History of Men's Magazines Vol. 1 Hardcover – November 1, 2004

I am gradually building this set of books, buying nice used ones when I can afford them and just got this one. It's typical Taschen quality, very high quality book but done on a peculiar semi-matte type paper. I imagine this was done because most of the source material for these books was done on poor quality pulp paper to begin with, and reproducing magazine covers and articles done in the thirties on pulp, then trying to reproduce them on high-resolution glossy paper wouldn't have worked all that well to begin with. Still, it's a very large and hefty book, impressive, and I will continue to build the set of the original books rather than the flimsy small later reprints.As others have said, this particular volume is a little confusing and off-the-rails. It's supposed to deal with prewar magazines (pre-1941 by most definitions) and about 1/3 of the book contains material from the 1950's and even the early 1960's. This wasn't necessary as Dian had plenty of source material from the earlier magazines, obviously, and if nothing else, it would've been much better to see the covers and photos that are relegated to 1/4 page photos reproduced as whole page photos so they could be better appreciated and it would've filled the book entirely with pre-WWII material. I have no idea why they jumped around like they did on this one, but there is still a lot of excellent prewar stuff in this one and the postwar stuff included isn't bad either, it's just out-of-place.I'd definitely recommend picking up a copy of this while you still can, these are destined to increase in value and demand.

I have just finished the History of Men's Magazines Vol. 1. It is done really well. Nice comparison of magazines during the time frame between the U.S. and France, Germany and England. This is the start of Men's magazines in the early 1900's when magazines start to come out due to cheaper printing costs. The book goes through the end of WWII. Plenty of pictures of actual magazine covers and some of the insides of the magazines. Each chapter features either a time period of a type of magazine that was out during this time. The write up gives a good explanation of who was publishing the magazines, who their market was for and what was going on at the time the magazine was being published. I am looking forward to continuing the series. Nice hard cover volume. Will look good on the book shelf.

This is a fascinating book about men's magazines. It arrived in the scheduled time period and was in good condition for a used book.

I'm a sucker for this series. Arrived as promised, thank you.

ok.

I already have Volume 2 of Dian Hanson's encyclopedic _History of Men's Magazines_, detailing what I believe to be the golden age of that genre (the 1950's), so I was really looking forward to getting Volume 1. This volume is presented just as beautifully as the other five volumes in the series, with lots of gorgeous full-page color and B&W photos.However, there is a very big oversight, not to say error, in the material contained in this volume. Let me explain; Volume 1 bills itself as covering the history of men's magazines from 1900 to the period immediately after World War II. OK. So where are all the pictures from 1900 to the beginning of the 1920's? Certainly, there weren't very many magazines specializing in girlie art or photography before the Roaring Twenties, but France did have several, most notably the famous "La Vie Parisienne", which started publishing in, I believe, the 1870's and ran almost continuously for seven or eight decades. There was a LOT of first-class girlie art in that 'zine from the 1870's to the 1910's (including some classic art produced during World War I) that Hanson could have located and reproduced. Also, what about the Gibson Girl in "Life"? That's not strictly "girlie" art within the parameters set by this series, to be sure, but she was such an iconic figure that she should have gotten at least a couple of pictures. Or what about all the "French postcards" of the Gay Nineties and after? Those directly adumbrated the later girlie magazines, and also go unrepresented, at least in the pictures.Furthermore, Hanson errs seriously in putting a large number of pictures from the 1950's and 1960's in a volume that is expressly _not_ dedicated to those decades (the 1960's, in fact, get two volumes later on in the series). She may have intended to show how girlie photography developed over the decades, but there was plenty of room later on in the series to do that. The space misappropriated to those pictures would much better have been allocated to the kind of imagery I described in the previous paragraph.Sorry, Dian. I really like Volume 2. Volume 1, however, is a rather disappointing introduction to what should have been a definitive reference work on a little-studied genre.

This is an incredible series given the usual Taschen touch, that is to say the best possible treatment of the subject matter and fantastic graphics! I have ALL of the 6 volumes and they just get better and better! So if you can,latch onto these excellent set of books for an invaluable addition to your library!

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