Editor-in-chief | Edwin S. Grosvenor |
---|---|
Categories | American history |
Frequency | Quarterly |
Circulation | 160,000 |
Year founded | 1947 |
Company | American Heritage Publishing Company |
Country | United States |
Based in | Rockville, Maryland |
Language | English |
Website | www |
ISSN | 0002-8738 |
American Heritage is a magazine dedicated to covering the history of the United States of America for a mainstream readership. Until 2007, the magazine was published by Forbes. Since that time, Edwin S. Grosvenor has been its publisher. Print publication was suspended early in 2013, but the magazine relaunched in digital format with the Summer 2017 issue after a Kickstarter campaign raised $31,203 from 587 backers. The publisher stated it also intended to relaunch the magazine's sister publication Invention & Technology, which ceased print publication in 2011.
From 1947 to 1949 the American Association for State and Local History published a house organ, American Heritage: A Journal of Community History. In September 1949, a quarterly was published with broader scope for the general public, but keeping certain features geared to educators. Though the endeavor was not hugely successful, a group of concerned people formed the American Heritage Publishing Company and introduced the hardcover, 120-page advertising-free "magazine" with Volume 6, Number 1 in December 1954. Though, in essence, an entirely new magazine, the publishers kept the volume numbering because the previous incarnation had been indexed in the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. Each year begins in December and continues through the following October, published every other month. For example, Volume XXV issues are December 1973, February 1974, April 1974, June 1974, August 1974, and October 1974. December 1974 begins Volume XXVI. The founding editor was Civil War historian Bruce Catton, who remained with the magazine for many years.
In 1964, David McCullough began his writing career as an editor and writer for American Heritage, which he sometimes calls "my graduate school". McCullough wrote numerous articles for the magazine. He turned his article for the June 1966 issue on the Johnstown Flood, Run for Your Lives, into a full-length book. When it became an unexpected bestseller, McCullough left the magazine in 1968 to commit full-time to writing. Later American Heritage articles by McCullough on the transcontinental railroad and Harry Truman also became bestselling books.