[3][4] Monocle was founded by a group of Yale Law School students, including Navasky, as a "leisurely quarterly" (issued, in fact, twice a year).
[1] After graduation, they moved to New York City, where the magazine, in its editors' words, initially "operated more or less like the UN police force — we came out whenever there was an emergency".
[5][better source needed] Navasky recounts in detail the history of his founding and direction of Monocle in his 2005 memoir, A Matter of Opinion.
[6][page needed] An anthology of material from the magazine, titled The Monocle Peep Show, was published in 1965.
The anthology's chapter headings give a sense of both the magazine's subject matter and its politically irreverent tone.