American Heritage (magazine)

Last updated

American Heritage
American Heritage logo.jpg
American Heritage, Spring 2018.jpg
Cover of the Spring 2018 issue featuring United States President William McKinley
Editor-in-chief Edwin S. Grosvenor
Categories American history
FrequencyQuarterly
Circulation 160,000
Founded1947
Final issue2013 (print; relaunched digitally in 2017)
CompanyAmerican Heritage Publishing Company
Country United States
Based in Rockville, Maryland
LanguageEnglish
Website www.americanheritage.com
ISSN 0002-8738

American Heritage is a magazine dedicated to covering the history of the United States for a mainstream readership. Until 2007, the magazine was published by Forbes. [1] Since that time, Edwin S. Grosvenor has been its editor and publisher. [2] Print publication was suspended early in 2013, [3] but the magazine relaunched in digital format with the Summer 2017 issue [4] [5] after a Kickstarter campaign raised $31,203 from 587 backers. [6] [7] The 70th Anniversary issue of the magazine (Winter 2020) on the subject "What Makes America Great?" includes essays by such historians as Fergus Bordewich, Douglas Brinkley, Joseph Ellis, and David S. Reynolds. [8]

Contents

History

From 1947 to 1949 the American Association for State and Local History published a house organ, American Heritage: A Journal of Community History. In September 1949, AASLH launched the magazine with broader scope for the general public, but keeping certain features geared to educators and historical societies.

In 1954, AASLH sold the magazine to a quartet of writers and editors from Time, Inc. including James Parton, Oliver Jensen, Joseph J. Thorndike and founding editor Bruce Catton, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the Civil War. They formed the American Heritage Publishing Company and introduced the hardcover, 120-page advertising-free "magazine" with Volume 6, Number 1 in December 1954. [9] [5] Though, in essence, an entirely new magazine, the publishers kept the volume numbering because the previous incarnation had been indexed in the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature . Each year begins in December and continues through the following October, published every other month. For example, Volume XXV issues are December 1973, February 1974, April 1974, June 1974, August 1974, and October 1974. December 1974 begins Volume XXVI.

Bruce Catton remained with the magazine for 25 years until his death in 1979 and published over 100 essays. [10] He warned historians against "regarding the past so fondly we are unable to get it in proper focus, and we see virtues that were not there.” [11] [12]

In 1964, David McCullough began his writing career as an editor and writer for American Heritage, which he sometimes calls "my graduate school". [13] McCullough wrote numerous articles for the magazine. [14] He turned his article for the June 1966 issue on the Johnstown Flood, Run for Your Lives, [15] into a full-length book titled, The Johnstown Flood . When it became an unexpected bestseller, McCullough left the magazine in 1968 to commit full-time to writing. Later American Heritage articles by McCullough on the transcontinental railroad and Harry Truman also became bestselling books.

McGraw-Hill purchased the American Heritage Publishing Company in 1969. [16] Samuel P. Reed acquired the magazine in 1978. [17] By 1980, costs made the hardcover version prohibitive for a regular subscription. Subscribers could choose the new regular newsstand high-quality softcover or the "Collector's Edition", even plusher and thicker than the previous hardcover. Each is usually about 80 pages and has more "relevant" features and shorter articles than in the early years, but the scope and direction and purpose had not changed. Forbes bought the magazine in 1986. [17]

On May 17, 2007, the magazine, published on a bimonthly basis, announced that it had stopped publication, at least temporarily, with the April/May 2007 issue." [18] On October 27, 2007, Edwin S. Grosvenor, purchased the magazine from Forbes for $500,000 in cash and $10 million in subscription liabilities. [19] Grosvenor, who serves as president and editor-in-chief, is the former editor of the fine arts magazine, Portfolio. Grosvenor was also the editor of the literary magazine, Current Books, and magazines for Marriott and Hyatt Hotels. He was also the CEO of KnowledgeMax, Inc., an online bookseller.

After suspending print publication in 2013, the magazine relaunched digitally in 2017 with a new website and subscriber management system. [5]

Contents

For a magazine that has lasted seven decades, its way of covering history has changed much over the years. Each issue is still an eclectic collection of articles on the people, places, and events from the entire history of the United States. Today, there is mention of television shows and Web sites, and a greater diversity of articles such as Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates' recent article, "Growing Up Colored," [20] about life as a young boy in segregated West Virginia.

