Introducing an Index of American Magazines: 1741:1826
By Bruce McKinney Most books are read from front to back but I challenge you to try to do this with any of the five volumes of Frank Luther Mott's A History of American Magazines. Every page has references to other pages, to footnotes and to indexes and it simply isn't possible to read any of the volumes as a book unless you simply decide to ignore all the bibliographical tendrils. Each one is a door into something curious and interesting. I couldn't ignore them and in time simply surrendered to the logic of the material and have read volume one [848 pages] as an extraordinary refer...