A Bomb in Every Issue: How Ramparts Magazine Changed America

The rollicking story of Ramparts—the magazine that captured the zeitgeist of the ’60s, repeatedly scooped the New York Times, brought the new left into American living rooms, and made an indelible imprint on American journalism.

A Bomb in Every Issue tells the largely untold story of the wild ride of this hugely influential magazine that achieved countless firsts: it published the first conspiracy theory about JFK’s assassination, it was the first to reveal that the CIA had backed the National Student Association during the Cold War, and its article about the use of napalm on Vietnamese children (another first) caused Martin Luther King Jr. to speak out against the war for the first time.

Peter Richardson is the author of American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams. He is the editorial director at PoliPoint Press and the interim chair of the California Studies Association, and teaches courses on California culture at San Francisco State University. He lives in Marin County, California.