During their first 175 years of existence, American magazines preached long and occasionally in loud tone on personal morality, but rare was the published foray into the real lives of lower-class Americans. That oversight ended in 1919 with the introduction of True Stories, the first of what came to be known as confession magazines. Founded by health and physical fitness zealot Bernarr Macfadden, True Stories "had the conscious ring of public confession, such as is heard in a Salvation Army gathering, or in an old-fashioned testimony meeting of Southern camp religionists," according to Macfadden's first biographer Fulton Oursler.

It and other confession magazines were "a medium for publishing the autobiographies of the unknown," as one editor explained, a substitute among the poor for lawyers, doctors, and educators. Although True Stories eventually reached a circulation of 2.5 million during the 1930s, it cost less to produce than most other magazines...