Last one of the year.
Sonny Mehta, book guy.
He published the work of nine Nobel literature laureates, including Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Remains of the Day” (1989), and of winners of Pulitzer and Booker prizes and National Book Awards; memoirs by former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, former Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, and Pope John Paul II; and new translations of Tolstoy, Thomas Mann and Albert Camus.
Mr. Mehta also published popular books by Toni Morrison, John Updike, Anne Rice, John le Carré, P.D. James and Gabriel García Márquez; Geoffrey Ward’s companion to Ken Burns’s PBS series “The Civil War”; Michael Crichton’s “Jurassic Park”; Stieg Larsson’s Dragon Tattoo trilogy; and the work of many important French, German, Italian, Spanish, African and Asian writers.
Gen. Paul X. Kelley, former commandant of the United States Marines.
He completed two tours in Vietnam, as a battalion commander in the 1960s and later as a regimental commander, commanding and bringing home the last Marine combat unit to leave Vietnam, in 1971. His combat decorations included the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and two Legions of Merit. After returning to civilian life he saw to it that other veterans were honored, serving two stints as chairman of the American Battle Monuments Commission.
Early in his career he had served on the Sixth Fleet’s flagship in the Mediterranean, and in 1960 and 1961 he trained as a commando with the British Royal Marines and deployed with them to Aden, followed by Singapore, Malaya and Borneo.
The Beirut bombing took place four months into his time as commandant.
“When you see 144 caskets on an airplane,” he later said, as quoted by Marine Corps Times, “it will have an impact on you for the rest of your life.”
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