Myron Magnet was the editor of City Journal from 1994 through 2006, and he is now the magazine’s editor-at-large. A former member of the board of editors of Fortune magazine, Magnet has written about a wide variety of topics, from American society and social policy, economics, and corporate management to intellectual history, literature, architecture, and the American Founding.

His book, The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties' Legacy to the Underclass (Encounter Books, 1993) argues that the radical transformation of elite and mainstream American culture that took place in the 1960s produced catastrophic changes in behavior at the bottom of society that gave rise to the urban underclass. President George W. Bush told the Wall Street Journal that it was the most important book he'd ever read after the Bible, and Bush strategist Karl Rove calls The Dream and the Nightmare a roadmap to the president's "compassionate conservatism." Hilton Kramer called the book "an indispensable guide to the outstanding question of the day," while columnist Mona Charen deemed it "the book of the decade." Dr. Magnet is also the author of Dickens and the Social Order (second edition: ISI Books, 2004) and editor of The Millennial City: A New Urban Paradigm for 21st-Century America; What Makes Charity Work? A Century of Public and Private Philanthropy; and Modern Sex: Liberation and its Discontents.

In addition to his many City Journal and Fortune articles, he has written for Commentary, The Wall Street Journal, National Review, the American Spectator, The New York Times, and other publications. He has also appeared on numerous television and radio programs.

Magnet holds bachelor's degrees from Columbia University and the University of Cambridge. He earned an M.A. from Cambridge and a Ph.D. from Columbia, where he taught for several years, before joining the staff of Fortune in 1980. President Bush awarded him the National Humanities Medal in 2008.

Myron Magnet lives on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

In Prospect Columns >>

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Articles/Op-eds

• Hamilton's Shining House on a Hill, Wall Street Journal, 09-15-11
• Let's Bring Back Stigma Because Anything Doesn't Go, Washington Examiner, 08-04-11
• MAGNET: Tea Parties Just Getting Started, Washington Times, 03-31-10
• The Obsolete New York Model, City Journal, 07-21-09
• The Obsolete New York Model, Forbes.com, 07-15-09
• Cut Public Spending To Save New York, Forbes, 10-22-08
• Writer's Block: 'The Inimitable', Wall Street Journal, 03-15-08
• Immigration Reversals, The American Spectator, 02-05-08
• Ending Welfare As We Knew It, National Review Online, 12-19-05
• The War on the War on Poverty, Wall Street Journal, 02-24-05
• The Road to Serfdom, The New York Sun, 02-16-05
• GOP Poster Child: Gotham’s revolutionary, New York Post, 08-31-04
• Freedom vs. Dependency, Wall Street Journal, 07-20-04
• Bloomberg's Taxi-Busters, The New York Sun, 05-16-03
• Old Money, Old Virtues, Forbes.com, 10-08-01
• Keep Rudy, Wall Street Journal, 09-24-01
• What Is Compassionate Conservatism?, Wall Street Journal, 02-05-99
• More Articles >>

Books

• Dickens and the Social Order, May 2004
• Modern Sex: Liberation and Its Discontents, November 2001
• What Makes Charity Work?, October 2000
• The Millennial City: A New Urban Paradigm for 21st-Century America, May 2000
• The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties' Legacy to the Underclass, March 1993

City Journal articles

• On Tyranny and Liberty, Autumn 2011
• Bring Back Stigma, Summer 2011
• The Great Little Madison, Spring 2011
• When a Picture Is Worth 1,000 Words, 6 May 2011
• James Madison and the Dilemmas of Democracy, Winter 2011
• How American Press Freedom Began on Wall Street, Autumn 2010
• Bracing Brew, Spring 2010
• The Education of John Jay, Winter 2010
• The Godfather, R.I.P., 18 September 2009
• Conservative Revolutionaries, Summer 2009
• The Obsolete New York Model, 16 July 2009
• Alexander Hamilton, Modern America’s Founding Father, Winter 2009
• The Public-Sector House of Cards, Autumn 2008
• The Great African-American Awakening, Summer 2008
• Mr. Sammler’s City, Spring 2008
• The Unbought Grace of Life, 27 February 2008
• Architecture’s Battle of the Modernisms, Winter 2008
• Monticello’s Shadows, Autumn 2007
• In the Heart of Freedom, in Chains, Summer 2007
• Walter B. Wriston, Spring 2005
• More City Journal Articles >>