American Dreamers: The Wallaces and the Reader's Digest: An Insider's Story

by Peter Canning

Dewitt and Lila Wallace founded Reader's Digest in the 1930s to provide edifying articles for people who often read little else. Canning, a former Digest managing editor, has written an in-depth... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684809281
• ISBN13: 9780684809281
• Release Date: November 1996
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 379 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

The Best Book About Reader's Digest -- Ever.

Peter Canning succinctly tells the history of The Reader's Digest, from its humble beginnings to the story of the mighty direct mail machine it became. The style is clear and concise (as matches the subject), and his careful and comprehensive research is clearly evident throughout. After the salacious nonsense by John Heidenry, (Theirs Was The Kingdom -- 1993) it's refreshing to see how an insider deals with the subject.

a classic american success story

This is undoubtedly one of the best books ever written about the building of a truly American business empire, (The Reader's Digest Association) and how that empire affected the lives of its founders, Dewitt and Lila Wallace.The author poignantly details how the founders,who were undoubtedly handson managers of the Digest for most of their lives,became prisoners of their empire, and how those who inherited the reigns of the Digest abused that powerand abandoned the original goals the Wallaces developed for it.