My Excellent $1 Investment (Or, Culture For Mad Men)

The sign on the bin read, "USED PAPERBACKS $1 – BENEFIT CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL" On top of the pile sat a thinnish, letter-size, hard-bound volume. The December, 1965 issue of American Heritage!

The 'Sixties offered more than an ashtray on every table and a liquor cabinet in every executive office. In its heyday American Heritage magazine was a widely-admired cross between a magazine and a lavishly illustrated coffee-table book. No advertising – that's how Mad Men knew it was high class. Subscribers paid full price for the production of a periodical that made their households look cultured.

An American's View of Canada

My December 1965 issue features Canada, beginning with a whimsical map, "An American's View of Canada." The detail shows French explorers on their way to discovering General Motors. After a beautifully illustrated series of articles on our neighbor to the north, the issue moves on to cover parlor pianos, an ante-bellum U.S. Navy steamer, Burma Shave signs, and more.

Toward the back of the issue, a real treasure – a portfolio of well-reproduced prints from Clarence P. Hornung's "Gallery of the American Automobile." If I matted up half a dozen and sold them online, I could turn a handsome profit on my $1 investment.

1899 Columbia electric, made in Hartford, Connecticut

Surviving without advertising wasn't easy. In later years American Heritage lost its coffee-table production values. Forbes acquired the magazine and kept it on life support until 2007. Then it pulled the plug.

Sic Transit Gloria History

Fortunately, Edwin S. Grosvenor stepped in. The resuscitated American Heritage publishes quarterly. Online it maintains a complete archive of articles, but not the lavish illustrations.

For writers on matters financial, the archives are a welcome resource. Need a backgrounder on income inequality? See the discussion of Social Darwinism here. Preparing for Taxmageddon? See John Steele Gordon's concise history of U.S. taxation.

Writing in 1996, Gordon declared that the Internal Revenue Code "violates every single principle of sound taxation developed over the more than five thousand years in which taxes have been collected." Not much has happened since that would change his opinion.