[Magazine including pictorial world map, Carriers of the New Black Plague by William Cotton.]

Front cover with color illustration of Moroccan male sheik and yellow lettering.
Oversized magazine, features analysis of English justice, map of Herr Hitler's heaven (full page cartoon, Nazis and Mexico, fascism's New World trust and Latin America by Carleton Beals, Mussolini, cartoons on Hitler, Norway's next, many topical full page b/w photos, Sam Berman caricature of Mussolini in color, Ernest Hemingway on dying, Ataturk-hoodlum as hero, the Theatre Guild's decline, inside the Third Reich by Carl Marzani, other articles on the growing fear of war in Europe, Contains Ernest Hemingway's "The Time Now, The Place Spain"; Dorothea Lange; George Petty Pinup cigarette ad; bright clean pages.

>Ken was founded in March 1938 by publisher David A. Smart and editor Arnold Gingrich, who earlier had founded Esquire. Initial publication was delayed due to difficulties in assembling an editorial team. Jay Allen was the first editor hired, and he began to assemble a staff drawing heavily from the political left. Smart and Gingrich found his work unsatisfactory and quickly fired Allen and most of his new men, replacing him with George Seldes; but as Seldes's left-wing views provoked little sympathy from potential advertisers, he was soon downgraded although not fired. Microbe Hunters author Paul de Kruif was brought on as an editor, but was not able to devote full-time to the project.
Smart and Gingrich then took more direct editorial control and launched the magazine with contributors including Seldes, Ernest Hemingway, John Spivak, Raymond Gram Swing, Manuel Komroff, critic Burton Rascoe, and sportswriter Herb Graffis. Sam Berman contributed caricatures, and David Low cartoons. Some of the politicians with photo layouts in the magazine included Presidents Calvin Coolidge, Grover Cleveland, Thomas Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt and as well as many prominent people in German politics.
The publication was investigated 1938 for being Communist leaning. However its editor Arnold Gingrich denied that the publication had any political slant.

Ken ceased publication in the fall of 1939. The first fourteen issues of Ken featured articles by Ernest Hemingway on the Spanish Civil War. In the first issue, of which his article begins on page 36, it is revealed in a caption that Hemingway was initially contracted and announced to be an editor of Ken, but had thus far taken no part in the editing of the magazine, nor in the formation of its policies. The caption goes on to reveal "If he sees eye to eye with us on Ken, we would like to have him as an editor. If not, he will remain as a contributor until he is fired or quits." The disclaimer was written at Hemingway's insistence, as he felt that Ken's politics might be "liberal-phoney" and did not wish to be too closely associated with it.

This debut issue of the magazine features an article by Ernest Hemingway, "The Time Now, The Place Spain," which is accompanied but a note from the editors stating that while Hemingway was originally announced as an editor for the magazine he is not only though it would have him and until then "he will remain as a contributor until he is fired or quits."

The magazine has several articles on the Nazi's and Hitler ("Hitler Hunts a Wife") as well as large black and white photos, including Dorothea Lange's haunting photo Migrant Mother.
- the inaugural issue of perhaps the most political magazine of the pre-war era.

This pictorial map is color-coded to show the extent of the "black plague" across the world. A key at bottom shows three categories of free speech: dictatorial control (black), varying degrees of control (gray), and relative freedom (tan). The map reveals that slightly more than half of the globe is in "Totalitarian Eclipse." Within the map image are ten of these dictators "whose ten totaled brains wouldn't counterbalance that of one Einstein in the measurement of man's distance from the anthropoid ape" including Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and Stalin (by himself). Drawn by William Cotton and issued in the very first edition of Ken Magazine (April 7, 1938), a controversial anti-fascist magazine.
The verso contains a satirical portrait of Hermann Goring, a powerful military figure in the Nazi Party who eventually became Hitler's second in command, and a wartime illustration based upon a painting by George Grosz.

More aboutcartographical curiosities and Pictorial Maps [+]
An excellent description of this map and additional background on Ken Magazine can be found at the PJ Mode Persuasive Map Collection (Cornell University)