Deaths
Walter Minton
NEW YORK (AP) — Walter J. Minton, a publishing scion and risk taker with a self-described “nasty streak” who as head of G.P. Putnam’s Sons released works by Norman Mailer and Terry Southern among others and signed up Vladimir Nabokov’s scandalous “Lolita,” has died at age 96.
The son of longtime Putnam president Melville Minton, Walter Minton was in his early 30s when he inherited the position in 1955 after his father’s death and remained until he was forced out in 1978 by corporate parent MCA. (Putnam is now part of Penguin Random House). Minton presided over an era of profit and growth.