Periodicals
The American Prospect
Wikipedia cuts to the chase nicely in saying that The American Prospect's "politics are to the left of The New Republic and to the right of The Nation." Since its founding in 1990, the now-monthly journal has become a progressive must-read, whether via paper or pixels. Among those currently integral to the publication are Robert Kuttner, Paul Starr, Michael Tomasky, Robert Reich and Matthew Yglesias. "Our mission ...
... simply put, is to rise to the momentous occasion that confronts all Americans who seek a just society based on our greatest traditions. Contemporary conservatism stands to thwart those traditions; its advances its agenda by way of stealth, fearmongering, and a massive propaganda apparatus. It is our mission to expose that agenda and the lies that support it. [ ¶ ] Rising to our historical occasion also means reviving and rebuilding liberalism, renewing its connections both to American history and to people's lives in the 21st century, and giving progressive political leaders the weapons they need for battle. Through dogged reporting, cool analysis, witty commentary and passionate argument, the Prospect strives to beat back the right wing and to build a majority of true patriots who understand what really makes America great.
The Atlantic
Despite a noticeable drift toward the right in recent years, The Atlantic still features some of the very best progressive reporting and analysis available anywhere. Cullen Murphy's the managing editor, coordinating the efforts of such other editors or regular contributors as Jack Beatty, James Fallows, David Brooks, Robert Kaplan, P.J. O'Rourke, Sy Hersch and Christopher Hitchens.
The magazine itself has been in the news a lot in recent years. Its recently hired editor, Michael Kelly, was killed in Iraq. Just prior to that, the magazine had come under new management, and after 148 years in Boston its offices have now been relocated to Washington D.C. But The Atlantic has, since 1857, occupied a unique and important place in American letters and politics -- among its founders were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and its contributors have included Twain, Muir, Einstein, Kennan, Hemingway, and Martin Luther King -- and it seems to be weathering its recent turbulence well.
Foreign Affairs
America's most influential foreign policy journal features articles by those at the highest levels of government and academia. It's published by the Council on Foreign Relations, an organization whose members include U.S. presidents and top cabinet officials as well as "renowned scholars, and major leaders of business, media, human rights, and other non-governmental groups."
It's a quarterly publication that can make for an extremely challenging read, not because it's intellectually difficult, but because it publishes submissions from such a broad range of the power elite. The last few years' issues have carried pieces by Kofi Annan, Madeline Albright, Colin Powell, Sandy Berger, Chuck Hagel, Richard Holbrooke, Donald Rumsfeld, and Codoleeza Rice. All that diversity guarantees that some essays will be brilliant, while others turn out to be even nuttier and more outrageous than you'd feared. But it's an indispensable tool for understanding American foreign policy's origins and prospects.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/
The New York Review of Books
No other periodical comes remotely close to matching the breadth, depth, and intelligence of the NY Review's essays on various political and cultural issues. The world-class credentials and abilities of the writers The Review attracts (such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Hannah Arendt, Saul Bellow, John K. Galbraith, V.S. Naipaul, Mario Cuomo, and Vaclav Havel) are breathtaking, and no periodical is better edited.
The book reviews (which typically run to about 5,000 words) often tackle a half-dozen or more recent titles at once, illuminating broader concepts and comparing some of the relative merits of various books on the subject(s). Other topical essays may or may not make mention of specific books, but instead offer the thoughts of some of the world's most important minds on issues of concern to an intellectually and politically engaged readership. The $66 per year (20 issues) subscription price may be off-putting to some; if so, selected articles are available on The Review's website.
The Progressive
Since its 1909 founding by Bob La Follette The Progressive has been one of America's foremost liberal journals. It's featured the writings of Jane Addams, Helen Keller, Jack London, Clarence Darrow, Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, Carl Sandburg, George Orwell, James Baldwin, I.F. Stone, Noam Chomsky, and Edward W. Said. Contribuors now include Nat Hentoff, Barabara Ehrenreich, Molly Ivins, and Howard Zinn. Editor Matt Rothschild, who joined The Progressive over 20 years ago, has long been one of the nation's most articulate and persuasive liberal advocates. According to the magazine's website,
The mission of The Progressive is to be a journalistic voice for peace and social justice at home and abroad. The magazine, its affiliates, and its staff steadfastly oppose militarism, the concentration of power in corporate hands, the disenfranchisement of the citizenry, poverty, and prejudice in all its guises. We champion peace, social and economic justice, civil rights, civil liberties, human rights, a preserved environment, and a reinvigorated democracy.
Scientific American
How desperately do Americans need to read some science-related materials once in awhile? Most of us don't know how long it takes Earth to orbit the Sun; nearly half think using a portable phone in the bathtub can result in electrocution; 40 percent are not convinced that global warming is happening. Scientific American to the rescue: the nation's longest continually published magazine, dating back to 1845.
More than 120 Nobel laureates have written for Scientific American, most of whom wrote about their prize-winning works years before being recognized by the Nobel Committee. In addition to the likes of Albert Einstein, Francis Crick, Jonas Salk and Linus Pauling, Scientific American continues to attract esteemed authors from many fields.
So says SciAm's website, and as one might expect, the site's well designed and superbly executed. Both magazine and website are aimed at laypersons.