A monthly men's magazine founded in 1933 by Arnold Gingrich (1903–1976) and David Smart (1892–1952), Esquire was originally conceived as a fashion magazine and distributed through men's clothing stores. By the 1960s, it had evolved into one of the United States' most respected monthly magazines. It published hard-hitting articles and high-quality short stories by some of the nation's leading writers such as Tom Wolfe (1931–), Gore Vidal (1925–), William F. Buckley Jr. (1925–), and Garry Wills (1934–). Under fiction editor Gordon Lish (1934–), the magazine helped establish the careers of important short-story writers like Raymond Carver (1938–1988).

Appealing to an audience of sophisticated, style-conscious males, Esquire helped define patterns of thinking and standards of behavior for the post–World War II (1939-45) generation of well-off, educated men (and women). The magazine virtually reinvented notions of how American men should act by presenting as role models men who were interested in leisure, who were avid consumers, and who...