Dear Reader:

Welcome to The American, a new bimonthly magazine of ideas that focuses on the world of business and economics.

Why start a new magazine in an Internet age?   Two reasons:

First, magazines can provide an environment that a computer screen can’t match. You can feel the pages and turn them. You can comfortably read long articles. You can browse—really, browse—and look at dazzling photographs and illustrations.

Second, there was a particular magazine that needed doing—one publishers had neglected. We call it a magazine of ideas, but of a special sort.

In 2003, an article in Harper’s lamented a trend in business journalism: “Presented with a subject matter as expansive as American business, our magazines and newspapers collectively fret over market indicators, minor transactions. They make lists.”

Business magazines have gone tiny. Clearly, there are readers who want nuts-and-bolts stories on how to climb the corporate ladder or how to find the best mutual funds. I have read—indeed, written—such stories myself. But by going tiny, business magazines have provided us with an opportunity that Henry Luce recognized when he proposed the original Fortune magazine: “The field which lies open is as immense and as rich as was ever offered to journalistic enterprise…. Industry is a world in itself…and this World is more macrocosm than microcosm, is, in fact, the largest of the planets which make up our system.”

Fortune, in its original incarnation from the 1930s through the 1960s, largely fulfilled this mission. It made business a macro subject and used business reporting to illuminate society and culture. Fortune was also a beautiful magazine, an artifact in itself, and, without embarrassment (but also without sycophancy), it celebrated American accomplishment.

The magazine that you hold in your hands, The American, picks up where the old Fortune left off. As you will see from this first issue, we will cover business, entrepreneurship, and economics, but we will also cover foreign policy, media, social policy, and culture (including music, travel, food, sports, and fashion). Our perspective is not partisan, but it is rooted in liberal—that is, free-market—economics. Our aim is not to preach, but to show and explain.

I have been publisher or editor, or both, of a series of publications, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, and Roll Call. I’m back, as the successor of Karl Zinsmeister, who did a wonderful job with The American Enterprise. This new magazine will be different. In addition to my editorial and business colleagues here in Washington, it owes its existence to the faith of Christopher DeMuth and David Gerson, who gave me this chance; the experience and wisdom of Sam Schulman, our publishing director; and the skill and imagination of Alex Isley, Tara Benyei, and rest of the staff of Alex’s design firm.

The American is not just a magazine. It is also an online journal: <WWW.AMERICAN.COM>. As we go forward, give me your reactions. Email james.glassman@tamagazine.com. Enjoy!

James K. Glassman

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