ABSTRACT
Using a graph from the “Circulating American Magazines: Visualization Tools for U.S. Magazine History” project, charting seven-and-a-half years of the circulation of one magazine, this chapter seeks to create models of visualisation that allow for new mechanisms to read big data sets. The model demonstrated in this contribution uses the cinematic image of the zoom shot in powers of ten to allow for a wide spectrum of perspectives, including both distant and close readings. This representation of analytic models of reading data will allow scholars to better pose problems, rather than describe a singular reality. Founded in 1900, The Smart Set became important in literary history from 1914 to 1923, when H. L. Mencken and George Nathan co-edited it; the graph focuses on the transition of the magazine from its relatively small circulation to a sevenfold increase when William Randolf Hearst bought it and converted it into a women’s magazine.
