The Nation
Encyclopedia
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics
and culture
, is self-described as "the flagship of the left
." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.
The Nation has bureaus in Washington, D.C.
, London and South Africa, with departments covering architecture
, art
, corporation
s, defense
, environment
, film
s, legal affairs
, music
, peace
and disarmament
, poetry
and the United Nations
. Circulation peaked at 187,000 in 2006 but by 2010 had dropped back to 145,000 in print, though digital subscriptions had risen to over 15,000. Print ad pages declined by 5% from 2009 to 2010, while digital advertising rose 32.8% from 2009-10. Advertising accounts for 10% of total revenue for the magazine, while circulation totals 60%.The Nation has lost money in all but three or four years of operation and is sustained in part by a group of more than 30,000 donors called The Nation Associates, who donate funds to the periodical above and beyond their annual subscription fees. This program accounts for 30% of the total revenue for the magazine. An annual cruise also generates $200,000 for the magazine.
" at 130 Nassau Street in Manhattan
. The publisher was Joseph H. Richards, and the editor was E.L. Godkin, a classical liberal critic of nationalism
, imperialism
, and socialism
. The magazine would stay at Newspaper Row for 90 years. Wendell Phillips Garrison
, son of William Lloyd Garrison
, was Literary Editor from 1865 to 1906.
In 1881, newspaperman-turned-railroad-baron Henry Villard
acquired The Nation and converted it into a weekly literary supplement for his daily newspaper the New York Evening Post. The offices of the magazine were moved to the Evening Posts headquarters at 210 Broadway. The New York Evening Post would later morph into a tabloid; the New York Post
was a left-leaning afternoon tabloid under owner Dorothy Schiff
from 1939 to 1976 and, since then, has been a conservative tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch
, while The Nation became known for its markedly liberal (and sometimes leftist) politics.
In 1900, Henry Villard's son, Oswald Garrison Villard
, inherited the magazine and the Evening Post, selling off the latter in 1918. Thereafter, he remade The Nation into a current affairs
publication and gave it an anti-classical liberal
orientation: Oswald Villard welcomed the New Deal and supported the nationalization of industries - thus reversing the meaning of "liberalism" as the founders of "The Nation" would have understood the term, from a belief in a smaller and more restricted government to a belief in a larger and less restricted government. Villard's takeover prompted the FBI to monitor the magazine for roughly 50 years. The FBI had a file on Villard from 1915. Villard sold the magazine in 1935. It became a nonprofit in 1943.
Almost every editor of The Nation from Villard's time to the 1970s was looked at for "subversive" activities and ties. When Albert Jay Nock
, not long later, published a column criticizing Samuel Gompers
and trade union
s for being complicit in the war machine
of the First World War, The Nation was briefly suspended from the U.S. mail.
During the late 1940s and again in the early 1950s, a merger was discussed by The Nation's Freda Kirchwey
(later Carey McWilliams
) and The New Republic's Michael Straight. The two magazines were very similar at that time—both were left of center, The Nation further left than TNR; both had circulations around 100,000, TNR had a slightly higher circulation; and both lost money—and it was thought that the two magazines could unite and make the most powerful journal of opinion.
During this period, Paul Blanshard
was an Associate Editor of The Nation and served during the 1950s as its Special Correspondent in Uzbekistan
. His most famous writing was a series of articles attacking the Roman Catholic Church
in America as a dangerous, powerful, and undemocratic institution.
The new publication would have been called The Nation and New Republic. Kirchwey was the most hesitant, and both attempts to merge failed. The two magazines would later take very different paths, with The Nation having a higher circulation and The New Republic moving more to the right.
In June 1979, new Nation publisher Hamilton Fish
and then-editor Victor Navasky
moved the weekly to 72 Fifth Avenue
. In June 1998, the periodical had to move to make way for condominium
development. The offices of The Nation are now at 33 Irving Place in the Gramercy neighborhood.
In 1977, Hamilton Fish V bought the magazine and, in 1985, sold it to Arthur L. Carter
, who had made a fortune as a founding partner of Cogan, Berlind, Weill & Levitt.
In 1995, Victor Navasky bought the magazine and, in 1996, became publisher.
Katrina vanden Heuvel
is the editor and publisher of the Nation as of 2010.
. Former editors include Victor Navasky, Norman Thomas
(associate editor), Carey McWilliams
, and Freda Kirchwey
, the subject of a biography by the feminist historian Sara Alpern
.
