Last week, in my editing magazine class, I was editing a book review piece on “A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America” by Peter Richardson in the San Francisco Chronicle written by Jonah Raskin, who also had the opportunity to write for the Ramparts magazine once.
This piece seems more like criticizing what Richardson wrote in his book about what Ramparts magazine was. “‘A Bomb in Every Issue’ is a good title for a book about Ramparts, but this book doesn't capture the magazine's or the era's wildness, and irreverence, ” writes Raskin.
At first I didn’t give it too much importance. It was just another piece to edit and I wouldn’t probably see any similar article again, but I was wrong.
It seems like there are many reviews on this book because it sorts of brings the magazine alive again. Major newspapers have reviews about Richardson’s book mixed with information of what the magazine meant for Americans.
But what makes this magazine so especial? Is it its writers? Is it the way its writers covered the stories they covered? Or is it the stories written in the magazine?
It certainly can be all of the above, as a matter of fact, most reviews talk about all these.
The LA Times review book, for example, seconds and agrees with Richardson when acknowledging the fact the magazine changed American.
The New Press also explains the Ramparts contribution to change America by pointing out the kinds of issues it covered at a national and international level from publishing the "first conspiracy theory about JFK’s assassination" to covering first the Che Guevera’s diaries.
Locally, Richardson writes in his book that Ramparts was published in Menlo Park, California in 1962 and then in 1968, it moved to San Francisco's North Beach with a monthly circulation to almost 250,000 thanks to coverage it delivered.
Other book reviews on Richardson’s book, define the magazine as, “the groundbreaking muckraking magazine of the 1960s and early 1970s.”
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