Robert S. Wilson (born 1951 [1] ) is an American magazine editor and author. He is the editor of The American Scholar , the literary journal of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He took that position in 2004, after having previously been the literary editor at Civilization magazine and the editor of Preservation magazine. Wilson has also written two biographies set in nineteenth-century America, and he has edited a collection of essays from Preservation.
Wilson graduated from Washington and Lee University and received a master's degree from the University of Virginia. He worked at The Washington Post and at USA Today , where he was a book columnist as well as an editor. [1] He was a founding literary editor at Civilization, a magazine published under the auspices of the Library of Congress. Civilization won a National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 1996. [2] In 1996, Wilson became the editor of Preservation, the magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Under Wilson, Preservation won a National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 1998. [3]
In 2004 Wilson briefly served as editor of the AARP Bulletin, [4] then became the seventh editor of The American Scholar, six months after that journal had dismissed its prior editor, Anne Fadiman, in a widely publicized dispute over funding. [3] Wilson took steps to increase the journal's focus on current events. [5] The American Scholar's writers have won a number of awards during Wilson's tenure, and the magazine has been a finalist for a National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2009, 2012, 2014, and 2015. [6] [7] [8]
Wilson lives in Manassas, Virginia, [9] and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. [10]
Wilson edited the 2002 book A Certain Somewhere: Writers on the Places They Remember, a collection of essays from Preservation magazine. [11] He is the author of the 2006 book The Explorer King: Adventure, Science, and the Great Diamond Hoax; Clarence King in the Old West, about the flamboyant nineteenth century geologist Clarence King, who was the first director of the United States Geological Survey. [12] Entertainment Weekly reviewer Paul Katz gave the book a "B+" rating and called it "an engrossing portrait". [13] Some other reviewers were more critical, noting that the book devoted little space to the later, problematic parts of King's life. [14] [15] [16]
Wilson's 2013 book, Mathew Brady: Portraits of a Nation, is a biography of the pioneer photographer Mathew Brady. Reviewers noted the difficulties of writing a biography of Brady, about whom many details are unknown. [17] Washington Post reviewer Michael Ruane thought the book's best aspect was "its fascinating account of how the business of photography worked in the mid-19th century", [18] and The Economist similarly commented that the book was "more a portrait of an age than of a man". [19]
The Phi Beta Kappa Society (ΦΒΚ) is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, and to induct the most outstanding students of arts and sciences at only select American colleges and universities. It was founded at the College of William and Mary on December 5, 1776, as the first collegiate Greek-letter fraternity and was among the earliest collegiate fraternal societies. Since its inception, 17 U.S. presidents, 40 U.S. Supreme Court justices, and 136 Nobel laureates have been inducted members.
Mathew B. Brady was one of the earliest and most famous photographers in American history. Best known for his scenes of the Civil War, he studied under inventor Samuel Morse, who pioneered the daguerreotype technique in America. Brady opened his own studio in New York City in 1844, and photographed John Quincy Adams and Abraham Lincoln, among other public figures.
Alpha Sigma Phi (ΑΣΦ), commonly known as Alpha Sig, is an intercollegiate men's social fraternity with 181 active chapters and provisional chapters. Founded at Yale in 1845, it is the 10th oldest Greek letter fraternity in the United States.
Linda Joyce Greenhouse is an American legal journalist who is the Knight Distinguished Journalist in Residence and Joseph M. Goldstein Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School. She is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who covered the United States Supreme Court for nearly three decades for The New York Times. Since 2017, she is the president of the American Philosophical Society, and a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Senate.
Joseph Epstein is an American writer who was the editor of the magazine The American Scholar from 1975 to 1997. His essays and stories have appeared in books and other publications.
The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi is an honor society established in 1897 to recognize and encourage superior scholarship without restriction as to area of study, and to promote the "unity and democracy of education". It is the fourth academic society in the United States to be organized around recognizing academic excellence, and it is the oldest all-discipline honor society. The society's motto is Φιλοσοφία Kρατείτω Φωτῶν, which is translated as "Let the love of learning rule humanity", and its mission is "to recognize and promote academic excellence in all fields of higher education and to engage the community of scholars in service to others." It is a member of the Honor Society Caucus, which is composed of four honor societies: Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Sigma Xi, and Omicron Delta Kappa.
David Levering Lewis is an American historian, a Julius Silver University Professor, and a professor of history at New York University. He is twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, for part one and part two of his biography of W. E. B. Du Bois. He is the first author to win Pulitzer Prizes for biography for two successive volumes on the same subject.
The American Scholar is the quarterly literary magazine of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, established in 1932. The magazine has won fourteen National Magazine Awards from the American Society of Magazine Editors from 1999 to present, including awards for General Excellence. Additionally, the magazine has won four Utne Independent Press Awards from Utne Reader, most recently in 2011 in the category "Best Writing".
Anne Fadiman is an American essayist and reporter. Her interests include literary journalism, essays, memoir, and autobiography. She has received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest, and the Salon Book Award.
John Towner Frederick, born Corning, Iowa and only child of Oliver Roberts and Mary Elmira Frederick. He was a noted professor and literary editor, scholar, critic, and novelist.
Marie Arana is an author, editor, journalist, critic, and the inaugural Literary Director of the Library of Congress.
William Ayres Arrowsmith was an American classicist, academic, and translator.
Douglas Turner Day III was an American novelist, biographer, scholar and critic. He was a popular professor of English literature at the University of Virginia, where he taught for almost four decades.
Robert Bingham Downs was an American writer and librarian. Downs was an advocate for intellectual freedom. Downs spent the majority of his career working against, and voicing opposition to, literary censorship. Downs authored many books and publications regarding the topics of censorship, and on the topics of responsible and efficient leadership in the library context.
George B. Hutchinson is a noted American scholar, Professor of Literatures in English and Newton C. Farr Professor of American Culture at Cornell University, where he is also Director of the John S. Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines. He held a fellowship from Cornell's Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future from 2016 to 2021.
Jessica M. Wilson is an American professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Her research focuses on metaphysics, especially on the metaphysics of science and mind, the epistemologies of skepticism, a priori deliberation, and necessity. Wilson was awarded the Lebowitz Prize for excellence in philosophical thought by Phi Beta Kappa in conjunction with the American Philosophical Association.
Annalyn Swan is an American writer and biographer who has written extensively about the arts. With her husband, art critic Mark Stevens, she is the author of de Kooning: An American Master (2004), a biography of Dutch-American artist Willem de Kooning, which was awarded the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. De Kooning also won the National Book Critics Circle prize for biography and the Los Angeles Times biography award, and was named one of the 10 best books of 2005 by The New York Times. In her review in The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote: "The elusiveness of its subject makes the achievements of de Kooning: An American Master that much more dazzling."
David Greenberg is a historian and professor of US history as well as of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University, New Jersey, United States.
Christina Thompson is best known for her book Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia, which won the 2020 Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award for Nonfiction.