Life magazine for free!

Life magazine, 1935-1972, is now available online through Google Books

It joins Life magazine’s photo archive, also available courtesy of Google. 

I just spent an hour reading through issues from the 1940s and found the advertising to be most interesting.  Sexist, straight-forward, scantily-clad, and almost always sentimental, it’s hard to imagine a time when magazine advertisements such as these were effective.