The best magazines

Check out this list of the 51 best magazines ever. As always with such lists, it's highly subjective, and we are invited to agree or disagree with the choices, but it's a fun read. The top 10: Esquire, The New Yorker, Life, Playboy, The New York Times Magazine, Mad, Spy, Wired, Andy Warhol's Interview and Colors. Some are listed just for specific time frames. Mad, for example, is said to have been one of the best only from 1955 through 1992.

I love magazines, and find their current plight almost as sad as that of newspapers. At one time or another, my parents subscribed to Life, Look and the Saturday Evening Post, among others. I waited for them eagerly, reading all the short items first, then savoring the longer articles. Much of my developing view of the world around me came from those publications. I still pick up a Reader's Digest from time to time just so I can read it the same way, short items first.

Except for Newsweek, which I earlier noted provides a quick and easy way to keep tabs on the liberal world view, I read mostly niche magazines: Reason, Discover, Cook's Illustrated. The world is moving too quickly these days for a good general-interest magazine to thrive. I miss them.