His father, Robert, worked as a partner in the family textile business; his mother, Gladys (Shapiro), was a housewife.

[2] While working there, he saw the need for inexpensive, well-made paperbacks of the kinds of books that his classmates, many of them veterans studying on the GI Bill, were reading but could not afford to own in their hardcover editions.

[7] Epstein left Doubleday in 1958, frustrated at the company's refusal to publish Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel, Lolita.

[1] At Random House, he edited such writers as Jane Jacobs, Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, Gore Vidal, Vladimir Nabokov, E. L. Doctorow,[1] Michael Korda,[8] Benzion Netanyahu,[9] Peter Matthiessen,[10] and Paul Kennedy.

[11] He also worked with Ted Geisel, better known as Dr Seuss, who arrived with storyboards to recite "Green Eggs and Ham".

He had his list of distribution contacts from Anchor Books, and Robert Lowell invested $4,000 from his trust fund to get the company started.

[12] He later published The Reader's Catalogue of 40,000 titles available by mail order, an analog precursor of online book selling.

[14] Epstein predicted that the Espresso Book Machine will supplant the 500-year-old Gutenberg printing press technology.

[15][16][14] Epstein was the inaugural recipient of the National Book Award for Distinguished Service to American Letters in 1988.

He tells of: W. H. Auden delivering the manuscript of The Dyer's Hand in a torn overcoat and slippers; Dr. Seuss reciting Green Eggs and Ham to the staff; Terry Southern writing scenes for Dr. Strangelove on a wooden table in the basement; a diffident Andy Warhol bowing and scraping to Epstein; John O'Hare showing off his Rolls-Royce in the courtyard; and Ralph Ellison smoking a cigar in Epstein's office and using his hands to explain "how Thelonious Monk developed his chords.