The premiere edition of Ms. magazine appeared on newsstands in July 1972, containing feminist political analysis, articles about women's issues, and critiques of male-dominated society. The first national "glossy" publication to emerge from the 1970s wave of feminism was greeted with guarded enthusiasm by members of the multi-faceted movement it attempted to represent, and with outright hostility by the establishment media of the day. "I'll give it six months," sneered the late Harry Reasoner, co-anchor of the ABC Nightly News, "before they run out of things to say." Reasoner went on to complain, "There isn't an article in Ms. that wouldn't look perfectly normal in one of the standard women's magazines, and has probably already been there, only better written."

Criticisms of the pundits aside, however, American women must have been hungry for what a popular feminist journal had to offer. The preview edition, which had been released on...