viking Books. During his time with Viking Books, Frank worked alongside James Gleick, publishing '' Chaos: Making a New Science,'' which became a best seller and critical success. This work "represented the sort of literary nonfiction (and fiction) that Dan would aspire to: well-informed, elegantly written, presenting complex subjects accessibly, helping readers enter and understand realms they had not known about before." Gleick continued to work with Frank throughout his career.
Pantheon Books
Frank began working at Pantheon Books in 1991 when many believe the world of publishing was on the decline, serving as the vice president and senior editor. Due to issues regarding budgeting and creative control, Pantheon had recently lost the company head, Andre Schiffrin, and many editors left with him.
From 1996 to 2020, Frank served as the editorial director, "setting the tone for the ublishinghouse and overseeing the list f potential publications" Under Frank's guidance, "Pantheon became well known as a publisher of narrative science, world literature, contemporary fiction, and graphic novels." Frank led Pantheon Books to begin a new era in book publishing with his interest in "sophisticated comics and graphic novels." By 2000, ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' named Pantheon the industry leader in graphic novels.
Pantheon authors have won two
Pulitzer Prizes
The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made hi ...
, as well as several
National Book Awards
The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors.
The Nat ...
,
National Book Critics Circle Awards
The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".Eisner Awards
The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, commonly shortened to the Eisner Awards, are prizes given for creative achievement in American comic books, sometimes referred to as the comics industry's equivalent of the Academy Awards. They are named in ...
.
Speaking of Frank's role at Pantheon, Reagan Arthur, executive vice president and publisher of Knopf, Pantheon, and Schocken, noted, "As important as the books he published and the authors he edited, Dan served as a mentor to younger colleagues, endlessly generous with his time and expertise."
Authors served
While working with Pantheon, Frank worked with various prestigious authors. The following is an incomplete list:
* Charles Baxter
*
Madison Smartt Bell
Madison Smartt Bell (born August 1, 1957, in Nashville, Tennessee) is an American novelist. While established as a writer by several early novels, he is especially known for his trilogy of novels about Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolut ...
*
Alain de Botton
Alain de Botton (; born 20 December 1969) is a Swiss-born British author and philosopher. His books discuss various contemporary subjects and themes, emphasizing philosophy's relevance to everyday life. He published ''Essays in Love'' (1993), w ...
*
David Eagleman
David Eagleman (born April 25, 1971) is an American neuroscientist, author, and science communicator. He teaches neuroscience at Stanford University and is CEO and co-founder of Neosensory, a company that develops devices for sensory substituti ...
*
Gretel Ehrlich
Gretel Ehrlich is an American travel writer, poet and essayist.
Biography
Born in 1946 in Santa Barbara, California, she studied at Bennington College and UCLA film school. She began to write full-time in 1978 while living on a Wyoming ranch ...
*
Joseph Ellis
Joseph John-Michael Ellis III (born July 18, 1943) is an American historian whose work focuses on the lives and times of the founders of the United States of America. '' American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson'' won a National Boo ...
*
James Fallows
James Mackenzie Fallows (born August 2, 1949) is an American writer and journalist. He is a former national correspondent for ''The Atlantic.'' His work has also appeared in ''Slate'', ''The New York Times Magazine'', ''The New York Review of Book ...
*
James Gleick
James Gleick (; born August 1, 1954) is an American author and historian of science whose work has chronicled the cultural impact of modern technology. Recognized for his writing about complex subjects through the techniques of narrative nonficti ...
*
Jonathan Haidt
Jonathan David Haidt (; born October 19, 1963) is an American social psychologist and author. He is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University Stern School of Business. His main areas of study are the psychology of ...
Susan Jacoby
Susan Jacoby (; born June 4, 1945) is an American author. Her 2008 book about American anti-intellectualism, ''The Age of American Unreason'', was a ''New York Times'' best seller. She is an atheist and a secularist. Jacoby graduated from Michiga ...
*
Ben Katchor
Ben Katchor (born November 19, 1951) is an American cartoonist and illustrator best known for the comic strip ''Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer''. He has contributed comics and drawings to ''The Forward'', ''The New Yorker,'' ''Metropoli ...
*
Daniel Kehlmann
Daniel Kehlmann (; born 13 January 1975) is a German-language novelist and playwright of both Austrian and German nationality.
*
Jill Lepore
Jill Lepore is an American historian and journalist. She is the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at ''The New Yorker'', where she has contributed since 2005. She writes about American ...
*
Janna Levin
Janna J. Levin (born 1967) is an American theoretical cosmologist and a professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard College. She earned a Bachelor of Science in astronomy and physics with a concentration in philosophy at Barnard College in 19 ...
*
Alan Lightman
Alan Paige Lightman is an American physicist, writer, and social entrepreneur. He has served on the faculties of Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is currently a Professor of the Practice of the Humanities a ...
Joseph Mitchell
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Cynthia Ozick
Cynthia Ozick (born April 17, 1928) is an American short story writer, novelist, and essayist.
Biography
Cynthia Ozick was born in New York City, the second of two children. She moved to the Bronx with her Belarusian-Jewish parents from Hlusk, ...
*
Maria Popova
Maria Popova ( bg, Мария Попова; born 28 July 1984) is a Bulgarian-born, American-based essayist, book author, poet, and writer of literary and arts commentary and cultural criticism that has found wide appeal both for her writing and ...
*
Oliver Sacks
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*
Marjane Satrapi
Marjane Satrapi (; fa, مرجان ساتراپی ; born 22 November 1969) is a French-Iranian graphic novelist, cartoonist, illustrator, film director, and children's book author. Her best-known works include the graphic novel ''Persepolis'' a ...
*
Orville Schell
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*
Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman (; born Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev Spiegelman on February 15, 1948) is an American cartoonist, editor, and comics advocate best known for his graphic novel ''Maus''. His work as co-editor on the comics magazines ''Arcade (comics maga ...
*
Charles Yu
Charles Chowkai Yu (born January 3, 1976) is an American writer. He is the author of the novels ''How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe'' and '' Interior Chinatown'', as well as the short-story collections ''Third Class Superhero'' ...
*
Ramachandra Guha
Ramachandra "Ram" Guha (born 29 April 1958) is an Indian historian, environmentalist, writer and public intellectual whose research interests include social, political, contemporary, environmental and cricket history, and the field of economics. ...
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital The NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital is a nonprofit academic medical center in New York City affiliated with two Ivy League medical schools, Cornell University and Columbia University. The hospital comprises seven distinct campuses located in the New Y ...
; he was 67. He is survived by his wife (Patty), as well as three sons (Jasper, Lucas and Cole) and a grandson.
Reagan Arthur, executive vice president and publisher of Knopf, Pantheon, and Schocken, announced Frank's death, noting "that Frank was so identified with the imprint it was known to some as 'Dantheon.'"