Notable contributors have included Albert Einstein
, Albert J. Nock, Franz Boas
, Patrick Buchanan, Martin Luther King Jr., Bertrand Russell
, Barbara Garson
, H. L. Mencken
, Gore Vidal
, Edward Said
, Christopher Hitchens
, Hunter S. Thompson
, Langston Hughes
, Ralph Nader
, James Baldwin
, Kai Bird
, Clement Greenberg
, Tom Hayden
, Daniel Singer, I.F. Stone, Leon Trotsky
, George Orwell
, Henry Miller
, Franklin D. Roosevelt
, James K. Galbraith
, John Steinbeck
, Barbara Tuchman
, T. S. Eliot
, Kurt Vonnegut
, Robert Frost
, Frank Lloyd Wright
, Hannah Arendt
, Ezra Pound
, Henry James
, Charles Sanders Peirce, Jean-Paul Sartre
, John Maynard Keynes
, Naomi Klein
, Alexander Cockburn
, Tariq Ali
, and poet John Beecher
.
, Barbara Ehrenreich
, Richard Falk, Frances FitzGerald, Eric Foner
, Philip Green
, Lani Guinier
, Tom Hayden, Randall Kennedy
, Tony Kushner
, Elinor Langer, Deborah Meier
, Toni Morrison
, Victor Navasky, Pedro Antonio Noguera, Richard Parker
, Michael Pertschuk
, Elizabeth Pochoda, Marcus G. Raskin
, Andrea Batista Schlesinger
, David Weir
, and Roger Wilkins
.
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
and culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
, is self-described as "the flagship of the left
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.
The Nation has bureaus in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, London and South Africa, with departments covering architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
, art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
, corporation
Corporation
A corporation is created under the laws of a state as a separate legal entity that has privileges and liabilities that are distinct from those of its members. There are many different forms of corporations, most of which are used to conduct business. Early corporations were established by charter...
s, defense
Defense (military)
Defense has several uses in the sphere of military application.Personal defense implies measures taken by individual soldiers in protecting themselves whether by use of protective materials such as armor, or field construction of trenches or a bunker, or by using weapons that prevent the enemy...
, environment
Natural environment
The natural environment encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth or some region thereof. It is an environment that encompasses the interaction of all living species....
, film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
s, legal affairs
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
, music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
, peace
Peace
Peace is a state of harmony characterized by the lack of violent conflict. Commonly understood as the absence of hostility, peace also suggests the existence of healthy or newly healed interpersonal or international relationships, prosperity in matters of social or economic welfare, the...
and disarmament
Disarmament
Disarmament is the act of reducing, limiting, or abolishing weapons. Disarmament generally refers to a country's military or specific type of weaponry. Disarmament is often taken to mean total elimination of weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear arms...
, poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
and the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
. Circulation peaked at 187,000 in 2006 but by 2010 had dropped back to 145,000 in print, though digital subscriptions had risen to over 15,000. Print ad pages declined by 5% from 2009 to 2010, while digital advertising rose 32.8% from 2009-10. Advertising accounts for 10% of total revenue for the magazine, while circulation totals 60%.The Nation has lost money in all but three or four years of operation and is sustained in part by a group of more than 30,000 donors called The Nation Associates, who donate funds to the periodical above and beyond their annual subscription fees. This program accounts for 30% of the total revenue for the magazine. An annual cruise also generates $200,000 for the magazine.
Mission
According to The Nations founding prospectus of 1865, "The Nation will not be the organ of any party, sect, or body. It will, on the contrary, make an earnest effort to bring to the discussion of political and social questions a really critical spirit, and to wage war upon the vices of violence, exaggeration and misrepresentation by which so much of the political writing of the day is marred."History
Abolitionists founded The Nation in July 1865 on "Newspaper RowPark Row (Manhattan)
Park Row is a street located in the Financial District of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It was previously called Chatham Street and during the late 19th century it was nicknamed Newspaper Row, as most of New York City's newspapers located on the street to be close to the action at New...
" at 130 Nassau Street in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
. The publisher was Joseph H. Richards, and the editor was E.L. Godkin, a classical liberal critic of nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
, imperialism
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
, and socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
. The magazine would stay at Newspaper Row for 90 years. Wendell Phillips Garrison
Wendell Phillips Garrison
Wendell Phillips Garrison was an American editor and author.He was born at Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, a son of William Lloyd Garrison. He graduated from Harvard in 1861 and was literary editor of the Nation from 1865 to 1906. He had assisted E. L. Godkin in establishing the magazine...
