[2] His parents met in a garment factory, later running a tailors and, his father, a liquor store in Connecticut.
[2] Dystel was admitted to New York University on a track scholarship, working as a typesetter for The Times.
He left the magazine in 1942 to serve in United States Office of War Information where he worked on psychological warfare.
For his service, he won a Medal of Freedom for creating anti-Nazi pamphlets distributed in occupied France that were "valuable factors in reducing the enemy’s will to resist.
[3] During this period he also worked as an executive for Gardner Cowles on their Quick news weekly, and became editor of Flair magazine in 1950.
He pursued a strategy of publishing cheap, portable versions of classic books in paperback form, targeting the school market.
[2] The Bantam edition sold a half million copies a year, reaching 46 printings by 1978.
When the Warren Commission Report on John F. Kennedy's assassination came out in 1964, Bantam got the complete text into production in 80 hours.
Later books in the series Pope Paul VI's 1965 trip to the United States and the 1969 Moon landing.
Jaws by Peter Benchley (1974), already a fast seller, set industry sales records by hitting 6 million copies sold in less than two years when Steven Spielberg's 1975 movie version came out.
By that time Bantam was the largest publisher of paperbacks, had over 15% of the market, and exceeded US$100 million in yearly sales.