However, the book is so tersely written as to constitute more an outline of issues than an exposition. This is a chewy but ultimately rewarding presentation. By Tom Pendergast University of Missouri Press. In separate chapters, he traces the struggles by black-oriented magazines to gain larger audiences, largely unsuccessful until the founding of John H. Johnson's Ebony , just after World War II, a periodical that successfully adopted the consumerist orientation. Pendergast, an optimist, does not think that the change in character of American magazines has been for the worse, but has opened the way toward more diverse, more imaginative lives.
Dictionaries still define a curmudgeon as grasping, avaricious, miserly, and loathsome.
This takes temerity. James Boylan is founding editor of cjr and professor emeritus of journalism and history at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.