, son of William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison was a prominent American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. He is best known as the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, and as one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, he promoted "immediate emancipation" of slaves in the United...
, was Literary Editor from 1865 to 1906.
In 1881, newspaperman-turned-railroad-baron Henry Villard
Henry Villard
Henry Villard was an American journalist and financier who was an early president of the Northern Pacific Railway....
acquired The Nation and converted it into a weekly literary supplement for his daily newspaper the New York Evening Post. The offices of the magazine were moved to the Evening Posts headquarters at 210 Broadway. The New York Evening Post would later morph into a tabloid; the New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
was a left-leaning afternoon tabloid under owner Dorothy Schiff
Dorothy Schiff
Dorothy Schiff was an owner and then publisher of the New York Post for nearly 40 years. She was a granddaughter of financier Jacob H. Schiff...
from 1939 to 1976 and, since then, has been a conservative tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....
, while The Nation became known for its markedly liberal (and sometimes leftist) politics.
In 1900, Henry Villard's son, Oswald Garrison Villard
Oswald Garrison Villard
Oswald Garrison Villard was an American journalist. He provided a rare direct link between the anti-imperialism of the late 19th century and the conservative Old Right of the 1930s and 1940s.-Biography:...
, inherited the magazine and the Evening Post, selling off the latter in 1918. Thereafter, he remade The Nation into a current affairs
Current affairs (news format)
Current Affairs is a genre of broadcast journalism where the emphasis is on detailed analysis and discussion of news stories that have recently occurred or are ongoing at the time of broadcast....
publication and gave it an anti-classical liberal
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
orientation: Oswald Villard welcomed the New Deal and supported the nationalization of industries - thus reversing the meaning of "liberalism" as the founders of "The Nation" would have understood the term, from a belief in a smaller and more restricted government to a belief in a larger and less restricted government. Villard's takeover prompted the FBI to monitor the magazine for roughly 50 years. The FBI had a file on Villard from 1915. Villard sold the magazine in 1935. It became a nonprofit in 1943.
Almost every editor of The Nation from Villard's time to the 1970s was looked at for "subversive" activities and ties. When Albert Jay Nock
Albert Jay Nock
Albert Jay Nock was an influential United States libertarian author, educational theorist, and social critic of the early and middle 20th century.- Life and work :...
, not long later, published a column criticizing Samuel Gompers
Samuel Gompers
Samuel Gompers was an English-born American cigar maker who became a labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor , and served as that organization's president from 1886 to 1894 and from 1895 until his death in 1924...
and trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
s for being complicit in the war machine
War Machine
War Machine is a fictional character, a comic book superhero appearing in comic books set in the Marvel Comics universe. The character of James Rhodes first appeared in Iron Man #118 by David Michelinie, John Byrne and Bob Layton...
of the First World War, The Nation was briefly suspended from the U.S. mail.
During the late 1940s and again in the early 1950s, a merger was discussed by The Nation's Freda Kirchwey
Freda Kirchwey
Freda Kirchwey was an American journalist, editor, and publisher strongly committed throughout her career to liberal causes. From 1933 to 1955, she was Editor of The Nation magazine.-Biography:...
(later Carey McWilliams
Carey McWilliams (journalist)
Carey McWilliams was an American author, editor, and lawyer. He is best known for his writings about social issues in California, including the condition of migrant farm workers and the internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II...
) and The New Republic's Michael Straight. The two magazines were very similar at that time—both were left of center, The Nation further left than TNR; both had circulations around 100,000, TNR had a slightly higher circulation; and both lost money—and it was thought that the two magazines could unite and make the most powerful journal of opinion.
During this period, Paul Blanshard
Paul Blanshard
Paul Beecher Blanshard was a controversial American author, assistant editor of The Nation magazine, lawyer, socialist, secular humanist, and from 1949 an outspoken critic of Catholicism....
was an Associate Editor of The Nation and served during the 1950s as its Special Correspondent in Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....
. His most famous writing was a series of articles attacking the Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
in America as a dangerous, powerful, and undemocratic institution.
The new publication would have been called The Nation and New Republic. Kirchwey was the most hesitant, and both attempts to merge failed. The two magazines would later take very different paths, with The Nation having a higher circulation and The New Republic moving more to the right.
