The periodicals section is on the third floor, and, yes, I am a vixen beneath my demure exterior.

Several years ago I picked up a excellent 1969 paperback entitled Good Reading for about a buck in used bookstore in Brooklyn (which has since gone out of business). The Good Reading series was first published in 1935, and this 35th anniversary edition was priced at 95 cents.

Scholars from fields including Middle Ages history, the 19th-century British novel and Mathematics suggested the must-read books in their area of expertise. It lucidly and briefly annotates more than a couple thousand important books. In the fields of reference books and magazines, J. Sherwood Weber, who was the series’ editor and the chairman of the English department at Pratt, picked the best of the best.

The following are his choices for the best periodicals of the era, all but one of which still exist and have made the leap to the Internet. A good number, however, have changed significantly, so you’ll have to judge for yourself how many would still belong among the top publications.

• The Atlantic
• Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
• Challenge
• Commentary
• Criticism Quarterly
• Daedalus
• Economist
• Foreign Affairs
• Fortune
• Harper’s Magazine
• Hudson Review
• Kenyon Review
• Modern Fiction Studies
• The Nation
• National Review
• The New Republic
• New York Review of Books
• The New Yorker
• Newsweek
• Saturday Review
• Scientific American
• Sewanee Review
• Time
• Virginia Quarterly Review
• Yale Review

Read other Listeria lists.