Launched in 1962 as "a forum for the mature American Catholic," Ramparts magazine went on to become the iconic magazine of the 1960s left, publishing writings by such figures as Eldridge Cleaver, Che Guevara, Noam Chomsky, Seymour Hersh, Angela Davis, and Susan Sontag. It naturally gathered a lot of enemies as well, with the CIA spying on the magazine after it published material on covert activities in Vietnam and Time magazine deriding it as containing "A Bomb in Every Issue," as they put in a headline. Richardson (San Francisco State U.) recounts the story of Ramparts and its influence from its founding to its demise in 1975. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)