In June 1979, new Nation publisher Hamilton Fish
Hamilton Fish V
Hamilton Fish is a publisher, social entrepreneur, environmental advocate, and film producer in New York City. He was born in Washington, D.C. to Hamilton and Julia MacKenzie Fish. He attended schools in New York City and Massachusetts, where he graduated from Harvard University in 1973...
and then-editor Victor Navasky
Victor Navasky
Victor Saul Navasky is a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He was editor of The Nation from 1978 until 1995, and its publisher and editorial director 1995 to 2005. In November 2005 he became the publisher emeritus...
moved the weekly to 72 Fifth Avenue
Fifth Avenue (Manhattan)
Fifth Avenue is a major thoroughfare in the center of the borough of Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. The section of Fifth Avenue that crosses Midtown Manhattan, especially that between 49th Street and 60th Street, is lined with prestigious shops and is consistently ranked among...
. In June 1998, the periodical had to move to make way for condominium
Condominium
A condominium, or condo, is the form of housing tenure and other real property where a specified part of a piece of real estate is individually owned while use of and access to common facilities in the piece such as hallways, heating system, elevators, exterior areas is executed under legal rights...
development. The offices of The Nation are now at 33 Irving Place in the Gramercy neighborhood.
In 1977, Hamilton Fish V bought the magazine and, in 1985, sold it to Arthur L. Carter
Arthur L. Carter
Arthur L. Carter is an investment banker, publisher, and artist.He graduated from Brown University in 1953 with a degree in French literature....
, who had made a fortune as a founding partner of Cogan, Berlind, Weill & Levitt.
In 1995, Victor Navasky bought the magazine and, in 1996, became publisher.
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Katrina vanden Heuvel is the editor, publisher, and part-owner of the magazine The Nation. She has been the magazine's editor since 1995. She is a frequent guest on numerous television programs...
is the editor and publisher of the Nation as of 2010.
Notable contributors
The publisher and editor is Katrina vanden HeuvelKatrina vanden Heuvel
Katrina vanden Heuvel is the editor, publisher, and part-owner of the magazine The Nation. She has been the magazine's editor since 1995. She is a frequent guest on numerous television programs...
. Former editors include Victor Navasky, Norman Thomas
Norman Thomas
Norman Mattoon Thomas was a leading American socialist, pacifist, and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.-Early years:...
(associate editor), Carey McWilliams
Carey McWilliams (journalist)
Carey McWilliams was an American author, editor, and lawyer. He is best known for his writings about social issues in California, including the condition of migrant farm workers and the internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II...
, and Freda Kirchwey
Freda Kirchwey
Freda Kirchwey was an American journalist, editor, and publisher strongly committed throughout her career to liberal causes. From 1933 to 1955, she was Editor of The Nation magazine.-Biography:...
, the subject of a biography by the feminist historian Sara Alpern
Sara Alpern
Sara Alpern Tarlow, known as Sara Alpern , is an associate professor of history at Texas A&M University, known for her specialization in women's studies.-Early life:...
.
Notable contributors have included Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
, Albert J. Nock, Franz Boas
Franz Boas
Franz Boas was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology" and "the Father of Modern Anthropology." Like many such pioneers, he trained in other disciplines; he received his doctorate in physics, and did...
, Patrick Buchanan, Martin Luther King Jr., Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
, Barbara Garson
Barbara Garson
Barbara Garson is an American playwright, author and social activist.Garson is best known for the play MacBird, a notorious 1966 counterculture drama/political parody of Macbeth that sold over half a million copies as a book and had over 90 productions world wide...
, H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken
Henry Louis "H. L." Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture, and a scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the...
, Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
, Edward Said
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
, Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens is an Anglo-American author and journalist whose books, essays, and journalistic career span more than four decades. He has been a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became a media fellow at the...
, Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author who wrote The Rum Diary , Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 .He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to...
, Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...
, Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader is an American political activist, as well as an author, lecturer, and attorney. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government....
, James Baldwin
James Baldwin (writer)
James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.Baldwin's essays, for instance "Notes of a Native Son" , explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th century America,...
, Kai Bird
Kai Bird
Kai Bird is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning author and columnist, best known for his biographies of political figures.-Personal life:Bird was born in 1951 in Eugene, Oregon. His father was a U.S. Foreign Service officer, and he spent his childhood in Jerusalem, Beirut, Dhahran, Cairo and Bombay...
, Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg was an American essayist known mainly as an influential visual art critic closely associated with American Modern art of the mid-20th century...
