We don’t get the New York Review of Books; three is our limit on magazines with New York in the title. But we do know that people sound smart quoting it. We also know that one of the co-founders of the magazine, Elizabeth Hardwick, died this weekend.

Like with every obituary in the Times, her death comes with a mini-history lesson. For those who forgot, the New York Review of Books was founded because of a newspaper strike:

It was the spring of 1963, during the 114-day newspaper strike, which had begun late the previous year. Mr. Epstein proposed that in the absence of The New York Times Book Review on Sundays, the time was perfect to introduce a new book review. The guests concurred. The next day, Mr. Lowell went to Mr. Epstein’s bank and took out a $4,000 loan, secured by his own trust fund. He then began to cajole his moneyed friends, including Blair Clark, the television news executive, to invest in the project. Shortly afterward, the first issue was dummied out on the Lowells’ dining-room table.

Don't feel intimated by the legacy of that strike. The stuff coming out in reaction to this strike will be just as enduring as the New York Review of Book, at least in the sense that YouTube clips don’t get taken down.