Global Visions

As I alluded to in my last post, I am going to start writing more about what I’m reading, and this is my first effort at doing that - today, I’d like to tell you about my favorite magazine at the moment. Monocle, an international magazine that bills itself as “A Briefing on Global Affairs, Business, Culture, and Design”, is less of a magazine than it is a journal on foreign affairs with correspondents and offices in London, New York, Zurich, Tokyo, and Paris, the publication sends out its journalists to different locations to report on the latest global trends in a variety of different subjects. For example, the July / August issue this year included stories on “Paris’s policies to encourage small-scale retail”, and “Geneva: managing urban growth diplomatically”. The magazine has a very strong global perspective on how the world of international business is constantly evolving. In a welcome departure from many of today’s magazines, Monocle keeps advertisements to a minimum and instead focuses on packing in loads of high-quality content. Each issue alone weighs in at just a shade over 200 pages - much of that space is filled by opinion editorials and world-class journalism. Shallow as this may seem, even the magazine is physically high-quality - with sturdy binding, a glossy cover, thick pages, and an appealing visual design throughout. I have found that Monocle’s intriguing writing and vast array of topics gels very well with the business courses I am currently taking. Reading it not only helps increase my vocabulary, but it bolsters my knowledge of the critical role business and culture play in our ever-diversifying world. I highly recommend it to any college student or person interested in travel or exploring the rest of the world. They also have a website that publishes some of the content in the magazine and gives international news updates (well worth checking out). Have you heard of or read Monocle before? What magazines do you find yourself turning back to time and time again? Let me know in the comments; I’d love to hear what you think!