, Tom Hayden
Tom Hayden
Thomas Emmet "Tom" Hayden is an American social and political activist and politician, known for his involvement in the animal rights, and the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s. He is the former husband of actress Jane Fonda and the father of actor Troy Garity.-Life and...
, Daniel Singer, I.F. Stone, Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
, George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
, Henry Miller
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...
, Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
, James K. Galbraith
James K. Galbraith
James Kenneth Galbraith is an American economist who writes frequently for mainstream and liberal publications on economic topics. He is currently a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and at the Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Senior...
, John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...
, Barbara Tuchman
Barbara Tuchman
Barbara Wertheim Tuchman was an American historian and author. She became known for her best-selling book The Guns of August, a history of the prelude to and first month of World War I, which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1963....
, T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
, Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...
, Robert Frost
Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and...
, Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture...
, Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt was a German American political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact...
, Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
, Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
, Charles Sanders Peirce, Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
, John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes of Tilton, CB FBA , was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments...
, Naomi Klein
Naomi Klein
Naomi Klein is a Canadian author and social activist known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization.-Family:...
, Alexander Cockburn
Alexander Cockburn
Alexander Claud Cockburn is an American political journalist. Cockburn was brought up in Ireland but has lived and worked in the United States since 1972. Together with Jeffrey St. Clair, he edits the political newsletter CounterPunch...
, Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali , , is a British Pakistani military historian, novelist, journalist, filmmaker, public intellectual, political campaigner, activist, and commentator...
, and poet John Beecher
John Beecher
John Beecher was an activist poet, writer and journalist who wrote about the Southern United States during the Great Depression and the American Civil Rights Movement. Beecher was extremely active in the American labor and Civil Rights movements...
.
Regular columns
The magazine runs a number of regular columns. The longest-running of these contributors had written their columns for over 20 years.- Sister Citizen by Melissa Harris-Perry
- Beat the Devil by Alexander CockburnAlexander CockburnAlexander Claud Cockburn is an American political journalist. Cockburn was brought up in Ireland but has lived and worked in the United States since 1972. Together with Jeffrey St. Clair, he edits the political newsletter CounterPunch...
- The Liberal Media by Eric AltermanEric AltermanEric Alterman is an American English teacher, historian, journalist, author, media critic, blogger, and educator. His political weblog named Altercation was hosted by MSNBC.com from 2002 until 2006, moved to Media Matters for America until December 2008, and is now hosted by The...
- Diary of a Mad Law Professor by Patricia J. WilliamsPatricia J. WilliamsPatricia J. Williams is an American legal scholar and a proponent of critical race theory, a school of legal thought that emphasizes race as a fundamental determinant of the American legal system....
- Subject to Debate by Katha PollittKatha PollittKatha Pollitt is an American feminist poet, essayist and critic. She is the author of four essay collections and two books of poetry...
- Beneath the Radar by Gary YoungeGary YoungeGary Younge is a British journalist, author and broadcaster, born to immigrant parents from Barbados....
- Look Out by Naomi KleinNaomi KleinNaomi Klein is a Canadian author and social activist known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization.-Family:...
- Deadline Poet by Calvin TrillinCalvin TrillinCalvin Marshall Trillin is an American journalist, humorist, food writer, poet, memoirist and novelist.-Biography:Trillin attended public schools in Kansas City and went on to Yale University, where he served as chairman of the Yale Daily News and was a member of Scroll and Key before graduating...
- The Nation cryptic crosswordCryptic crosswordCryptic crosswords are crossword puzzles in which each clue is a word puzzle in and of itself. Cryptic crosswords are particularly popular in the United Kingdom, where they originated, Ireland, the Netherlands, and in several Commonwealth nations, including Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Malta,...
by Frank W. LewisFrank W. LewisFrank Waring Lewis was an American cryptographer and cryptic crossword compiler. His puzzles were printed in The Nation for over 60 years, for a total of 2,962 puzzles... - Minority Report (1982 to 2002) by Christopher HitchensChristopher HitchensChristopher Eric Hitchens is an Anglo-American author and journalist whose books, essays, and journalistic career span more than four decades. He has been a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became a media fellow at the...
