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. His latest book, Clarence Thomas and the Lost Constitution, was published in 2019 by Encounter Books.

Biography 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. Before that, Magnet was a longtime member of the Board of Editors at Fortune magazine, a publication for which he wrote numerous articles on social policy, management, and finance, in addition to publishing essays and op-eds in The New Criterion, The Claremont Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, among other publications. 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.

Encounter Books published his latest work, Clarence Thomas and the Lost Constitution, in May 2019. Former George W. Bush-appointed U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey deemed it "A great read. . . fascinating and provocative"; historian Richard Brookhiser called it "splendid" and "riveting." Corey Robin, on the other hand thoroughly rejected Magnet's adulatory appraisal.

Of Magnet's first book, Dickens and the Social Order (1985), the New York Times stated: “Perhaps he will consider writing a sequel; even if it turned out to be only half as good as Dickens and the Social Order, it would be very well worth reading.”

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.