One uncle was a director and producer, another a director. His father was a world-famous art director. His Auntie Merle was Merle Oberon. Educated in America, Switzerland, France and England, Korda left Oxford to lend a humanitarian hand in Budapest during the 1956 Hungarian revolution. The experience convinced him that his future lay in America, and in 1957 he went to New York.
Korda speed reads, a big asset for a book editor.
He would take home piles of manuscripts, sending nearly all to the reject heap the next morning. Editing a book isn't commas, periods and spelling. The top book editors, finding something worthwhile in a manuscript, help the author develop the story, cut, paste and interweave, condensing chapters into sentences, expanding sentences into chapters. He calls his rise to the top luck, but it included a good measure of insight, intuition and making the breaks happen. The whole book is like that.