Reader's Digest
magazine
Reader's Digest is an American general-interest family magazine, published six times a year. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, it is now headquartered in midtown Manhattan. The magazine was founded in 1922 by DeWitt Wallace and his wife Lila Bell Wallace. For many years, Reader's Digest was the best-selling consumer magazine in the United States; it lost that distinction in 2009 to Better Homes and Gardens. According to Media Mark Research (2006), Reader's Digest reached more readers with household incomes of over $100,000 than Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Inc. combined.
Global editions of Reader's Digest reach an additional 40 million people in more than 70 countries, via 49 editions in 21 languages. The periodical has a global circulation of 10.5 million, making it the largest paid-circulation magazine in the world.
It is also published in Braille, digital, and audio editions, and in a large-type edition called "Reader's Digest Large Print". The magazine is compact—its pages are roughly half the size of most American magazines.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Reader's Digest” is magazine. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Reader's, Digest and magazine, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “magazine” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q371820. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1922, 2009 and 2006.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Reader's Digest”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Reader's Digest primary sources, Reader's Digest archive and Reader's research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Reader's Digest” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.