Volume 15, Number 7 · October 22, 1970
Just Plain Bill
By Joseph Epstein
The Lives of William Benton
by Sidney Hyman
Chicago, 626 pp., $10.00
The life of William Benton, former United States Senator from Connecticut, American Ambassador to UNESCO, and the first man to receive the University of Chicago's William Benton Distinguished Service Medal, has one main point of interest: that in America there still isn't much that money can't buy. Among other things, Benton's money has helped bring him political office as well as the services of politicians as distinguished as Adlai Stevenson and Hubert Humphrey—both of whom (Humphrey currently) have taken ample pay for modest work from the Encyclopaedia Britannica Corporation, which Benton owns. It has also paid for the services of intellectuals of every stamp and discipline, as well as educators of the stature of Robert Hutchins, a once impressive man who today languishes in his Santa Barbara Valhalla, in endless dialogue with a tape recorder. Yet money has not been able to buy Benton the one thing he has all his life craved more than anything else—distinction for himself.
Review, 4974 words
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