While recovering from injuries in World War I, DeWitt Wallace gathered together a number of his favorite articles on a variety of subjects, condensed them and released them as Reader's Digest.
DeWitt Wallace was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. He attended school at Macalester College from 1907 to 1909 and then went to the University of California, Berkeley, for the remaining 2 years. He married Lila Bell Acheson and started the magazine.
Lila Bell Wallace was born in Virden, Manitoba, in Canada. She attended the University of Oregon and became a schoolteacher and an advocate for the Young Women's Christian Association before co-founding the magazine with her husband.
Reader's Digest focuses on a variety of political and social issues while maintaining a conservative viewpoint in its editorial process. During the Cold War, the magazine acted as a staunch anti-Communist medium.
The magazine has the privilege of being one of the first publications to present information regarding the dangers of cigarette smoke. It linked smoking with lung cancer in a series of articles called "Cancer by the Carton," published in 1952.