As a senior editor at Warner Books, he was responsible for the huge publishing success of sex therapist and author Dr. Ruth Westheimer, which she writes about in her autobiography, All in a Lifetime (2001).
In 1956 he edited the humor anthology, The Wild Reader (Ballantine), featuring essays, poems and satirical pieces by Robert Benchley, Art Buchwald, Tom Lehrer, John Lardner, Shepherd Mead, Ogden Nash, S.J.
The screenplay of Roger Vadim's Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1959) was translated by Shir-Cliff for publication by Ballantine in 1962.
He also was the co-translator with Oscar De Liso of the screenplay for Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (Ballantine, 1961).
In the early 1980s, when he was editor-in-chief of Warner Books, Shir-Cliff commented on the publishing recession and lower reprint prices: Until his recent retirement, Shir-Cliff was an agent handling such books as John R. Dann's Song of the Earth (2006).