"In late January of 1922, a young man and his wife sat in a New York basement store-room office supervising the shipment of the first issue of a magazine they'd started. It was small, 14 by 19 centimetres and had only 64 pages. It had no fiction, no pictures, no colour, no ads -- just informative helpful articles set in solid type.
After the last of the 5000 copies had been sent to the post office, DeWill Wallance and his wife Lila spend the next few days anxiously wondering how their magazine would be received. They needn't have worried. It was a hit. By the end of the magazine's first year circulation had increased to 7000; after four years to 20,000. Then in the next three years it skyrocketed, shooting up ten fold to 216,000. And in the decades that followed the Reader's Digest became the most successful magazine in history. Today, it sells more than 27 million copies around the world and is published in 18 langages.
When the Wallaces created Reader's Digest, they wanted to inspire, entertain, and inform people. And although the magazine looks very different now, its guiding principle has not changed in 75 years. In this special anthology to commemorate a very special anniversary you'll find the most inspiring, informative and entertaining articles ever published. Happy reading!"