Readers are never quite sure what an editor does. Writers, without whom no magazine can live, have only a vague idea, and try to forget what little they know.
Readers are even more in the dark.
The answer is all of the above, a claim that can be doubled and redoubled with regard to Edward K. Thompson, who died in October at age 89. Ed Thompson was some kind of genius, and no one who ever worked for or with him will ever forget the experience. He was also, though we say it who perhaps shouldn't, one of the great editors of the last half-century. The record can be briefly stated. Moving from the Milwaukee Journal to Life in the late 1930s, he was its managing editor during the great years from 1949 to 1961, with time out during World War II to create a remarkable magazine called Impact for the Army Air Forces.