Recent content has included a special 70th Anniversary issue on "What Makes America Great" (Winter 2020) [21] and an issue on the history of gun control with essays by historian Joseph J. Ellis, law professor Adam Winkler, and gun rights advocate Robert A. Levy. [22]

Some historians have criticized the magazine for what they say is a lack of seriousness. Reviewing David McCullough's book on John Adams in The New Republic, [23] Sean Wilentz stated that during the 1950s, "[Bernard] DeVoto's style of seriousness [was] eclipsed by the more journalistic and sentimentally descriptive style of American Heritage, whose influence is everywhere." Wilentz claimed that McCullough and film maker Ken Burns followed the American Heritage style: "popular history as passive nostalgic spectacle" marching "under the banner of 'narrative'". The magazine's editor at the time, Richard Snow, replied that "this magazine has never taken an overly sentimentalized or simplistic view of the past" and that American Heritage is "a magazine addressed to a lay audience and thus it has the usual fixtures—columns, picture stories, and so forth—and a variety of topics, some of greater consequence than others... but that it publishes many historians "whose work nobody has ever called simplistic, or sentimental, or undemanding. [24]

Numerous articles in American Heritage have later been expanded into bestselling books, including:

In addition to running four to six articles, American Heritage's regular features include

Other media

During the early 1960s, American Heritage sponsored a series of popular military board games produced by the Milton Bradley Company.

Beginning in 1973, and presumably as part of the then-current national lead-up to the Bicentennial, American Heritage teamed up with producer David L. Wolper for a series of four hour-long television specials (broadcast every few months between late 1973 and early 1975) based on events and people in American history, in documentary-like filmed dramatizations with actors taking the roles of historic figures, and key events re-enacted. The specials, sponsored by Texaco, were narrated by actor Cliff Robertson and broadcast on ABC.

The American Heritage Specials

[29]

The Philadelphia descendants of former King Joseph Napoleon featured in American Heritage 1970 THE KING OF SPAIN AND NAPLES.png
The Philadelphia descendants of former King Joseph Napoleon featured in American Heritage 1970

Editors

Notable staff and contributors

Awards

American Heritage has been the finalist or winner of several National Magazine Awards, especially between 1985 and 1993:

Samuel Eliot Morison Award

In 1976, the American Heritage Publishing Company founded and sponsored an award called the Samuel Eliot Morison Award, named for the historian Samuel Eliot Morison. It had the goal of annually honoring an American author whose work shows "that good history is literature as well as high scholarship." [48] The first award was presented on September 28, 1977, by Henry A. Kissinger at the Pierpont Morgan Library, valued at $5,000. [48] It ran for two years.

See also

Related Research Articles

<i>Wired</i> (magazine) American technology magazine

Wired is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and has been in publication since March/April 1993. Several spin-offs have been launched, including Wired UK, Wired Italia, Wired Japan, and Wired Germany.

<i>National Geographic</i> Geography, history, nature, and science magazine

National Geographic is an American monthly magazine published by National Geographic Partners.

<i>Mother Jones</i> (magazine) American progressive magazine

Mother Jones is an American progressive magazine that focuses on news, commentary, and investigative journalism on topics including politics, environment, human rights, health and culture. Clara Jeffery serves as editor-in-chief of the magazine. Monika Bauerlein has been the CEO since 2015. Mother Jones is published by the Foundation for National Progress.

<i>Foreign Policy</i> American news magazine and website

Foreign Policy is an American news publication, founded in 1970 and focused on global affairs, current events, and domestic and international policy. It produces content daily on its website and app, and in four print issues annually.

The Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP) is an independent, national, bilingual, not-for-profit organization based in Montreal, Quebec. Its mission is to "improve public policy in Canada by generating research, providing insight and informing debate on current and emerging policy issues facing Canadians and their governments." It publishes peer-reviewed research and acts as a convenor of policy debates by organizing conferences, round tables and panel discussions among stakeholders, academics, policy-makers and the general public. It is also the publisher of Policy Options magazine and the home of the Centre of Excellence on the Canadian Federation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruce Catton</span> U.S. historian, author, and journalist

Charles Bruce Catton was an American historian and journalist, known best for his books concerning the American Civil War. Known as a narrative historian, Catton specialized in popular history, featuring interesting characters and historical vignettes, in addition to the basic facts, dates, and analyses. His books were researched well and included footnotes. He won a Pulitzer Prize during 1954 for A Stillness at Appomattox, his study of the final campaign of the war in Virginia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David McCullough</span> American historian and author (1933–2022)

David Gaub McCullough was an American popular historian. He was a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In 2006, he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian award.

