“Roger W. Straus Jr., the brash and opinionated grandee who presided for nearly six decades over the book-publishing company that bore his name, the last surviving representative of the age of independent houses owned privately by gentlemen of literary taste, died Tuesday at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. He was 87 and lived in Manhattan… With its distinguished list of authors and its course set almost entirely at the proprietor’s discretion, Farrar, Straus & Giroux — as it was known for much of its existence — approached uniqueness as the conglomeration boom swept through the publishing trade in the 1960’s and 70’s.”