{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.032615384615384616, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0036923076923076922, 'mean_word_length': 5.0, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Amy Beth Aronson. Taking Liberties: Early American Women's Magazines and Their Readers. Westport: Praeger, 2002.

Working as an independent scholar, Amy Beth Aronson has put together in a conversational format an eclectic, in-depth examination of the history of women’s magazine publishing, as seen through a holistic lens. The information available on the subject, as we can see from Aronson’s extensive notes, is voluminous, thus her job was complicated by the embarrassment of riches on the topic. She begins, as one expects in good scholarship, with an overview. Although some of the concepts are familiar, a refresher in such areas as the “guilty pleasure” of women’s magazine reading and the construction of women’s identities by the magazines is useful. Her purpose, in her words, is “to reveal some of the missing elements in modern assessments of the first and most successful form of women’s popular culture in America” (7). Aronson has a gift for the occasional humorous insight: “Up to now, both scholars and popular critics have treated the magazine either as a poor relation of the novel, the simpleton cousin of the sociological essay, or paternalist advice literature in drag” (9). Both her subject matter and style keep the reader engaged, and the jargon-free prose is an additional incentive. After the historical and sociological overview of Western magazine publishing, from the Tatler and Spectator forward, Aronson moves on to the early history of women’s magazine publishing. Magazines in the United States were born with the concept of the republic, and many used patriotism to increase sales, usually