Myron Magnet was the Editor of City Journal, the Manhattan Institute's quarterly magazine of urban affairs, from 1994 through 2006, and he is now the journal's Editor-at-Large. A former member of the Board of Editors of Fortune magazine, he has written about a wide variety of topics, from American society and social policy, economics, and corporate management to intellectual history, literature, and architecture.

His book, The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties' Legacy to the Underclass (Encounter Books, 1993) argues that the radical transformation of mainstream American culture that took place in the 1960s brought the underclass into being. Changes in beliefs and values at the top of American society produced catastrophic changes in behavior at the bottom. 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," columnist Mona Charen deemed it "the book of the decade," and the Wall Street Journal remarked that "many writers have addressed this topic [of the underclass] but few have done so with more wisdom or more passion." Dr. Magnet is also the author of Dickens and the Social Order (second edition: ISI Books, 2004), and he is the 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.

More than fifty feature articles have appeared in Fortune under his byline, as have articles in City Journal, Commentary, the Wall Street Journal, the National Review, the New York Times, and other publications. He has also appeared on numerous television and radio programs.

Dr. 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. He serves on the advisory boards of the Institute of Classical Architecture and the Intelligence Squared debate series.

Dr. Magnet lives on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

In Prospect Columns

City Journal Articles

• 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
• Compassionate Conservative or Cowboy Capitalist?, Spring 2005
• “The Gates” on the Road to Serfdom, 14 February 2005
• Walter B. Wriston, 1919–2005, 21 January 2005
• Gotham, GOP Poster Child, 24 August 2004
• The War on Poverty at 40, Summer 2004
• What Use Is Literature?, Summer 2003
• Taxi Busters, 14 May 2003
• The Monument They Deserve, Spring 2002
• London’s Crime Wave, 20 February 2002
• Roger Starr 1918–2001, Autumn 2001
• Solving President Bush’s Urban Problem, Winter 2001
• A New Lincoln Center, Autumn 2000
• The Cosmic Cathedral, Spring 2000
• More Humbug or Homelessness, Winter 2000
• Fred Rose, Autumn 1999
• Elect, Don’t Settle, Spring 1999
• Civility for All, Autumn 1998
• A Sweetheart Deal, Summer 1998
• Putting Children First, Summer 1994
• The Cultural Dimensions of Social Change, Spring 1993
• Deinstitutionalizing the Mentally Ill, Spring 1993

Articles/Op-eds

• Cut Public Spending To Save New York, Forbes.com, 10-21-08
• Writer's Block: 'The Inimitable' Wall Street Journal, 03-15-08
• Immigration Reversals American Spectator, 02-05-08
• Ending Welfare As We Knew It National Review, 12-19-05
• The War on the War on Poverty Wall Street Journal, 2-25-05
• The Road to Serfdom New York Sun, 2-16-05
• GOP Poster Child New York Post, 8-31-04
• Freedom vs. Dependency Wall Street Journal, 7-20-04
• Bloomberg’s Taxi-Busters New York Sun, 5-16-03
• Old Money, Old Virtues Forbes, 10-8-2001
• Keep Rudy The Wall Street Journal, 9-24-2001
• What Is Compassionate Conservatism? The Wall Street Journal, 1-5-1999

Books

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