Reader's Digest: May, 1942: Volume 40, No. 241; An article a day--of enduring significant, in condensed permanent booklet form

Pleasantville, NY: Readers Digest Association, Inc, 1942. Presumed First Edition, First printing [thus]. Wraps. Very good. 144 pages. Illustrations (some with color). Cover has slight wear and soiling. Reader's Digest is an American general-interest family magazine, published ten times a year. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, it is now headquartered in New York City. The magazine was founded in 1920, by DeWitt Wallace and Lila Bell Wallace. For many years, Reader's Digest was the best-selling consumer magazine in the United States. According to Mediamark Research (2006), Reader's Digest reaches more readers with household incomes of $100,000+ than Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Inc. combined. The magazine is compact, with its pages roughly half the size of most American magazines'. This is the early Second World War era issue. It includes articles such as: Fooling Enemy Airmen, Colonel of the Marines, Uncle Sam's Prettiest Battalion, and Russian Front. DeWitt Wallace, while he was recovering from shrapnel wounds received in World War I, had the idea to gather a sampling of favorite articles on many subjects from various monthly magazines, sometimes condensing and rewriting them, and to combine them into one magazine. The magazine's format for several decades consisted of 30 articles per issue (one per day), along with a vocabulary page, a page of "Amazing Anecdotes" and "Personal Glimpses", two features of funny stories entitled "Humor in Uniform" and "Life in these United States", and a lengthier article at the end, usually condensed from a published book. These were all listed in the Table of Contents on the front cover. Each article was prefaced by a small, simple line drawing.