Holiday Buying Guide

Magazines aren't designed to be historical documents, which is precisely why they end up being pretty interesting historical documents. The more than 1,000 issues and 115,000 pages included on these high quality, easily searchable DVDs chronicle Rolling Stone's journey from radical rag to glossy star-maker while also providing a revealingly flawed story of pop culture as seen through the editors' eyes. (The magazine perfectly timed the emergence of Bruce Springsteen, Madonna and U2, but missed badly on hip hop and metal.) Still, it's fun to surf the waves of Rolling Stone's enthusiasms, particularly as photographed by Annie Leibovitz and Mark Seliger. Oh, and they scanned all the ads, too.

— Josh Tyrangiel