A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America - Softcover

Richardson, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 159558546X ISBN 13: 9781595585462

Publisher: The New Press, 2010

Synopsis

A Bomb in Every Issue recounts the rise and fall of Ramparts magazine, which, for nearly a decade in the 1960s, was the nation’s premier leftist publication, combining radical content, sophisticated design, and public relations savvy to shape political journalism for a generation. Featuring interviews with David Horowitz, Peter Collier, Adam Hochschild, Christopher Hitchens, Todd Gitlin, Robert Scheer, Warren Hinckle, Angela Davis, Kathleen Cleaver, Seymour Hersh, William F. Buckley, Noam Chomsky, Brit Hume, Bobby Seale, Howard Zinn, and others, A Bomb in Every Issue situates the magazine amidst student movements in Berkeley, the rise and fall of the Black Panthers in Oakland, and the acid-inflected Summer of Love in San Francisco while assessing the magazine’s impact on national media and politics.

About this title

From the Publisher

The rollicking story of Ramparts--the magazine that captured the zeitgeist of the '60s, repeatedly scooped the New York Times, brought the new left into American living rooms, and made an indelible imprint on American journalism

Advance Praise:
"Peter Richardson has done a brilliant job bringing to life the incredible story of Ramparts, a publication that changed journalism and the world it reported on. This book will become required reading for all those concerned about the current crisis in the world of news. A Bomb in Every Issue makes clear that Ramparts in its prime was a vortex of flamboyance and critical intelligence. Out of that maelstrom came reporting that truly changed America. What makes this book even better is that it has not ignored or downplayed the foibles of Ramparts' founders and chief architects. It is a cautionary tale told with economy that will be a touchstone for the new journalism, the new Ramparts of the twenty-first century."
--Lowell Bergman, professor of journalism, University of California, Berkeley, and a correspondent for PBS's Frontline

"It's a great delight to see this key chapter in the history of American journalism at last get the readable, judicious history it deserves. Ramparts touched the lives of far more people than its readers by paving the way for the rich universe of alternative media now open to us. Peter Richardson has told an important story, and told it well."
--Adam Hochschild, author of Half the Way Home and Bury the Chains

America's muckraking tradition stretches back to the 1690s--but no publication better represented it than Ramparts. In the 1960s, it helped set a generation on fire, tore away a veil of hypocrisy in public life, and set new standards in editorial and design quality. Richardson's tale brings the dead to life, and gives us a new understanding of how journalism changes the way we are and will be."
--Richard Parker, senior fellow, Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, Harvard University

About the Author

Peter Richardson is editorial director at PoliPointPress, chair of the California Studies Association, and a lecturer at San Francisco State University. His publications include American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams and numerous essays on literature, language, politics, and media. He lives in Marin County, California.

About this edition

• Publisher: The New Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 159558546X
• ISBN 13: 9781595585462
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256