Includes chapters on The Port folio, Edward Bok and The American home, women's magazines, muckrakers, The Saturday evening post, farm magazines, The Reader's digest, The New Yorker, and "little magazines."

The twentieth century was the magazine century in many ways. Between 1900 and 2000, the number of magazines grew from about 3,000 to 17,815, a 593 percent increase, which exceeded population growth by 95 percent. The typical American read less than half a magazine per month in 1920, but by 2000 that figure had tripled. This book examines how and why magazines grew so rapidly. Structured chronologically by decade, it tells the stories of innovative...