Early Life, Education and Marriage
Janeway was born Eliot Jacobstein in New York City on January 1, 1913, the son of Jewish parents Meyer Joseph Jacobstein and the former Fanny Siff. Later Elliot kept private his heritage and religion, with the assistance of those around him—he never acknowledged to others his Jewish religion, culture or heritage. His mother had two nameplates for the buzzer panel in the lobby of her apartment house, Jacobstein and Janeway, and changed them depending on whom she was expecting.
He majored in economics at Cornell University, graduating at the age of 19, and did graduate work at the London School of Economics in the early 1930s, where he was briefly a member of the British Communist Party. While he did not consistently champion any particular branch of economic theory, his classic economic history and first book, Struggle for Survival, chronicled the Roosevelt administration's World War II mobilization and hyperactive Keynesian fiscal policy.
In 1938 Janeway married the former Elizabeth Hall. His wife, as Elizabeth Janeway, became a noteworthy novelist and essayist. They had two sons, Michael C. Janeway, a former editor of the Boston Globe and dean of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, and William H. Janeway, a vice chairman until 2006 at Warburg Pincus, a private equity firm. Michael also served as a special assistant to U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and is currently a professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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