A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America

A Bomb in Every Issue recounts the rise and fall of Ramparts magazine, which, for nearly a decade in the 1960s, was the nation’s premier leftist publication, combining radical content, sophisticated design, and public relations savvy to shape political journalism for a generation. Featuring interviews with David Horowitz, Peter Collier, Adam Hochschild, Christopher Hitchens, Todd Gitlin, Robert Scheer, Warren Hinckle, Angela Davis, Kathleen Cleaver, Seymour Hersh, William F. Buckley, Noam Chomsky, Brit Hume, Bobby Seale, Howard Zinn, and others, A Bomb in Every Issue situates the magazine amidst student movements in Berkeley, the rise and fall of the Black Panthers in Oakland, and the acid-inflected Summer of Love in San Francisco while assessing the magazine’s impact on national media and politics.

Peter Richardson is editorial director at PoliPointPress, chair of the California Studies Association, and a lecturer at San Francisco State University. His publications include American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams and numerous essays on literature, language, politics, and media. He lives in Marin County, California.