author
Edward William Bok
1863–1930
An immigrant office boy who became one of America’s most influential magazine editors, he helped shape popular ideas about home life, culture, and reform. His Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography tells that rise with unusual energy and candor.
4 Audiobooks
A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After
by Edward William Bok
The Americanization of Edward Bok The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After
by Edward William Bok
Successward: A Young Man's Book for Young Men
by Edward William Bok
The Young Man in Business
by Edward William Bok
About the author
Born in Den Helder in the Netherlands in 1863, Edward William Bok moved to the United States as a child and built his career with remarkable speed. After early work in offices and journalism, he became editor of Ladies' Home Journal in 1889 and led it for three decades.
During those years, he became known as an innovative editor who influenced American middle-class life well beyond the magazine page. Sources describe him as a major figure in periodical journalism for women, and his work also reached into housing, civic improvement, and public taste.
Bok later wrote The Americanization of Edward Bok, the autobiography that won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography. He is also remembered for creating Bok Tower Gardens in Florida, a lasting expression of his belief that life should leave the world "better or more beautiful."