Mid-century Modern Magazines

Explore the brave new worlds of fifty years ago with cover-to-cover access to the Time and Life magazine archives.  These new additions to online primary sources offered by the Libraries allow you to search or browse through advertisements, entertainment and book reviews, shorts stories and poems, as well as feature articles and editorials.

The Time Magazine Archive covers more than 4,000 issues published between 1923 and 1980. Each weekly issue of Time encapsulated the news of the world:  the national and international political scene, sports achievements, entertainment news and reviews, and profiles of public figures.  Browse entire issues in PDF format to perform an act of advertising time travel to the days when doctors recommended cigarette brands and  airlines promised gourmet cuisine.

The Life Magazine Archive offers more than 2000 issues published between 1936 and 2000.  The quintessential home of photojournalism, Life delivered the world through photographs and snappy captions, with gripping images from the hot fronts of the Spanish Civil War, Normandy, and Vietnam to the cold war Kitchen Debate between Nixon and Khrushchev.  Or explore the history of design and fashion with photo essays on topics such as  “The Kitchens of Tomorrow” (1943) or Dior’s New Look (1951).

Life and Time both featured intimate profiles of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo NASA astronauts and their families.  These archives present especially rich sources for understanding the excitement of the 1969 moon landing and all the scientific and manufacturing advances, personal sacrifices, and political maneuvering that went into the success of the Apollo missions.

Go beyond the moon to discover fads, fashions and popular culture, geopolitics across a century of war and nuclear threat, the evolution of print advertising and profile journalism, and reporting on industrial and scientific advances.

We hope you have the Time of your Life with these new resources.