History of Men's Magazines, Vol. 1 (Dian Hanson's The History of Men's Magazines) [Hardcover]

Dian Hanson (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2004

A former men's magazine editor traces the development of sexy, titillating periodicals from 1900 to 1980 in these first two volumes of a massive, three-volume series. Volume 1 explores the years 1900 through 1957, and Volume 2 chronicles the years 1958 to 1967.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Each volume contains over 400 pages and 15 to 20 chapters, profiling important or quirky publishers and their magazines, single countries in a given era, distinctive genres such as swinging ("Suburban Sin") or spanking ("Spank You Very Much!"), top models, and those back-of-the-magazine advertisements for male girdles and X-ray spectacles. Most importantly: while the books are amply supplied with fascinating and educational text, they are also chock full of magazine covers and photos—a whopping 5000 images in all! Who knew learning could be so much fun?

About the Author

Dian Hanson is a twenty-five-year veteran of men’s magazine publishing. She began her career at Puritan Magazine in 1976 and went on to edit a variety of titles, including Partner, Oui, Hooker, Outlaw Biker, and Juggs magazines. In 1987 she took over the ‘60s title Leg Show and transformed it into the world’s best-selling fetish publication. Most recently, she authored TASCHEN’s Roy Stuart: The Fourth Body.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 460 pages
• Publisher: Taschen (November 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3822822299
• ISBN-13: 978-3822822296
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,488,179 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dian Hanson was born in Seattle, Washington, November 2, 1951. A hippie and high school drop out, she moved east at age 20, first to Oxford, Mississippi, then Allentown, Pennsylvania, finally settling in New York City in 1976 to work on the sex magazine Puritan. Over the next 25 years she edited magazines including Partner, Oui, Adult Cinema Review, Harvey, Hooker, Juggs and Leg Show. She founded the magazines Outlaw Biker, Hawgs, Big Butt, Bust Out and Tight. In 1993 Hanson became friends with Benedikt Taschen, and in 2001 she finally agreed to leave sex magazines and take over the Sexy Book division of TASCHEN Publishing. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the novelist Geoff Nicholson.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A MAJOR oversight in Volume 1 of this six-volume work, August 3, 2007

By 

Joseph A. Admire (Manassas, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: History of Men's Magazines, Vol. 1 (Dian Hanson's The History of Men's Magazines) (Hardcover)

I already have Volume 2 of Dian Hanson's encyclopedic _History of Men's Magazines_, detailing what I believe to be the golden age of that genre (the 1950's), so I was really looking forward to getting Volume 1. This volume is presented just as beautifully as the other five volumes in the series, with lots of gorgeous full-page color and B&W photos.

However, there is a very big oversight, not to say error, in the material contained in this volume. Let me explain; Volume 1 bills itself as covering the history of men's magazines from 1900 to the period immediately after World War II. OK. So where are all the pictures from 1900 to the beginning of the 1920's? Certainly, there weren't very many magazines specializing in girlie art or photography before the Roaring Twenties, but France did have several, most notably the famous "La Vie Parisienne", which started publishing in, I believe, the 1870's and ran almost continuously for seven or eight decades. There was a LOT of first-class girlie art in that 'zine from the 1870's to the 1910's (including some classic art produced during World War I) that Hanson could have located and reproduced. Also, what about the Gibson Girl in "Life"? That's not strictly "girlie" art within the parameters set by this series, to be sure, but she was such an iconic figure that she should have gotten at least a couple of pictures. Or what about all the "French postcards" of the Gay Nineties and after? Those directly adumbrated the later girlie magazines, and also go unrepresented, at least in the pictures.

Furthermore, Hanson errs seriously in putting a large number of pictures from the 1950's and 1960's in a volume that is expressly _not_ dedicated to those decades (the 1960's, in fact, get two volumes later on in the series). She may have intended to show how girlie photography developed over the decades, but there was plenty of room later on in the series to do that. The space misappropriated to those pictures would much better have been allocated to the kind of imagery I described in the previous paragraph.

Sorry, Dian. I really like Volume 2. Volume 1, however, is a rather disappointing introduction to what should have been a definitive reference work on a little-studied genre.