Every two months I look forward to reading History Magazine. I've been a subscriber for years and I always feel pleasantly surprised by the variety of topics covered. In every issue I read about topics that had never occurred to me in a historical sense.
The articles are not long, they are plainly written, and there are plenty of pictures. This is NOT a scholarly journal of history. In general the articles are not written by historians (often freelance writers) and I'm sure that most of the "research" is done with relatively few secondary sources. That being said, History Magazine doesn't pretend to be a scholarly journal and there is still much to be enjoyed and learned from reading it. Many of the articles have inspired me to dig deeper into topics that I might never have known about. History Magazine really whets my history appetite.
The topics focus mostly on Western history, from ancient times to the present. However, the magazine does ask its readers to suggest ideas for articles, and I suspect that if enough readers expressed an interest in, say, Oriental or African history, then there would be more of that. Perhaps one day I will offer a suggestion to see how closely they listen to one reader!
To top things off they have a wonderful customer service department, the magazine contains relatively few advertising pages so you don't have to search for the articles, each issue has 10-15 articles of great variety, and they have the best guarantee of any magazine I know of: you can cancel your subscription at any time without hassles. But if you enjoy history, you won't want to cancel. I have hundreds of "real" history books, but this is my favorite magazine. The story of people in the world is endlessly fascinating.
One more note: Every year or so I try an issue of that other world history magazine for laypeople, BBC History, which contains articles written by "real" historians. But for reasons I can't fully explain I just can't seem to enjoy it enough to subscribe (I won't try to explain here, and I'm not criticizing it). I'm pointing this out for those who might want to look at each of these magazines and decide for themselves whether they prefer one or both. Get more detail about History Magazine.
Posts
