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Bennett CerfBennett Cerf
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Session:         Page of 1029

Q:

Was this the first reference book that you'd done?

Cerf:

Well, we had done in the Modern Library a lot of smaller reference books, and we had initiated a Vest Pocket series, too: Vest Pocket German Dictionary, a Vest Pocket French one. They were really modest operations. We were learning.

Then we signed up Bergen Evans for a book on American usage, which has been a very important book on our list. Having plunged into the dictionary business, well, we just sat down and began planning new things, along similar lines.

Q:

Was Haas pleased on the way that it ended?

Cerf:

Oh, sure he was. I'm afraid Bob Haas was never a very good businessman. He was born rich. He also married a rich girl. But he had a genius for getting out of businesses just before they became wildly successful. He had been in the real estate business, which he got out of just before his firm made tremendous deals. Then he started the Book-of-the-Month Club with Harry Scherman and got a little bored with that and got out of that just before the Book-of-the-Month Club just expanded like crazy.

In fact, Harry Scherman, who is a wonderfully fine, honest, and decent man, did an almost unprecedented thing. The year after Mr. Haas had retired from the Book-of-the-Month Club, Mr. Scherman insisted on his accepting a very big check





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