As voted by the American Society of Magazine Editors.
I’m not convinced about #1 – I sense a lot of nostalgia at play in that one, and I’m a John Lennon fan.
I’d move up numbers 5-7, actually; they could be my top 4 with some rejiggering. And that iconic National Geographic cover with the Afghan woman seems a bit low at #10…
Their system certainly wasn’t ready for the traffic.
#6 doesn’t reproduce well. It’s a black silhouette of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, against a near-black background.
Hmm. Well, here’s a CNN story that runs down the top 10.
The ASME site is quoted in about 140 Google news stories, so I’m not surprised their site’s taking a hit…
I really dislike #27, the Dixie Chicks on EW. I admire the concept but the composition is just all wrong.
I have this magazine…I remember getting it…it was very powerful. Just black on black…like a faint shadow of what once was.
I generally hate those kind of lists. It’s always a - what the heck are they thinking - reaction. When I saw the article this morning, I thought: I bet they don’t list the National Lampoon cover. You know the one. The dog.
It came in 7th. Not bad. Sort of validated it for me.
But I didn’t read the whole list, and I thought: I bet they left off the Van Gough with the bannana in his ear cover. 
This list shows nothing more than how lame magazines have become in the last 40 years.
BTW, my mom had a few dealings with ASME, which she described as a giant ass-kiss. Whatever’s going on in the industry right at the moment, they love.
Lists like these tell me nothing. There are a lot of current covers on there. Just tells me that events from the recent past are more moving than events from 20 years ago. There were a lot of magazine covers from Vietnam which brought home the war. How about all of those covers from the Iranian hostage crisis which showed Americans being held hostage by Iran?
I don’t get the significance of #9.
Not only is that not the best magazine cover of the past 40 years; not only is it not the best Rolling Stone cover of the past 40 years; it’s not even the best Rolling Stone cover featuring John Lennon of the past 40 years. That honor would go to the iconic “Lennon Remembers” cover from 1970. (The infamous Jim Morrison “He’s hot, he’s sexy, and he’s dead” cover should be in there too).
Far too many cheap jokes made the cut. The inclusion of the camels screwing on the cover of The Economist and the Clinton crotch-shot are ludicrous; the Fast Company cover is a big so-what; and why include an Alfred E. Neuman parody and leave out the real thing entirely? OK, the golden age of Mad covers may lie slightly outside the 40-year span–I’m thinking of the reversible 1960 election cover, or Castro with exploding cigar–but how about the ca. 1967 Racial Issue (an array of Alfreds of various ethnicities) or the '70s issue with Nixon and Agnew as Redford and Newman in The Sting?
There must be literally hundreds of great New Yorker covers from the past 40 years that I would place ahead of the one these guys saw fit to place at #4.
At least they got the National Lampoon one right.
Yeah (grumble grumble) but I still liked the yearbook better.
Wiping her nose on her sleeve is edgy or something? It pairs well with #15’s ‘face in toilet seat’ though.
HA!!
I KNEW John would make it
SURPRISED it made #ONE 
I really don’t get #4, #9, #15, #19 (is it because there are no words?), and #33. If anyone would like to clue me in, I’d appreciate it.
Annie Leibowitz must be plotzing – she had #1 and #2.
I think the point is just that they’re striking images.
#4 is a New Yorker’s view of the rest of the world from his apartment. Notice how the first couple of streets loom large, then there’s the rest of the city. There’s the Hudson river over there. New Jersey is alleged to be across the river. Beyond that is some strange land with mythical places like Texas, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Even further onwards is supposed to be this ocean, and insignificant countries like China, Russia, and Japan.
Also, the image has often been parodied in cartoons that attempt to depict some person or group’s insular view of the world. For example, a woman I know is from Massachusetts, and her house features a poster in which Boston is rendered in detail, while outlying cities/states/countries are treated as increasingly incidental the further they are from the self-appointed Hub of the Universe.
Did they do Rolling Stone’s nude shot of Jennifer Anniston? (The link won’t work for whatever reason.)