One of the most prolific authors in the history of history's most widely read magazine, The Reader's Digest, award winning Roving Editor John G. Hubbell, recalls the adventures and thrills of four exciting decades of writing for an immense worldwide audience. One of the greatest thrills, he says, was hearing the founding Editor-in-Chief, the legendary DeWitt Wallace, instruct him on the day he brought him aboard to go wherever he had to go to find the information he needed for a story; "if you have to go to Timbuktu to get a paragraph to make a story right, you don't have to ask anyone's permission. Just be sure that when you bring in a story that it is definitive, that it contains everything that is worth knowing about the subject." Armed with that charge, Hubbell takes his reader where no reporter had gone before: *Through the Strategic Air Command's survival training program in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. *Through the training tank at the U.S. Navy's Submarine Training School, a ten-story-high silo filled with a quarter million gallons of water in which hopeful undersea warriors must prove they are not claustrophobic, and learn how to avoid a lung-destroying pulmonary embolism while escaping a downed boat. *On a realistic orbital flight around the world on NASA's fantastic space flight simulator. *On an exciting ride on the Navy's first nuclear-powered attack submarine. *To the discovery of a newly developing U.S. Army group called "Special Forces," which the world will soon come to know as "The Green Berets." *To the discovery of an until-then supersecret six-year-old Navy group called SEALs. *Through an objectively detailed investigation of the Kennedy Administration's behavior during the Cuban Missile Crisis. *To southeastern Spain to find the facts when the U.S. loses a hydrogen bomb. *To the facts about the Johnson Administration's conduct of the Vietnam War. *To the facts about the alleged "peace" that has obtained in Korea since the end of the Korean War, and about the North Korean seizure of the U.S.S. Pueblo and the Court of Inquiry that followed. *To the details of the American Prisoner of War Experience in Vietnam, in a work that the Washington Post characterized as "the standard book on the subject." If you were one of the millions who enjoyed DeWitt Wallace's Reader's Digest, you'll love "Writing for Wally."
About the Author: Graduating from a top tier School off Journalism in 1949, John Hubbell promptly turned down a "good" job as a reporter for a good newspaper in a "nice" town, took a job as a billing clerk that "paid me so well that I sometimes had to hitchhike to or from work and get lunch out of vending machines," and looked for a chance to work his way into the world of major league magazine journalism. "That," he explains, "was where the glory and the money was, just as today it's in TV journalism." Soon enough he found himself sitting in the office of DeWitt Wallace, the legendary founding Editor-in Chief of The Reader's Digest, history's most successful journalistic enterprise, who praised his work and hired him, instructing him that "if you have to go to Timbuktu to get a paragraph to make a story right, you don't have to ask anyone's, permission." In the 40-plus following years he produced approximately 140 Digest pieces, including a book he co-authored on the Cuban Missile Crisis, wrote another depicting the American prisoner of war experience in Vietnam that the Washington Post characterized as "the standard book on the subject"; and a book-length feature that won him the Sigma Delta Chi Professional Journalism Society's Distinguished Service Award for Magazine Reporting. In "Writing for Wally," Hubbell recalls growing up in northern New Jersey, where he deliberately "flunked" kindergarten, Atlanta, Richmond and Minneapolis, which he reached at age 12 and where, at the urging of DeWitt Wallace, he has happily lived for the rest of his life. With the love of his life, his wife, Katherine, he has produced nine children, who (so far) have produced 27 grandchildren, who have (so far) produced two great grandchildren. "A houseful of children," he says, "is a houseful of laughs." Accordingly, he wrote many hilarious family humor pieces which were hugely popular with the Digest's immense audience. Born in New York City, Hubbell was the youngest of four children born to Lester S. and Margaret Malia Hubbell. His father's abilities as a sales manager resulted in frequent transfers, thus his early education occurred in five different locales. He served in the Navy late inWorld War II and never achieved the status of either of his two older brothers, one of whom became an admiral, the other a captain. His sister, Peggy, died in 1969. Hubbell retired in 1993. He continues to live happily with his wife in Minnetonka, Minnesota, among many of his "kids and grandkids."