"I've often thought we'd have a Utopia in this country if every community adopted all the advice we offered from time to time". So said Roy DeWitt Wallace , father of Reader's Digest, the mail-order magazine that was born 80 years ago, and became a publishing phenomenon reaching a circulation of 18 million. Isabel Hilton hears how Reader's Digest became a mirror of American middle-class culture and values and how the Digestempire was a major outlet for Cold War propaganda.