Daniel Moses

Daniel Moses
May 1936 - September 2021
Daniel Moses, longtime editor-in-chief of Sierra Club Books, died peacefully at his home in Ojai on September 12 from three lung conditions caused by end-stage ankylosing spondylitis. He was 85. He graduated from the Bronx High School of Science and Cornell University, then studied dramatic literature in the graduate program at Columbia University. He became an editor at Prentice Hall and then at Simon & Schuster for many years, until he left to be editor-in-chief at Links Books and then at Bobbs-Merrill. He was active in the NYC chapter of Friends of SNCC during the civil rights movement and in Book Publishers for Social Responsibility during the Vietnam War. He also worked at the theater director Robert Wilson's Byrd Hoffman Foundation. In 1979 he moved to San Francisco to become editor-in-chief of Sierra Club Books, a position he retained until his retirement in 2006, except for an interim period in the mid-1990s when he founded and directed Earth Island Press at Earth Island Institute, founded by David Brower. In 1994 Daniel Moses was chosen to be the Green Party of California's candidate for Lt. Governor when they ran their first state-level slate (they stayed out of the Governor race that year). Two weeks before the general election, shock waves rumbled the California political landscape when the San Francisco Examiner endorsed Daniel Moses for Lt. Governor over the major-party candidates. When he retired in 2006 from Sierra Club Books, he moved with his wife from Half Moon Bay to Ojai. Daniel Moses was preceded in death by his first wife, Linda Chusid, and is survived by his wife of 33 years, Charlene Spretnak; his son Jay of San Francisco; his daughter, Julia (John) Wilber of Fillmore; his son David Moses of Los Angeles; his stepdaughter, Lissa Merkel of Los Angeles; three grandchildren, and a greatgranddaughter.