Robert Gottlieb

2022 saw the release of a documentary about the collaborations of Gottlieb and writer Robert Caro titled Turn Every Page. It was directed by Gottlieb's daughter, Lizzie Gottlieb. The title comes from advice from then-editor of Newsday, Alan Hathway, had given to Caro as a young reporter on "his first investigative assignment, Hathway 'looked at me for what I remember as a very long time … "Just remember", he said. "Turn every page. Never assume anything. Turn every goddamn page".'"

Gottlieb's autobiography, Avid Reader: A Life, was published in September 2016.

"Gottlieb is widely considered to be one of the greatest editors of the second half of the 20th century," is a claim written into the press release to promote Gottlieb's 2015 autobiography, Avid Reader: A Life.

Gottlieb has been a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Book Review, and has been the dance critic for The New York Observer since 1999. He is the author of biographies of George Balanchine, Sarah Bernhardt, and the family of Charles Dickens, as well as of a collection of his critical essays. A Certain Style, Gottlieb's lavishly illustrated book about the plastic handbags of which he was a major collector, was published by Alfred A. Knopf. He edited three major anthologies: Reading Jazz, Reading Dance, and (with Robert Kimball) Reading Lyrics.

In a 1994 interview with The Paris Review, Gottlieb described his need to "surrender" to a book. "The more you have surrendered," he said, "the more jarring its errors appear. I read a manuscript very quickly, the moment I get it. I usually won't use a pencil the first time through because I'm just reading for impressions. When I read the end, I'll call the writer and say, I think it's very fine (or whatever), but I think there are problems here and here. At that point I don't know why I think that—I just think it. Then I go back and read the manuscript again, more slowly, and I find and mark the places where I had negative reactions to try to figure out what's wrong. The second time through I think about solutions—maybe this needs expanding, maybe there's too much of this so it's blurring that."

In 1968, Gottlieb along with Nina Bourne and Anthony Schulte, moved to Alfred A. Knopf as editor-in-chief; soon after he became president. He left in 1987 to succeed William Shawn as editor of The New Yorker, staying in that position until 1992. After his departure from The New Yorker, Gottlieb returned to Alfred A. Knopf as editor ex officio.

Gottlieb joined Simon & Schuster in 1955 as an editorial assistant to Jack Goodman, the editor-in-chief. Within ten years he himself became the editor-in-chief. At that publisher, Gottlieb's most notable discovery, which he edited, was Catch-22, by the then-unknown Joseph Heller.

Gottlieb graduated from Columbia University in 1952, and then spent two years at Cambridge University before joining Simon & Schuster in 1955.

Gottlieb married Muriel Higgins in 1952; they had one child, Roger. In 1969, Gottlieb married Maria Tucci, an actress whose father, the novelist Niccolò Tucci, was one of Gottlieb's writers. They have two children: Lizzie Gottlieb, a film director, and Nicholas (Nicky), who is the subject of one of his sister's documentary films, Today's Man.

Robert Adams Gottlieb (born April 29, 1931) is an American writer and editor. He has been editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster, Alfred A. Knopf, and The New Yorker.

Robert Gottlieb was born to a Jewish family in New York City in 1931 and grew up in Manhattan. During his childhood, he "was your basic, garden-variety, ambitious, upwardly mobile, hard-working Jewish boy from Brooklyn. I was bound to go beyond my parents. It was simply the way things were." His middle name was given to him in honor of his uncle, Arthur Adams, who is now known to have been a Soviet spy.