When I was growing up, one of my favorite magazines to grace our living room coffee table was the National Geographic. When that recognizable, golden-yellow bordered publication arrived, I was lured to look inside.
Designed and produced as a slim, tight volume with a rigid edge, these magazines begged to be saved, which my father dutifully did for decades in built-in bookcases next to the fireplace. The rows of yellow grew over the years affording me countless opportunities to cull them for history, science or geography school projects. No worries; I never took scissors to the richly produced photographs.
For me, as well as, I am sure, for countless of others, the flagship National Geographic magazine that many of us grew up with offered windows to the world—from explorations of space to ocean depths, not to mention the adventures of explorers like Sir Edmund Hillary reaching the summit of Mount Everest or Jacques-Yves Cousteau navigating the mysteries beneath the sea….