As editor-in-chief and managing director of Pantheon Books, a Random House imprint where making money was never the main point, he published novels and books of cultural, social and political significance by an international array of writers including Jean-Paul Sartre, G??nter Grass, Michel Foucault, Simone de Beauvoir, Noam Chomsky, Anita Brookner, RD Laing and many others.