Alice Mayhew

Mayhew has worked at Simon & Schuster since at least the mid 1970s.

According to The New York Times, books edited by Mayhew have made news through seven presidencies.

Mayhew is well-known for working with authors to create narrative or creative nonfiction works, especially those focused on history, politics and Washington, D.C.

While Mayhew did not invent the Washington narrative genre, she helped popularize it in 1974 with the publication of All the President's Men. Richard E. Snyder bought the book for Simon & Schuster and Mayhew was the editor. The book's narrative was less about Watergate and more about Woodward and Bernstein's journalistic research and uncovering of the story. According to Michael Korda in his biography, this book changed America and played a major role in bringing down President Richard Nixon. More importantly, Korda wrote, "it transformed book publishing into a red-hot part of the media" and put Simon & Schuster on the "map as a major publishing force."

Attorney, Robert Barnett, who has represented a number of her clients, described this style to The New York Times, "She's great at taking things that are in the daily reporting cycle and putting them into book form with new material that goes beyond what you get daily. These are books that look back, but not years later." Mayhew is known to be miticulous about creating narrative and finding themes in the books she edits. In the same article, author Steven Brill, describes how Mayhew gave him a copy of a book on the Titanic while he was working on his book, The Teamsters. When Brill complained that the Titanic didn't have anything to do with Teamsters, Mayhew told him, "Think of this as a narrative form."

In 2008, it was reported that the then-71-year-old Mayhew continues to acquire and edit books and was partnering once again with Bob Woodward on the book, The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006–2008.

In later years, Mayhew has come under some criticism for delegating editing, having two well-known authors be accused of plagiarism (Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose), and producing popular history books with little to no sourcing.

in 2014, Simon & Schuster celebrated their 90th anniversary with a list of the staff's favorite 90 titles published during those years. 29 titles on the list had been edited by Mayhew including Our Bodies, Our Selves.

Not much is known about Mayhew's personal biography. She has been described as a diminutive woman with a raspy voice and is known to be tough and rigorous.

• Bob Woodward
• Carl Bernstein
• David Brooks
• David Maraniss
• Diane McWhorter
• Doris Kearns Goodwin
• Evan Thomas
• Frances FitzGerald
• Garry Wills
• Harold Holzer
• J. Anthony Lukas
• James B. Stewart
• Jimmy Carter
• Richard Cohen
• Richard Reeves
• Robert Lindsey
• Robert G. Kaiser
• Ron Suskind
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg
• Sally Bedell Smith
• Stephen E. Ambrose
• Steven Brill
• Taylor Branch
• Walter Isaacson