Pockell was born on June 19, 1942, in
Norwalk, Connecticut and graduated from
Columbia University in 1964. Pockell worked at
St. Martin's Press,
Doubleday and the
Book-of-the-Month Club before joining
Warner Books, which became
Grand Central Publishing. During his career, he edited works for a diverse group of authors from novelists
Donald Westlake and
Anna Porter to the physicist
Leonard Mlodinow to the former
Whitewater controversy prosecutor
Ken Starr to the critic
Harold Bloom to the actor and children's writer
John Lithgow. He was also a colleague of
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis at Doubleday. He was also an editor of the
Avant-Garde magazine. He died on July 26, 2010, at 68 years old. == References ==