Sol Stein, author who published James Baldwin, Che Guevara, dies at 92

Sol Stein, a best-selling novelist who later developed software programs for writers but was perhaps best known as the publisher of major works by James Baldwin and Che Guevara, died Sept. 19 at his home in Tarrytown, New York. He was 92.

He died of complications from dementia, said his wife, Edith Shapiro.

Stein had a varied career, beginning in the 1950s with the Voice of America, where he helped formulate anti-communist programming that was broadcast to dozens of countries around the world.

He also wrote plays and moved into publishing, first at Beacon Press, where in 1955 he edited Baldwin's "Notes of a Native Son," a collection of essays about the African American experience that became a literary classic.

Stein had known Baldwin since they were students at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx and staff members on the school literary journal.

"So much happened in our work together that his color disappeared, my color disappeared and it stayed that way for the rest of our lives," Stein told The New York Times in 2004.

"I was crazy about Jimmy's mother," Stein said. "She was my second mother. She struck me as colorblind. I never had the feeling I was the white kid visiting. I was Jimmy's friend."

In 2004, Stein wrote "Native Sons" about their friendship and the genesis of Baldwin's book. Stein included copies of dozens of letters he and Baldwin exchanged during the writing and editing of "Native Son."

"These letters, capturing the men at a pivotal moment in their careers and friendship," critic Wendy Smith wrote in Kirkus Reviews, "remind us that a cultural landmark like 'Notes of a Native Son' is also the product of a fallible, questing human being who misspelled words and worried about his relatives just like the rest of us."

After several years at Beacon, Stein formed an independent publishing company, Stein & Day, in 1962. His business partner and the corporate vice president was his wife at the time, Patricia Day. Over the next 25 years, Stein & Day published hundreds of books, including works by such wellknown figures as David Frost, Jack Higgins, Budd Schulberg, Marilyn Monroe and F. Lee Bailey. The firm's first major bestseller was "America America," an autobiographical 1962 novel by film director Elia Kazan, who later made it into a movie.

In 1968, Stein was caught up in a complex international scramble to publish the diaries of the charismatic Argentine-born revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara. After helping organize Fidel Castro's takeover of Cuba in the 1950s, Guevara sought to inspire revolutionary movements around the world.

He dropped out of sight for a few years before ending up in Bolivia, where he aimed to build a guerrilla network that would sweep across the South American continent. With help from the CIA, Bolivian military forces captured and killed Guevara in October 1967.

Among his belongings was a diary, which the Bolivian government seized, setting off a bidding war for publication rights. Castro released a truncated copy of the diary that made its way to Cuba, and questions about copyright caused several publishing houses to back away.

Competing versions appeared in magazines and a paperback edition, but in 1968 Stein & Day published "The Complete Bolivian Diaries of Che Guevara" after obtaining rights from the Bolivian government. The book detailed the travels, hopes and struggles of the revolutionary many people considered a martyr.