<i>MIT Technology Review</i> Magazine about technology

MIT Technology Review is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and editorially independent of the university. It was founded in 1899 as The Technology Review, and was re-launched without "The" in its name on April 23, 1998, under then publisher R. Bruce Journey. In September 2005, it was changed, under its then editor-in-chief and publisher, Jason Pontin, to a form resembling the historical magazine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor</span>

Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor, father of photojournalism, was the first full-time editor of the National Geographic magazine (1899–1954). Grosvenor is credited with having built the magazine into the iconic publication that it is today.

The Daily Bruin is the student newspaper at the University of California, Los Angeles. It began publishing in 1919, the year UCLA was founded.

<i>American Heritage of Invention & Technology</i> Mainstream magazine of the history of technology

Invention & Technology Magazine is a quarterly magazine dedicated to the history of technology. It was launched with sponsorship from General Motors in the summer of 1985 as a spinoff of American Heritage magazine. Later, the magazine had a partnership with the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

San Francisco is an American monthly magazine devoted to the people, culture, food, politics, and arts of the San Francisco Bay Area. It is published monthly by Modern Luxury publications.

Melville Bell Grosvenor was the president of the National Geographic Society and editor of The National Geographic Magazine from 1957 to 1967. He was the grandson of telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edwin S. Grosvenor</span>

Edwin S. Grosvenor is a writer, photographer, and President and Editor-in-Chief of American Heritage. He has published nine books and is best known for writing on his great-grandfather, Alexander Graham Bell, including two books and several magazine articles. Early in his career, Grosvenor worked as a freelance photographer for National Geographic, completing 23 assignments. He has been interviewed on History Channel, CBS News Sunday Morning, AARP Radio, AP Radio, CBC, NBC Radio Network, NPR, and Voice of America, and has lectured at the Smithsonian Institution, Boston Museum of Science, and other venues.

<i>Bloomberg Markets</i> Magazine

Bloomberg Markets is a magazine published six times a year by Bloomberg L.P. as part of Bloomberg News. Aimed at global financial professionals, Bloomberg Markets publishes articles on the people and issues related to global financial markets. Bloomberg Markets, which is based in New York City, has readers in 147 countries. More than half of its readers live outside the U.S.

Popular history is a broad genre of historiography that takes a popular approach, aims at a wide readership, and usually emphasizes narrative, personality and vivid detail over scholarly analysis. The term is used in contradistinction to professional academic or scholarly history writing which is usually more specialized and technical and thus less accessible to the general reader.

<i>Portfolio Magazine</i>

Portfolio Magazine, also known as Portfolio, The Magazine of the Fine Arts, was published bimonthly from 1979 to 1983 by Portfolio Associates of New York City. The editor and publisher was Edwin S. Grosvenor, who went on to edit American Heritage magazine. Other staff editors included Alexandra Anderson, Manuela Hoelterhoff, Denise Martin, Isolde McNichol, and Carter Wiseman.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph J. Thorndike</span>

Joseph Jacobs Thorndike was an American editor and writer. He was Managing Editor of Life for three years in the late 1940s, and a co-founder of American Heritage and Horizon magazines.

American Health was an American magazine devoted to health, and has been called "one of the fastest-growing magazines of the 1980s".

Byron Dobell was an American editor and artist. He is considered "one of the most respected and accomplished editors in New York magazine publishing history," the editor of several popular American magazines, including American Heritage and Esquire. He is credited with helping the early careers of many writers such as Tom Wolfe, David Halberstam and Mario Puzo. In 1998, Dobell was inducted into the American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame.

