Description
Collector's Note – Why This Issue Matters
The June 4, 2007 issue of The New Yorker features a cover by Mark Ulriksen, one of the magazine's most prolific and distinctive cover artists of the modern era. Ulriksen had been contributing covers to The New Yorker since the early 1990s and by 2007 had developed a signature style — warm, slightly caricatured, painterly — that made his work immediately recognizable within the magazine's cover program. His covers tend toward the observational and the culturally specific, finding humor and humanity in the particular textures of American life, and the June 2007 issue represents his work at a mature and confident stage of his long association with the publication. The listing identifies this as a theme cover, which in New Yorker editorial practice means the illustration is built around a specific cultural, seasonal, or topical concept rather than functioning as a purely decorative image — a distinction that gives themed covers additional documentary value as records of what the magazine considered worth commenting on in a given week. For collectors building an archive around vintage New Yorker issues from the Remnick era, Ulriksen cover issues are among the more consistently collectible within the magazine's modern run, reflecting both his artistic reputation and the sustained quality of his contributions.
June 2007 places this issue within a specific and culturally dense moment in American life. The Iraq War was at the height of its domestic political controversy — the surge announced by President Bush in January 2007 was still being debated and its effects were not yet clear — and The New Yorker under David Remnick was producing some of its most sustained and consequential reporting on the conflict and its political fallout. The magazine's June issues in this period also typically engaged with the early movements of the summer cultural calendar, and a themed cover from this date would have been calibrated to the specific moment with the editorial precision that distinguished Remnick's cover program from his predecessors. The full magazine designation confirms this is a complete issue — the essential criterion for collector-grade New Yorker copies, given that the interior cartoons, fiction, poetry, and long-form journalism are integral to the magazine's value as a collected object. Anyone building a collection around magazines from 2007 as documents of that year's American cultural and political landscape will find New Yorker issues from this period among the most editorially substantive objects the year produced.
About the Publication
The New Yorker, founded by Harold Ross in 1925, was by 2007 under David Remnick's editorship — which had begun in 1998 — producing what many critics considered a renaissance of the magazine's long-form journalism tradition alongside its continued commitment to fiction, poetry, criticism, and its signature single-panel cartoons. Its covers, always commissioned illustrations rather than photographs, functioned as a distinct art form within the magazine's broader identity, with a roster of contributing artists that included both long-established figures and newer voices whose work defined the visual character of the publication in the early twenty-first century. Mark Ulriksen was among the most frequently featured cover artists of the Remnick era, and his contributions represented a warm, humanistic strand within the magazine's visual program that complemented its more satirically inclined cover artists.
Key Highlights Inside
- Theme cover illustration by Mark Ulriksen — one of The New Yorker's most prolific modern cover artists, whose warm, painterly style and culturally observational subject matter made his work among the most recognizable in the magazine's contemporary cover program.
- Issue dated June 4, 2007 — placing it within one of the most politically and culturally charged periods of the Remnick era, when the magazine's reporting on the Iraq War, American politics, and cultural life was at a sustained peak of ambition and influence.
- Full magazine confirmed intact — the essential completeness criterion for collector-grade New Yorker copies, ensuring the interior cartoons, fiction, criticism, and journalism that define the magazine's value as a collected object are all present.
- Note: The specific theme of the Ulriksen cover illustration and specific interior article titles are unconfirmed for this issue beyond what is stated in the listing. The above reflects what is verifiable from the cover artist credit, date, condition description, and the publication's documented editorial format for this period.
Condition & Rarity
This issue is graded Very Good — a stronger condition designation than Good, implying smooth edges, minimal wear, and cover presentation that retains close to its original visual integrity. A subscriber address label is present on the front cover, the standard provenance for the substantial majority of surviving New Yorker copies given the magazine's subscription-dominant readership model; label-free newsstand copies represent the upper provenance tier for display-focused collectors of this title, but Very Good condition with a label is considerably more desirable than Good condition without one for collectors whose primary concern is page quality and structural integrity. The plastic protective covering ensures ongoing preservation. For New Yorker issues from the mid-2000s, the full magazine designation and spine integrity are the most important structural criteria beyond cover condition, and this issue's smooth edges and Very Good grade suggest a copy that has been stored carefully rather than read heavily — a meaningful distinction for a periodical whose interior content is as central to its collectible identity as its cover art.
Looking for More Issues Like This?
Mark Ulriksen cover issues of The New Yorker from the Remnick era are among the more consistently collectible in the magazine's modern run, and Very Good condition copies with complete interiors surface less frequently than the magazine's large subscription base might suggest. If this issue is no longer available, the broader vintage New Yorker archive at OriginalMagazines.com spans decades of the magazine's cover art and editorial history and is the most reliable place to continue the search. The complete 2007 magazine collection is also worth exploring for collectors documenting the full cultural and political landscape of that consequential year in American life.