College and Research Libraries


Magazines in the Twentieth Century. By 
Theodore Peterson. 2d ed. Urbana, Il-
linois: University of Illinois Press, 1964. 
vi, 484 p. $7:50. (64-18668). 

An extensive volume about American 
magazines is of significance because these 
publications' mass audiences compare in 
size with those of TV, radio, and the films. 
General newspapers still depend primarily 
on a local, or at best, regional coverage. 

The pioneer work in the magazine field is 
Frank Luther Mott's A History of American 
Magazines (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard 
University Press, 1938-57) which covers 
the period from 1741 to 1905 in four vol-
umes. An approach with primarily social 
and economic emphasis was provided by 
James P. Wood's Magazines in the United 
States ( 2 ed.; New York: Ronald Press, 
1956). In this one-volume work the mag-
azine impact on public opinion, such as the 
crusades for political reform, and economic 
effects of greater coverage are well de-
scribed. Other books of note are Hoffman, 
Allen and Ulrich's The Little Magazine 
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 
1946) and Mary Noel's "Villain's Galore; 
the Heyday of the Popular Story Weekly" 
(New York: Macmillan, 1954). To round 
out the picture, the January 1962 Library 
Trends on "Current Trends in U.S. Period-
ical Publishing" with Helen M. Welch and 
Maurice F. Tauber as issue editors must be 
mentioned. 

Peterson's book had its beginnings as a 
1955 University of Illinois dissertation, 
"Consumer Magazines in the United States, 
1900-1950: A Social and Economic His-
tory." The following year this study ap-
peared in its first edition. Since 1957 Dr. 
Peterson has been dean of the University of 
Illinois college of journalism and commu-
nications. 

Why should there be a second edition 
of Magazines in the Twentieth Century in 
a period of some eight years? In addition 
to newcomers, there have been mergers and 
disappearances of magazines with more 
than a million circulation. In response to 
suggestions, treatment of the "expose" mag-
azines is included which, on the basis of 
circulation, would be hard to overlook. 

Book Reviews 
Unfortunately, the extensive bibliography 
of the first edition has been omitted in the 
second. 

Chapter headlines include: "The Birth of 
the Modern Magazine" (treats the shift 
from agrarian to an industrial economy, ad-
vances in printing, the effects of low prices, 
mass production, and mass distribution) ; 
"Advertising: Its Growth and Effects"; "The 
Expanding Magazine Market"; "The Eco-
nomic Structure of the Industry"; "The Log-
istics of Magazine Publishing" (includes 
the economic plight of the freelance au-
thor); "The Old Leaders That Died"; "The 
Troubled Giant" (Curtis Publishing Co.); 
"The Old Leaders That Survived"; "New 
Leaders: The Missionaries"; "New Leaders: 
The Merchants" (Conde N ast Publications, 
Inc.; Esquire, Inc.; Cowles Magazines and 
Broadcasting, Inc.; Fawcett Publications, 
Inc.; and the Dell Publishing Company); 
"Success by Imitation"; "Expansion by Com-
pression"; (includes treatment of Time and 
Life as well as the comic books); "Mag-
azines for Everybody"; "Magazines for Cul-
tural Minorities" (two broad types: literary 
and political); and finally, "Magazines, 
1900-64: An Assessment." 

There is a great temptation to place a 
comprehensive study such as this on the 
reference shelves where it is never read as 
a whole, but a large proportion of the gen-
eral public would find this book absorbing. 

Librarians have a very definite stake in 
periodicals. According to the latest United 
States Office of Education statistics, college 
and university libraries subscribed to 1,-
600,000 periodicals in the academic year 
1962/ 63. Following the analysis of book-
periodical-binding figures in the budgets 
from the American Library Directory (24th 
ed.; New York: R. R. Bowker Co. 1964), 
the acquisition of periodicals accounted for 
20 per cent of the totals for college and uni-
versity libraries. General periodicals are al-
so of great interest in public and school li-
braries. 

This publication will give librarians and 
journalists facts they need and general read-
ers background material which will fasci-
nate many.-Frank L. Schick and Herbert 
A. Carl, Washington, D.C. 

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