Silvers to be its editor along with Epstein's wife, Barbara. The New York Review of Books was a journal dedicated to serious reviewing of books. He had his list of distribution contacts from Anchor Books, and Robert Lowell invested $4,000 dollars from his trust fund to get the company started. The first issue came out on February 1, 1963. It sold out and 2,000 letters arrived urging them to continue. Although he retired in 1999, he continued to be affiliated with the publisher and edited books into his eighties. In 1979, Epstein took up and forwarded the critic Edmund Wilson's concept for the Library of America, well-made, reliable editions of important American writers similar to the French Pleiade editions. With the support of the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the first volumes were published in 1982. He later published The Reader's Catalogue of 40,000 titles available by mail order, an analog precursor of online book selling. In 2004, he co-founded On Demand Books, marketer of the Espresso Book Machine, which reproduces a paperback book from a digital file in a few minutes. Epstein predicted that the Espresso Book Machine will supplant the 500-year-old Gutenberg printing press technology. Awards Epstein was the inaugural recipient of the National Book Award for Distinguished Service to American Letters in 1988. He was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award of the National Book Critics Circle in 2001, before being conferred the Philolexian Award for Distinguished Literary Achievement six years later. He also received the Curtis Benjamin Award of the Association of American Publishers for Creative Publishing. Publications His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, and Condé Nast Traveler, among other publications. He is the author of the following books: Book Business: Publishing Past, Present and Future. W. W. Norton & Company (2001) Eating: A Memoir. A. A. Knopf (2010) East Hampton: A History and Guide (with Elizabeth Barlow) Random House (1985) The Great Conspiracy Trial. Random House (1970) In his book, Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future, Epstein writes about working in the New York offices of Random House. He tells of: W. H. Auden delivering the manuscript of The Dyer's Hand in a torn overcoat and slippers; Dr. Seuss reciting Green Eggs and Ham to the staff; Terry Southern writing scenes for Dr. Strangelove on a wooden table