References

  1. Grosvenor, Edwin S. Archived 2009-09-16 at the Wayback Machine "Editor's Letter," American Heritage, Winter 2008.
  2. Rich, Motoko (October 24, 2007). "American Heritage is Bought". The New York Times.
  3. "American Heritage Magazine Temporarily Suspends Publication," History News Network, May 2, 2013.
  4. "American Heritage Returns in Digital Format". PRNewswire.com. PR Newswire.
  5. 1 2 3 Reynolds, Mark (June 2017). "Open configuration options American Heritage is Back!". American Heritage Magazine. 63 (1).
  6. "AMERICAN HERITAGE". www.americanheritage.com.
  7. "Saving American Heritage, the Famed Magazine of History". Kickstarter.com. Retrieved December 18, 2016.
  8. "Winter 2020 Issue". American Heritage Magazine. 64:1.
  9. Reynolds, Mark C. (November–December 2004). "Golden Anniversary". American Heritage. American Heritage Publishing. 55 (6). Retrieved January 22, 2012.
  10. "Bio and Essays of Bruce Catton". American Heritage Magazine. Retrieved January 27, 2020.
  11. Blight, David. "Bruce Catton". American Heritage Magazine. 62:1 (Spring 2012).
  12. Jensen, Oliver. "Working with Bruce Catton". American Heritage Magazine. 30:2 (February/March 1979).
  13. "David McCullough Biography". American Academy of Achievement. Archived from the original on May 17, 2008. Retrieved January 22, 2013.
  14. Brief biography and list of American Heritage articles by David McCullough.
  15. "Run For Your Lives! | AMERICAN HERITAGE". www.americanheritage.com.
  16. Christianson, Elin B. (1972). "Mergers in the Publishing Industry, 1958-1970". The Journal of Library History. 7 (1): 5–32. ISSN   0022-2259. JSTOR   25540337 . Retrieved March 6, 2021.
  17. 1 2 "Forbes Buys American Heritage Magazine". AP NEWS. Retrieved March 6, 2021.
  18. McGrath, Charles (May 17, 2007). "Magazine Suspends Its Run in History". The New York Times. Retrieved March 8, 2008.
  19. Rich, Motoko (October 24, 2007). "American Heritage Is Bought". The New York Times. Retrieved March 8, 2008.
  20. "Growing Up Colored | AMERICAN HERITAGE". www.americanheritage.com.
  21. "American Heritage Winter 2020". American Heritage. 64 (1).
  22. Grosvenor, Edwin (September 2019). "Introduction: A Special Issue on the Right to Bear Arms". American Heritage. 64 (4). Retrieved January 25, 2020.
  23. Wilentz, Sean. "America Made Easy McCullough, Adams, and the decline of popular history". The New Republic. Retrieved January 22, 2013.
  24. Snow, Richard. "Has American Heritage Gone Soft?". History News Network. Archived from the original on August 27, 2013. Retrieved January 22, 2013.
  25. "A Yankee Among The War Lords | AMERICAN HERITAGE". www.americanheritage.com.
  26. "Pulitzer Prizes for 1972". www.pulitzer.org.
  27. "Maiden Voyage | AMERICAN HERITAGE". www.americanheritage.com.
  28. ""Four Good Legs Between Us" | AMERICAN HERITAGE". www.americanheritage.com.
  29. "THE AMERICAN HERITAGE SPECIALS - David L. Wolper". www.davidlwolper.com. Retrieved September 2, 2021.
  30. Catton, Bruce. "Bio and article list". American Heritage. Retrieved April 6, 2013.
  31. Jensen, Oliver. "Bio and article list". American Heritage. Retrieved April 6, 2013.
  32. Josephy, Alvin. "Bio and article list". American Heritage. Retrieved April 6, 2013.
  33. Ward, Geoffrey. "Bio and article list". American Heritage. Retrieved April 6, 2013.
  34. Dobell, Byron. "Bio and article list". American Heritage. Retrieved April 6, 2013.
  35. Snow, Richard. "Bio and article list". American Heritage. Retrieved April 6, 2013.
  36. Grosvenor, Edwin. "Bio and article list". American Heritage. Retrieved April 6, 2013.
  37. Id., American Society of Magazine Editors, www.Magazine.org Archived 2019-12-30 at the Wayback Machine , entire year cited.
  38. 1 2 3 Id., For the April/May, June/July, and December issues.
  39. Id., For "A Medical Picture of the United States", October/November issue.
  40. Id., For the August/September, October/November, and December issues.
  41. Id., For the July/August, November, December and issues.
  42. Id., For the May/June, September/October, and November issues.
  43. Id., For the February, March, and July/August issues.
  44. Id., For the March, May/June, and December issues.
  45. Id., For the February, May/June, and September issues.
  46. Id., For the February/March, May/June, and December issues.
  47. Id., For the May/June, November, and December issues.
  48. 1 2 3 Albin Krebs (September 29, 1977). "Notes on People". The New York Times . Retrieved December 23, 2017.
  49. "Samuel Eliot Morison Award 1978". American Heritage. 29 (6). October 1978. Retrieved December 23, 2017.