E-Book of the Week: Cult Magazines A to Z

Kemp, Earl Ortiz, Luis. Cult Magazines A to Z : A Compendium of Culturally Obsessive and Curiously Expressive Publications.  New York: NonStop Press, 2009.  219 p. 

 Exploring the subcultures of mid-20th-century America, editors Kemp and Ortiz have collected the work of 19 contributors (including themselves) that document the huge quantity of 'cult', or at least special-interest, magazines that thrived beneath the mainstream in the period between 1925 and 1990, prior to the rise of the Internet.  This collection reveals how thousands of these specialized magazines were produced, and how they attempted to gratify the fans of every fad, taste, obsession, and hush-hush desire. This guide reveals the scope and inclinations of the various publications' imaginative publishers and eccentric editors, as it goes behind the scenes of titles such as Amazing Stories, Doctor Death, Gee-Whiz, Jaybird, Phantom Detective, and True Thrills. Featuring full-color reproductions of hundreds of distinctive magazine cover images, this reference's backgrounds, histories, and essays offer a panoramic picture of a bygone era.

Previewed by John Breitmeyer.  Click here to read the book