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Throughout this year, The Atlantic is celebrating our upcoming 150th anniversary. Fifteen decades is a long time; only a handful of publications anywhere have exceeded that benchmark. A great deal has occurred since a small group of writers and editors met in the dining room of a Boston hotel to plan the first issue of what would become The Atlantic Monthly. The economy of the United States at the time was smaller than Britain's, and its armed forces lesser than those of France. Germany and Italy didn't exist, and Das Kapital and The Origin of Species hadn't been written. American territory already stretched from coast to coast, but there were only thirty-one states in the Union. The vote was restricted to men, and a system of public education was a thing of the future. The most salient fact about this country was that slavery remained legal in the United States. The Atlantic's founders were leaders of the abolitionist cause.
America has changed profoundly in the course of fifteen decades. In certain obvious ways The Atlantic has changed as well. It is no longer a pamphlet-sized magazine with a dull brown cover. Its readership, rather than consisting of a few tens of thousands primarily in the Northeast, now numbers 1.5 million across the country. The first issue, which featured an engraving of John Winthrop on the cover, was more literary than the magazine today, though the bent toward public-affairs commentary and on-the-scene reporting was present from the start. James Russell Lowell's "The Election in November" (1860) and Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Chiefly About War Matters" (1862) are part of the genetic heritage of modern journalism.
But if some things about The Atlantic Monthly have changed in 150 years, the most important things have not. First, the founders of the magazine understood that breaking news was not always worth paying attention to, and in fact could distract the public from important stories that needed to be told—and that took more time to tell.
To honor this milestone, The Atlantic is dedicating each issue in 2006 to the 150th anniversary, reprising the most significant archived editorial content from the past 150 years. This fall the magazine will take to the road for a live tour—to Boston, Washington D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, and New York—convening great thinkers and prominent members of the public to exchange ideas and share in the celebration.
Readers can check in here to see each issue's archival highlights and find out about Ideas Tour information and updates. Coming soon—readers will also be able to read an updated history of the magazine, browse an archive of vintage Atlantic covers, and more.
