Pretty good magazine. About half the articles are interesting to read, but I just cancelled my subscription. I got started getting 30 spam emails A DAY and tons of junk mail as soon as I subscribed. It took me 2 months to get rid of all the spam email. I can't believe a refutable company would sell my information like that. I just moved, and there was no way I was going to give them another address to sell. If you are going to subscribe, at least just do the electronic subscription.

annebe12

USA

  There are many good financial magazines available to subscribers and most every one of them has something worthwhile to offer. Probably the best known name in the bunch is, of course, **Fortune**, a magazine known best for its annual ranking of the 500 largest companies in America. Let's take a look at what this magazine is all about: **Magazine Commentary:** Fortune is the best- known among the world's financial magazine publications. It doesn't rank first in the number of subscribers among financial periodicals. Yet, Fortune is still better- known than its competitors that have a greater subscription base. The reason is because of the Fortune 500. This annual ranking lists the largest corporations in the U.S. in terms of sales, with all sorts of miscellaneous sub- rankings and trivial facts. Most every person in the United States, even if they have never read a single page of this magazine, is at least familiar with the Fortune 500 label. Besides this annual 500 ranking, Fortune magazine does offer some good reading throughout the rest of the year. Fortune is one magazine that doesn't devote very much space to a pre- determined set of regular departments. The pages contain mostly articles that change each month, and this is where you will find most of the best that Fortune has to offer. With between thirty and forty articles to read every two weeks, Fortune has something to interest most everyone. The majority of the articles in Fortune center on corporate America. Sometimes, the featured article is about a CEO and how his restructuring efforts helped to save his business from financial ruin. Other articles deal with more general topics, like taxation, tariffs, politics, economic reforms, regulation, and the like. A wide range of issues are covered n each issue, but they generally retain a very corporate flavor. This brings me to a few criticisms I must make about this magazine. First of all, I think the magazine's diverse selection of topics is both a strength and a weakness. It's nice to be able to pick and choose what you read and to have such a wide variety of reading available. But I think Fortune goes a little too far in trying to satisfy everyone. It is so diverse that I think it lacks a distinct personality. Other competitors in the field, like Money magazine, have a more distinct mission and purpose, and their articles reflect this. Another criticism I have of Fortune is that it doesn't include nearly as much personal investment advice as I would prefer. It does have some, with about four or five short articles each month dedicated to personal finance. But I would like to see more and I would like to see articles that are more personal in nature, that more people can relate to, like you get in Money magazine and other publications. Reading about all this corporate fluff is ok, but it isn't something I can directly relate to or learn from. I am not a CEO, and chances are, I will never be a CEO of a huge, Fortune 500 company. Thus, I get little value from reading about how some already rich guy helped increase shareholder value for his company by fifty percent in one year. **Bottom Line Viewpoint:** Overall, I think Fortune is a decent magazine, but I can't rate it any better than three stars, for the reasons mentioned in this review. I know that some people swear by this magazine, but I find its usefulness limited. Maybe if I was a wealthy CEO with money to burn I would find the articles much more practical. But unfortunately, I'm not one of those people and therefore I find only a minimal amount of good, useful reading in this magazine.

Bryan-Carey

Houston, TX