70 years of the Reader's Digest

Nicholas Staveley

A marketing man's account of a unique magazine, its history and its international success. The Reader's Digest is even more of a marketing case history than a media success story.

70 Years of Reader's Digest

Nicholas Staveley Staveley & Associates

De Witt Wallace, an American dough boy in France during the first World War, founded the Reader's Digest only as the fortunate or unfortunate consequence of stopping some incoming German hardware.

Recovering in hospital, he read enormous numbers of magazines. Some of the articles were good, and some not so hot. What about, Wallace mused, having a publication that simply digested the good bits and left out the dross?

The result, back home after the war, was a compendious little magazine with typography and contents so...

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