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“A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America”” is the provocative title of a new book that follows the history of the even more provocative Ramparts magazine. Gaining notoriety during the height of the movement against the war in Vietnam, the underground magazine was a journalistic arm of the New Left. Written by Peter Richardson, the “A Bomb in Every Issue,” covers Ramparts’ inception as a Catholic quarterly in 1962 to its transformation into a radical voice of the late 60’s. By then, contributors included Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis and Susan Sontag. Ramparts also ruffled journalistic feathers by publishing the diaries of Ernesto “Che” Guevara. In the book, Richardson conveys the importance of the San Francisco Bay Area based underground magazine as it helped further the journalistic prowess of writers such as Robert Scheer and Warren Hinckle. Ramparts’ story on the use of napalm in Vietnam is said to have influenced the decision of Martin Luther King Jr. to speak out against the war. Before folding in 1975, the magazine garnered the George Polk award for its muckraking work. Douglas Brinkley has said of Richardson’s work in “A Bomb in Every Issue,” that it is “an excellent history that shouldn’t be ignored.”

GUEST: Peter Richardson, author of “A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America”