Myron Magnet

Myron James Magnet (born August 31, 1944) is an American journalist and historian. He was the editor of City Journal from 1994 to 2007 and is now the magazine's Editor-at-Large.
His latest book, The Founders at Home: The Building of America, 1735–1817, was published in 2013 by W. W. Norton.

Magnet served as editor of City Journal from 1994 to 2007, and is now its editor-at-large. Under his editorship, the magazine helped shape Rudy Giuliani's agenda as mayor of New York City. Magnet has also served as a member of the Board of Editors at Fortune magazine, a publication for which he wrote numerous articles on social policy, management, and finance after joining its staff in 1980, in addition to publishing essays and op-eds in Commentary, The Washington Monthly, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, among other publications.

The author of several books, he is best known for writing The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties' Legacy to the Underclass, which President George W. Bush has cited as a profound influence on his approach to public policy. The central premise of the book is that culture powerfully shapes economic and social outcomes, and the dramatic cultural transformation that the United States experienced during the 1960s unintentionally created an entrenched underclass, whose social pathologies are still with us. His widely praised The Founders at Home recounts the story of the American Founding from the Zenger trial to the Battle of New Orleans through a series of brief biographies that aim to explore each Founder's ideas and worldview as well as his actions.

In November, 2008, President Bush awarded Magnet the National Humanities Medal "for scholarship and visionary influence in renewing our national culture of compassion. He has combined literary and cultural history with a profound understanding of contemporary urban life to examine new ways of relieving poverty and renewing civic institutions."

President George W. Bush awards Myron Magnet the National Humanities Medal, November 2008

Magnet graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1962. He holds bachelor's degrees from both Columbia University (1966) and the University of Cambridge, as well an M.A. from Cambridge and a Ph.D. in English Literature from Columbia University, where he also taught for several years.