Witty Slices Taken from the Big Apple; about Town - the New Yorker and the World It Made. by Ben Yagoda (Duckworth, Pounds 20). Reviewed by Ross Reyburn

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All news-stand copies of one special edition of the New Yorker magazine disappeared the day they appeared and when Albert Einstein tried to buy 1,000 copies, he was told they were all sold out.

Within a fortnight, a second-hand copy of this edition was bought for $18 at auction.

This extraordinary state of affairs arose when the magazine, famous for its humour, decided to devote an entire issue to John Hersey's account of the horrific bombing of Hiroshima.

Yagoda's book fails to match the vivid anecdotal flair of Brendan Gill's masterful, joyously illustrated account of his 40 years with the magazine, Here at the New Yorker, published in 1975.

But what it does provide is an authoritative, critical analysis of the magazine. His account of the Hiroshima decision offers an interesting insight into the clear-headed visionary thinking of the magazine's great editor Harold Ross.

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