ABSTRACT
Little should be needed to convince anyone living in the United States of the significance of National Geographic in American culture. Initiated in 1888 as a sporadic scientific journal and redirected as a non-technical monthly a decade later, by 1920 the National Geographic Magazine had a circulation of more than 750,000,1 a number that for the most part only continued to rise. The Geographic’s success, declared an editor of the magazine in 1915, “proves how strong the love of this kind of geography is in every breast.” 2 At the time of its centennial in 1998, the National Geographic Society had more than ten million members, each one receiving the magazine through the original member-subscriber arrangement. One did not subscribe to the National Geographic, but became a member of the National Geographic Society and received the magazine as a benefit of membership.3
