There's a new history of Spy magazine out that's getting good reviews. The publication was before my time, but it's really impossible to overstate how enduring -- and annoying -- its influence is. I've yet to work or intern at a single publication that didn't advise me to go look at old Spys, or didn't huddle around the editorial table trying to recapture the snarkathon's magic in a one-shot graphic. The management of dull and serious political magazines is populated mainly by folks who wish they were at Spy, or editing it, or writing for it, and so they demand funny charts. Now!
