Field Enterprises was a private holding company founded on August 31, 1944, by Marshall Field III and others whose main asset was the Chicago Sun. That same year the company acquired the book publishers Simon & Schuster and Pocket Books. It also operated a syndicate, Field Newspaper Syndicate, whose most popular offering was the comic strip Steve Canyon. Comic-strip historian Allan Holtz has written regarding the origins of the syndicate and its relationship to the rest of the company: At some point, Field Newspaper Syndicate changed its name to Chicago Sun-Times Syndicate.