The Magazine Century: American Magazines since 1900

Abstract

David E. Sumner's new history of magazines in the United States is both descriptive and theoretical. It provides an overview of magazines from the twentieth century through the digital age, pulling together information on a wide range of titles. Sumner, a professor of journalism at Ball State University, has chosen to focus on consumer magazines (mostly titles that still exist) and innovative publishers and editors. Sumner lays out his general framework in the first chapter (with the remaining chapters intended to support his thesis and provide description). First, he posits that twentieth-century mass media inventions such as radio, movies, and television actually created an appetite for more information, thus expanding demand for magazines, albeit for special interest journals; general interest magazines were hurt over the course of the century. Second, as advertisers paid an increasing proportion of magazine costs, the medium became affordable for a larger number of consumers. However,...