Connected in Print: Selecciones del Reader’s Digest, U.S. Cultural Relations, and the Construction of a Global Middle Class

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This article traces the early history of the Reader’s Digest’s global editions, and in particular its Latin American magazine, Selecciones del Reader’s Digest, viewing this popularly consumed text as a window into transnational government and media initiatives to forge a “global middle class.” It contends that the magazine, rather than merely idealizing life in the United States, asserted that readers could use media to join an imagined community of likeminded “professionals” and “free peoples” around the world. Using documents from the U.S. National Archives, the magazine, as well as a variety of other press sources, the paper untangles the connections between the first truly-global U.S. consumer magazine and the U.S. geopolitical project. First, it describes the relationship between the launch of Reader’s Digest’s Latin American edition and the U.S. cultural campaign’s wartime initiatives; second, it examines the magazine’s content, illustrating how the notion of a global connection was depicted in its pages. Taken together, these sections illustrate how the transnational mass media not only normalized the notion of a righteous middle class but also narrated that group’s globality, seeking to implicate the reader in its scope.