So you’re a person who has decided between the price of buying a decent used car or buying your own computer in 1993. You weigh your options and decide that you’re cool with still taking the bus for a while. … Continue reading Let’s Read Wired, September 1993!

We looked at a Seventeen from the 90s a little while ago, and it was a lot of fun – so let’s take a look at Seventeen from a far less female-empowered, far more pink-tinted and soft-focused world and see how things … Continue reading Let’s Read Seventeen, November 1962!

Ebony Magazine was launched in 1945 by John H. Johnson, with help from his wife Eunice Johnson. While it was not the first magazine published specifically for the African-American audience, it was the most successful and has run in print … Continue reading Let’s Read Ebony, October 1975!

Mad Magazine started out in 1952 as one of many new and radical titles pumped out of a floundering educational comic book company, tossed suddenly into the lap of the late founder’s son who never intended to be part of his … Continue reading Let’s Read Mad Magazine, October 1976!

Spin Magazine was founded in 1985 by Bob Guccione Jr., the son of the founder of Penthouse, and ran in print until 2012. The magazine was ostensibly created to keep up with the music scene, particularly the college rock, alternative, and … Continue reading Let’s Read Spin, May 1991!

Finding historical background on Western Family was harder than I thought it would be. For a magazine that boasts a circulation of over a million on the cover, there’s not much information out there on it.  It’s certainly a very conservative … Continue reading Let’s Read Western Family, May 1957!

Let’s check in and see how the wide wide world of sports journalism has developed since the last time we looked at Sports Illustrated. So what’s changed in a few years between 1960 and 1967? The presence of major league sports, … Continue reading Let’s Read Sports Illustrated, September 1967!

The lovely Future Ex-Mrs. Malcolm said it would be cool for me to do this, so I figured I’d give it a go. I recently had the good fortune to acquire three issues of The Journal of Materia Medica from April, July … Continue reading Let’s Read The Journal of Materia Medica, 1882

Circus began in 1969 as a pop music magazine, trending to whatever was hot on the scene at the time. After struggling for a few years, the magazine found its core audience in teenage metalhead boys in the late 70s and … Continue reading Let’s Read Circus, October 1984!

Popular Science began life as The Popular Science Monthly in 1872, by a blind science writer and lecturer who employed his wife, brother, and sister as editors and contributors with the help of their friends like Charles Darwin and Walt Whitman. … Continue reading Let’s Read Popular Science, April 1953!

Holiday was a travel and lifestyle magazine that ran from 1946 to 1977. More than just a thinly disguised travel brochure for passenger trains and tourist destinations, the magazine published pieces from the leading intellectual minds of the day such … Continue reading Let’s Read Holiday, October 1954!

Very little of Seventeen appeals to actual seventeen year olds, who at this point in their lives are taking the SAT, applying to college, holding down part time jobs, learning to drive, and other things that are a lot more prescient … Continue reading Let’s Read Seventeen Magazine, May 1992!

PC Magazine ran in print from 1982 to 2009, and lives on today as an exclusively online publication. Originally a very niche and crunchy magazine, as the audience of personal computing continued to widen so did the content, until it became … Continue reading Let’s Read PC Magazine, July 1995!

GQ (Gentlemen’s Quarterly) started in 1931 as Apparel Arts, a trade magazine that catered to clothing wholesalers, but it started to accumulate a following outside of the industry so dedicated that the publisher created Esquire magazine as a result. Between the 50s and … Continue reading Let’s Read GQ, September 1979!

Planète magazine and its little brother, Le Nouveau Planète, were French periodicals published between 1961 and 1971 by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier. Those two were the authors of a book called Le Matin des Magiciens (The Dawn of Magic … Continue reading Planète: Let’s Read a Crazy Old French Magazine

TeenSet was a short lived (1965-1969) music magazine that offered a disconcerting mix of puppy-love teen idols and clear-eyed journalism on the LA underground music scene. A name change to AUM (America’s Under-thirty Magazine) and last-ditch attempt at becoming a serious … Continue reading Let’s Read TeenSet, September 1967!

Disney Adventures magazine was the brainchild of Walt Disney Company executive Michael Lynton, launched in part to promote the Disney Afternoon programming block that was an instant fixture of the childhoods of countless 90s kids. While the feature content of the … Continue reading Let’s Read Disney Adventures, November 1990!

Internet research on the history of Modern Romances brought up scant info, but Dell Publishing has long established itself as a publisher of cheap thrills and pulpy reads since the 1920s and continues to print paperbacks under several imprints today. So … Continue reading Let’s Read Modern Romances, March 1965!

Sports Illustrated came into its own from a bumpy start in the 30s and 40s, selling a lifestyle of polo and yachting to a niche group of upper-class readers. After being sold to Time-Life, the magazine limped along until the … Continue reading Let’s Read Sports Illustrated, May 23 1960!

Let’s put some generations in perspective this week. This issue of Harper’s is all about the youth – a veritable album of youth! Covering parenting, babies, young children, and college-aged women (weirdly, teenagers are almost entirely skipped over – Elvis … Continue reading Let’s Read Harper’s Bazaar, August 1936!