Robert S. Wilson (born 1951 [1] ) is an American writer and retired magazine editor. [2] From 2004 to 2022 he edited The American Scholar , the literary journal published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Before that he was editor of the AARP Bulletin and Preservation magazine and literary editor of Civilization magazine. Wilson has also written three biographies set in nineteenth-century America and 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 the book-review editor. [1] He was the 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. [3] [4] That year, Wilson became the editor of Preservation, the magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Under him, Preservation won a National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 1998. [5]
In 2004 Wilson briefly served as editor of the AARP Bulletin, [6] 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. [5] Wilson took steps to increase the journal's focus on current events. [7] 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. [8] [9] [10] [11]
Wilson lives in Manassas, Virginia, [12] and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. [13]
Wilson edited the 2002 book A Certain Somewhere: Writers on the Places They Remember, a collection of essays from Preservation magazine. [14] 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. [15] A Los Angeles Times reviewer, Carmela Ciuraru, wrote that “Wilson makes King, flaws and all, into an irresistible protagonist.” [16] Entertainment Weekly reviewer Paul Katz gave the book a "B+" rating and called it "an engrossing portrait". [17] Some other reviewers were more critical, noting that the book devoted little space to the later, problematic parts of King's life. [18] [19] [20]
Wilson's 2013 book, Mathew Brady: Portraits of a Nation, is a biography of the pioneer photographer Mathew Brady. New York Times columnist Dwight Garner called it “sober history, a flinty chunk of Americana.” [21] Max Byrd in The Wilson Quarterly, wrote, “Wilson’s book is notable for its thorough, up-to-date narrative. And his responses to Brady’s work are criticism of a high order.” [22] Reviewers noted the difficulties of writing a biography of Brady, about whom many details are unknown. [23] 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", [24] and The Economist similarly commented that the book was "more a portrait of an age than of a man". [25]
His 2019 book, Barnum: An American Life, was widely reviewed, including pieces in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. [26] Rachel Shteir wrote in The Wall Street Journal that the book “eschews cliches for a more nuanced story” and “is a life for our times, and the biography Barnum deserves.” [27] Historian John F. Kasson wrote in The Journal of American History that Wilson’s “new, relatively short biography is amiable, witty, judicious, and satisfying,” but warned that “it does not greatly alter our understanding of Barnum.” [28]
Robert Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is an American conservative magazine editor, book author and columnist. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of The American Spectator and writes with the byline "R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr."
Men's Health (MH), published by Hearst, is the world's largest men's magazine brand, with 35 editions in 59 countries. It is also the best-selling men's magazine on U.S. newsstands.
William Julius Wilson is an American sociologist, a professor at Harvard University, and an author of works on urban sociology, race, and class issues. Laureate of the National Medal of Science, he served as the 80th President of the American Sociological Association, was a member of numerous national boards and commissions. He identified the importance of neighborhood effects and demonstrated how limited employment opportunities and weakened institutional resources exacerbated poverty within American inner-city neighborhoods.
Mathew B. Brady was an American photographer. Known as one of the earliest and most famous photographers in American history, he is 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 went on to photograph U.S. presidents John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Millard Fillmore and Martin Van Buren, among other public figures.
Vice is a Canadian-American magazine focused on lifestyle, arts, culture, and news/politics. It was founded in 1994 in Montreal as an alternative punk magazine, and its founders later launched the youth media company Vice Media, which consists of divisions including the printed magazine as well as a website, broadcast news unit, a film production company, a record label, and a publishing imprint. As of February 2015, the magazine's editor-in-chief is Ellis Jones.
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Newsarama is an American website that publishes news, interviews, and essays about the American comic book industry. It is owned by Future US. In June 2020, Newsarama was merged with the website GamesRadar+, also owned by Future US.
Taylor Branch is an American author and historian who wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning trilogy chronicling the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and much of the history of the American civil rights movement. The final volume of the 2,912-page trilogy, collectively called America in the King Years, was released in January 2006, and an abridgment, The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement, was published in 2013.
Edward Hoagland is an American author best known for his nature and travel writing.
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The American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) is an industry trade group for magazine journalists and editors of magazines published in the United States. ASME includes the editorial leaders of most major consumer magazine in print and digital extensions. The group advocates on behalf of member organizations with respect to First Amendment issues and serves as a networking hub for editors and other industry employees.
Marie Arana is a Peruvian author, editor, journalist, critic, and the inaugural Literary Director of the Library of Congress.
Robin B. Wright, is an American foreign affairs analyst, author and journalist who has covered wars, revolutions and uprisings around the world. She writes for The New Yorker and is a fellow of the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson Center. Wright has authored five books and coauthored or edited three others.
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Betsy Graves Reyneau (1888–1964) was an American painter, best known for a series of paintings of prominent African Americans for the exhibition “Portraits of Outstanding Americans of Negro Origin” that, with those by Laura Wheeler Waring and under the Harmon Foundation, toured the United States from 1944 to 1954. A granddaughter of Michigan Supreme Court Justice Benjamin F. Graves, Reyneau's sitters included Mary McLeod Bethune, George Washington Carver, Joe Louis, and Thurgood Marshall. Reyneau's portrait of Carver, the most famous, was the first of an African American to enter a national American collection.
A Hologram for the King is a 2012 American novel written by Dave Eggers. In October 2012, the novel was announced as a finalist for the National Book Award.
Nicholas Andrew Basbanes is an American author who writes and lectures about authors, books, and book culture. His subjects include the "eternal passion for books" ; the history and future of libraries ; the "willful destruction of books" and the "determined effort to rescue them" ; "the power of the printed word to stir the world" ; the invention of paper and its effect on civilization, and an exploration of Longfellow's life and art.
Philip Kennicott is the chief Art and Architecture Critic of The Washington Post.
Melinda Wenner Moyer is a science journalist and author based in the Hudson Valley, New York. She is a contributing editor at Scientific American and a columnist for Slate. Her book How To Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes was published on July 20, 2021 by Putnam Books and was excerpted in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Parents magazine.
Carlos Eduardo Lozada is a Peruvian-American journalist and author. He joined The New York Times as an opinion columnist in 2022 after a 17-year career as senior editor and book critic at The Washington Post. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2019 and was a finalist for the prize in 2018. The Pulitzer Board cited his "trenchant and searching reviews and essays that joined warm emotion and careful analysis in examining a broad range of books addressing government and the American experience." He has also won the National Book Critics Circle Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing and the Kukula Award for excellence in nonfiction book reviewing. Lozada was an adjunct professor of political science and journalism with the University of Notre Dame's Washington program, teaching from 2009 to 2021. He is the author of What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era, published in 2020, and The Washington Book: How to Read Politics and Politicians, published in 2024, both with Simon & Schuster.
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