. - Dispatches (1984–87) by Max HollandMax HollandMax Holland is a journalist, author, and the editor of Washington Decoded, an online newsletter from the nation's capital that began publishing March 11, 2007...
and Kai Bird
Editorial board
In 2008, The Nation editorial board was composed of Deepak Bhargava, Norman BirnbaumNorman Birnbaum
Norman Birnbaum is an American sociologist. He is an emeritus professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, and a member of the editorial board of The Nation. He was educated in New York City's public schools, at Williams College, and has a doctorate in sociology from Harvard University...
, Barbara Ehrenreich
Barbara Ehrenreich
-Early life:Ehrenreich was born Barbara Alexander to Isabelle Oxley and Ben Howes Alexander in Butte, Montana, which she describes as then being "a bustling, brawling, blue collar mining town."...
, Richard Falk, Frances FitzGerald, Eric Foner
Eric Foner
Eric Foner is an American historian. On the faculty of the Department of History at Columbia University since 1982, he writes extensively on political history, the history of freedom, the early history of the Republican Party, African American biography, Reconstruction, and historiography...
, Philip Green
Philip Green (author)
Philip Green is the author of Deadly logic: the theory of nuclear deterrence. Retrieving democracy: in search of civic equality, Equality and democracy, and Cracks in the pedestal: ideology and gender in Hollywood. He has written for The New York Times Magazine, Dissent, and The American Political...
, Lani Guinier
Lani Guinier
Lani Guinier is an American lawyer, scholar and civil rights activist. The first African-American woman tenured professor at Harvard Law School, Guinier's work includes professional responsibilities of public lawyers, the relationship between democracy and the law, the role of race and gender in...
, Tom Hayden, Randall Kennedy
Randall Kennedy
Randall L. Kennedy is an American Law professor and author at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the Michael R. Klein Professor of Law and focuses his research on the intersection of racial conflict and legal institutions in American life...
, Tony Kushner
Tony Kushner
Anthony Robert "Tony" Kushner is an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993 for his play, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, and co-authored with Eric Roth the screenplay for the 2005 film, Munich.-Life and career:Kushner was born...
, Elinor Langer, Deborah Meier
Deborah Meier
Deborah Meier is an American educator often considered the founder of the modern small schools movement. After spending several years as a kindergarten teacher in Chicago, Philadelphia and then New York City, in 1974, Meier became the founder and director of the alternative Central Park East...
, Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved...
, Victor Navasky, Pedro Antonio Noguera, Richard Parker
Richard Parker (economist)
Richard Parker is an economist from the United States. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the University of Oxford, and has worked for the United Nations Development Programme. Parker co-founded Mother Jones magazine and is on the editorial board of The Nation...
, Michael Pertschuk
Michael Pertschuk
Michael Pertschuk is a consumer and public health advocate, author and former government official. He served as consumer counsel and later chief counsel and staff director to the U.S...
, Elizabeth Pochoda, Marcus G. Raskin
Marcus Raskin
Marcus Raskin is a prominent American social critic, political activist, author, and philosopher, working for progressive social change in the United States....
, Andrea Batista Schlesinger
Andrea Batista Schlesinger
Andrea Batista Schlesinger was until 2009 the Executive Director of the Drum Major Institute. In February 2009, she took a leave from that position to work as a policy adviser to the re-election campaign of Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg.-Background:Andrea was born and raised in...
, David Weir
David Weir (journalist)
David Weir is a journalist and co-founder, in 1977, of the Center for Investigative Reporting.He's written for The Economist, HotWired, L.A. Weekly, Mother Jones, The Nation, New West, New York Magazine, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Salon.com, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner,...
, and Roger Wilkins
Roger Wilkins
Roger Wilkins is an African American civil rights leader, professor of history, and journalist.-Biography:Wilkins was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and grew up in Michigan...
.
See also
- Dissent (magazine)Dissent (magazine)Dissent is a quarterly magazine focusing on politics and culture edited by Michael Walzer and Michael Kazin. The magazine is published for the Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, Inc by the University of Pennsylvania Press....
- Commentary (magazine)Commentary (magazine)Commentary is a monthly American magazine on politics, Judaism, social and cultural issues. It was founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945. By 1960 its editor was Norman Podhoretz, a liberal at the time who moved sharply to the right in the 1970s and 1980s becoming a strong voice for the...
- The New RepublicThe New RepublicThe magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
- The American ProspectThe American ProspectThe American Prospect is a monthly American political magazine dedicated to American liberalism. Based in Washington, DC, The American Prospect is a journal "of liberal ideas, committed to a just society, an enriched democracy, and effective liberal politics" which focuses on United States politics...