Myron Magnet

According to his Manhattan Institute biography, Myron Magnet is "the Editor of City Journal, the [Institute]'s quarterly magazine of urban affairs, and a former member of the Board of Editors of Fortune magazine. His work as a writer has covered a wide range of topics: American society and social policy, economics, corporate management, intellectual history, and literature.

"His book, The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties' Legacy to the Underclass (Encounter Books, 1999) argues that the radical transformation of 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-elect 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-elect'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." Magnet is also the author of Dickens and the Social Order, which will soon be released in a new edition, and 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, Modern Sex: Liberation and its Discontents, and the forthcoming How to Build Urbane Cities.

"More than fifty feature articles have appeared in Fortune under his byline, as have articles in City Journal, Commentary, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Monthly, 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 (1966) and the University of Cambridge (1968). He earned an M.A. from Cambridge (1972) and a Ph.D. from Columbia before joining the staff of Fortune in 1980."