E. B. White’s Ruminations on Life in the Late 1930s through 1943

It was like time-traveling listening to the audio version of “One Man’s Meat,” a collection of essays by E.B. White, one of the best wordsmiths of the 20th century, written between 1938 and 1943, mostly from his saltwater farmhouse in North Brooklin, Maine. When The New Yorker was founded in 1925, he submitted manuscripts to it, and the literary editor, Katharine Angell, was impressed. She urged publisher Harold Ross to hire White, but it took months for White, a shy man, to come into the office, finally agreeing to do so only on Thursdays. He continued to contribute to the magazine for the next six decades. Most of the essays in this book appeared first in The New Yorker or Harper’s. 

Incidentally, when White did come into the office, he and Katharine fell in love.