Living for the city

Author and editor Myron Magnet on life in New York City: How and why has it has changed for the better? | Marvin Olasky

Ben Kaufmann for WORLD

Myron Magnet, now editor-at-large of City Journal, brought that quarterly magazine of urban affairs to prominence as he edited it from 1994 through 2006. His book, The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties' Legacy to the Underclass (Encounter, 1993), was one of two books that underlay the development of compassionate conservatism. Magnet, also an expert on Charles Dickens, has spent his life in New York City, and loves it.

WORLD: What do you love most about this city?

MAGNET: I love the energy, the openness. There is not a more democratic city on earth than this. There's not a city that's more open to talent. There's not a truer meritocracy than this. And here people are willing to think new ideas, although political ideas are a little harder to get them to think about. But it's also a business city so people are not in cloud cuckoo land here.