- ISBN13: 9781595584397
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
What an incredible story Peter Richardson has told! Ramparts magazine turned the Sixties on its head with a high-octane combination of avant-garde satire and gumshoe investigative reporting. A Bomb in Every Issue is an excellent history that shouldn’t be ignored. I can’t recommend it enough.
–DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, AUTHOR OF THE WILDERNESS WARRIOR A Bomb in Every Issue tells the largely untold story of the wild ride of this hugely influential magazine that … More >>
A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America
This book will blow your mind! A must-read for critical thinkers of today and tomorrow.
Rating: 5 / 5
The magazines we get today like Time or Newsweek although have a history they are largely mainstream. They give us the usual lo-down on what is going on in the world but not much more. Peter Richardson sheds some light on how it used be done with his book about Ramparts magazine A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America.
Ramparts was founded by Edward M. Keating in 1962 with a focus on catholic matters. I use the phrase “catholic matters” but maybe a description from books introduction might give you a better idea of what Ramparts was about. It described itself as a “forum for the mature American Catholic” focusing on “those positive principles of Hellenic-Christian tradition which have shaped and sustained our civilization for the past two thousand years” It Sounds pretty staunch doesn’t it? But it wasn’t long before the magazine took a sharp turn to the left; it became a radical muckraker that by all accounts turned the art of journalism on its head and gave it a good shake.
I first heard of Ramparts through Scanlans magazine and their common denominator Warren Hinckle; and because of my huge interest in Scanlans I was delighted to get a peek at A Bomb in Every Issue so soon.
So what about it? Well after reading the book I’ve realized that magazines like Ramparts and Scanlans for that matter deserve some consideration for their contribution to a new, no nonsense style of journalism and gutsy political reporting. Publications with guile are thin on the ground these days.
Richardson gives a detailed account of the 13 year life of Ramparts and its most contentious stories. I had heard of Ramparts but never knew much about it’s history, but after reading A Bomb in Every issue I found just how important Ramparts was in the progression of journalism; and reporting issues that some folks would have preferred were buried. For example, it was the first to publish a conspiracy theory surrounding the assassination of JFK. Another point of interest was it’s publication of Che Guevara’s diaries. It also boasted a long list of contributors including Cesar Chavez, Norman Mailer, Noam Chomsky and many more.
The Hunter S. Thompson connection with Ramparts and of course Warren Hinckle is as you’d expect an entertaining one, as Richardson told me “The HST material in the book is brief but memorable: a fantastical visit to the Ramparts office, where Hinckle’s pet monkey got into his pills; the Chicago lunacy in 1968; and the Ramparts Wall Posters, an idea HST lifted for his campaign in Colorado.” The HST material in the book is small and not a huge selling point (nor was it intended to be) but it doesn’t need it, there’s plenty of other material to make this book stand on its own.
The bottom line is this. For anyone who’s interested in journalism and it’s transformation over the years; this book is a must read. It shows us the mettlesome attitude Ramparts had in its approach to spreading news, popular or not. As a fan of journalism I hope this book does well and reaches future writers of any ilk. It will bring to the fore a type of journalism that sadly is not as prominent as it should be in this day and age.
Rating: 5 / 5
Peter Richardson’s excellent first book, “American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams,” told the story of the most important political writer to come out of 1930s and ’40s California into post-war national prominence. Writing that book prepared Richardson well for “A Bomb in Every Issue,” his outstanding second effort.
“A Bomb in Every Issue” traces the vivid history of Ramparts magazine, the Bay Area experiment that in little more than a decade (the early ’60s through the mid-’70s) evolved from a sober-minded liberal Catholic journal of ideas into one of the most radical, irreverent and influential magazines of its time.
From Thomas Merton to Eldridge Cleaver and the Symbionese Liberation Army, from Vatican II to Vietnam and People’s Park, Richardson presents a dazzling cast of characters and a heady range of issues and events. While training his focus on the ground-level California activists who made the Ramparts bomb tick–vanguard journalists, visionary publishers, and at-times downright gonzo promoters–Richardson keeps a steady eye on the larger world of American politics and culture that Ramparts illuminated and affected.
I recommend this book with enthusiasm.
Rating: 5 / 5
This fabulous book kept me completely hooked. While some of the information and networks and stories were totally new to me (who knew all that about the Black Panthers?!?!) the more familiar stories helped me to piece together parts of the sixties that I had never thoroughly processed. Pick it up and enjoy!
Rating: 5 / 5
Peter Richardson has crafted a work of thorough research and a compelling story in “A Bomb in Every Issue,” the saga of Ramparts magazine. Ramparts was the quintessential leftist publication of the 1960s that changed traditional journalism and inspired a generation of investigative reporters before Watergate.
Anyone who lived or is interested in the Sixties and the emergence of the counter-culture will find this to be a fascinating backstory to the era. Richardson draws upon interviews with more than fifty writers, experts and observers of the tumultuous events that shaped much of the political and socioeconomic framework in Northern California, including Jann Wenner, Warren Hinckle, Lowell Bergman, Tom Hayden, Paul Krassner, Adam Hochschild, Robert Scheer and many more.
As a San Francisco Bay Area writer and former newspaper journalist during the late Sixties and Seventies, I thought I had a fair knowledge of the media scene at the time, but I was captivated by details here that I had never read or known of before. I heartily recommend the book.
Rating: 5 / 5