Hey everyone! It’s me, not delivering what I promised last week. Having a cold and staying home from the archive to keep my plague from spreading unfortunately cuts me off from accessing the fun stuff like old Playboy magazines and whathaveyou. Thankfully my other-other job at the public library grants me access to physical copies of old magazines in a more limited range, but in this case it’s right on brand because they have a large series of bound collections of Life from the WWII years. Life needs no introduction, as it was inarguably the most influential magazine of the 20th century. This week we’ll be … Continue reading Let’s Read Life Magazine from 1945!

Welcome to the second half of the WWII-era magazine review! Last week was a working-class general interest magazine from 1941, when America was on the brink of war and desperately itching for a reason to go. This week we’re looking at a year later in Harper’s Bazaar, July 1942. And what’s gone down in the meantime? Pearl Harbor has been attacked. Hitler is the Supreme Chancellor of Germany. Jews and other victims of hatred are being moved into concentration camps. Food, metal, gasoline, rubber, nylon, and almost everything else is being rationed for the troops. Shit’s bad. Real bad. Harper’s Bazaar has … Continue reading Let’s Read Harper’s Bazaar from 1942!

For this week and next week, I will be spotlighting the great era of American print journalism during World War II. I say “great” in part because of the outstanding quality of art, prose, and intellectualism that the magazines of this period flaunted. The rest of the greatness comes from the sheer volume of print media that the magazine publishers produced as part of the onslaught of home front propaganda. For every puff piece on Lana Turner’s silk pajamas, there’s a recipe for making your meatloaf as plain as possible to stretch your ration cards. There’s an ad for leg … Continue reading Let’s Read Liberty Magazine from 1941!