August 15, 2007 10:15 AM PDT

Rolling Stone and Playboy now on DVD

by Will Greenwald

Font size
Print
E-mail
Share
1 comment

In 1953, Hugh Hefner published the first issue of Playboy. Fourteen years later, Jann Wenner published the first issue of Rolling Stone. Today, both magazines have published hundreds of issues and made an undeniable mark on American culture.

Now, instead of spending months and thousands of dollars on eBay, you can read those iconographic issues on your computer. The Bondi Digital Publishing Cover to Cover series collects back issues on DVD, which can be searched and read with the company's proprietary software. The first two "Cover to Cover" collections are Rolling Stone Cover to Cover: The First 40 Years and Playboy Cover to Cover: The '50s. Every Rolling Stone magazine published since 1967 and every Playboy issue published in the '50s can now be read on your computer.

The magazines are reproduced from scans from the original issues. They aren't simply scanned PDFs, though; the text in every issue is stored and cataloged, so you can search the entire Rolling Stone archives or every 1950s Playboy issue for author, subject, band, Playmate, or other criteria. If you want to read all of Hunter S. Thompson's stories from Rolling Stone, you can just type in his name instead of poring over the hundreds of issues.

Besides the digital back issues, each collection comes with its own tangible bonuses. Rolling Stone Cover to Cover: The First 40 Years comes with a two-year subscription to Rolling Stone and a book of highlights and history in the magazine. The book isn't just some liner notes--it's a bulky, 200+ page tome of musical and cultural history. Playboy Cover to Cover: The '50s doesn't come with a subscription to the magazine, but it does come with its own book, plus a paper reproduction of the very first issue of Playboy featuring Marilyn Monroe.

Both Cover to Cover collections will be available in November, but you can pre-order them from either magazine's Web site or from Bondi's web site on September 15. Rolling Stone Cover to Cover: The First 40 Years will retail for $125, and Playboy Cover to Cover: The '50s will retail for $100.