10 (or more) Memorable Magazine Articles from the 20th Century
Submitted by wheat on Tue, 02/20/2001 - 09:59
Tags:
- Esquire, Sept., 1977: Inside Yale's Skull & Bones Society
- Ibid., Article on Princeton Eating Clubs
- Esquire ca. 1978, Article on Mary Tyler Moore and the In-Between Generation
- New England Journal of Medicine ca. 1980 -- letter from a New Hampshire jogging physician on how to treat frostbite penis
- Fast Company Vol. 1 No. 1 --jwz@netscape at work
- Sports Illustrated profile early 1990s on a Utah hardware juggler
- Life's Bourke-White pictorial on the Hoover Dam
- Harvard Lampoon parody of Time ca. 1969, inside cover ad for the AMC Hornet
- National Lampoon Stupid Issue (summer '75?) fake SAT
- Weekend Magazine 1973-74 article on cryogenics
- Esquire (1983?) article by Tom Wolfe on Silicon Valley and the importance of lunch
- Sara Davidson article in Rolling Stone (Cheap Trick or F Mac on cover) on Israel in the shadow of the Egypt/Sinai Peace Treaty
- Ms from 1972/73 -- Gloria Steinem : "If Men Could Menstruate"
- New York, mid-70s -- the article that inspired Saturday Night Fever. Wedding receptions and cruise ship nightclubs would never be the same afterwards.
- New Times, 1976 (?): The Malling of America
- Every Rolling Stone article on Karen Silkwood
- Robert Morris's Chinese Food watchdog fabrication in the New Republic
- Also, watching the New Republic's editorial staff debate Nicaragua during the Reagan years
- Playboy 1973/74 interview with O. J., in which the juice says he and his buds liked to get drunk on a Friday night and beat up a few guys.
Author Comments:
This is all from memory, and I'll probably come up
with a few more as I come back to this. The Weekend
article is significant because my English teacher
used it to show us how we can read between the lines
of an allegedly objective piece of journalism
to determine how the writer really felt. And
the NEJM citation isn't made up -- my stepfather
subscribed, and there was always a copy to read
over breakfast. I read the first account of AIDS
in 1982 in there as well, which should be on that list as well...
I haven't heard of most of these articles, but agree with your mention of Tom Wolfe and the Rolling Stone's Karen Silkwood articles. RS has published some of the greatest journalism of the last 20 years. Have you read much Hunter S. Thompson? His "The Kentucky Derby is Sick and Depraved" is one of his best, and the article he wrote on the Roxanne Pulitzer divorce trial in Palm Beach, Florida is hysterical- I can't remember the name of that one.
Plenty of the above articles have been
reprinted. RS puts out an anthology every
few years, always worth getting, esp. from
your local library. Esquire should as well,
but I don't know why they don't. I used to
buy old issues for 10c, rip out the fiction
and any other interesting articles, and give
the full-page fashion ads of guys wearing
leisure suits to my punk-rock-loving,
fashion-fanatic friend for her to laugh at.