http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Review_of_Books

This was a very high brow rag for the radicals in its early years.

Current Edition and Atlantic Monthly are good too. Those two magazines are to the best of my knowledge the only magazines who publish fiction short stories, and poetry from freelance writers. There are 'some' other magazines that accept short fiction stories from writers, but most reduce the writers to formulas their magazines support.

Here's the last issue, fiction section They have a wide selection of articles. The competition amongst free lancers is very keen to have their stories published in either of them.

The New Yorker Magazine and Atlantic Monthly are good too.
canuck September 25, 2006 - 4:58pm

One thing I love about The Atlantic and Harper's are the cryptic crosswords -- there needs to be more cryptic crosswords in American magazines.

It is funny that magazines that are solidly on the left like The Nation and The New York Review of Books actually run a profit, but magazines on the right like The American Spectator and Reason don't. The old president of Loompanics did an interview in which he discussed how Reason would refuse to run his ads and then send him fundraising letters:

Q: Is there more? [examples of private censorship]

A: Unfortunately, yeah, lots. One of the most widespread forms of private censorship is the forbidding of advertising. The “Libertarians” are notorious for this kind of censorship. Reason magazine for years forbade Loompanics to place any ad whatsoever – this from a publisher who claims to be devoted to “Free Minds and Free Markets” (as long as they are not too free, I guess). I remember once, shortly after they had refused one of our book ads, receiving a fund-raising letter from Reason soliciting “donations” on the grounds that they were such big-balled, two-fisted freedom fighters that they had difficulty selling ads in their magazine, and you were therefore supposed to give them something for nothing. These hypocrites refused to engage in a straight-forward honest business deal (selling us ads), instead asking for handouts (and lying about why they were doing it) – this from an outfit which opposes food stamps for poor people on the grounds that giving them something they did not earn would destroy their “incentive” to earn a living.

The New York Review is the main thing still keeping my brain alive. Lately, I read about half online and half on paper.

I am sorry, Sean, that your experience with The New Republic had to duplicate my own.

Back in the 1960s, the New York Review of Books was too leftist for me. The Reporter and the New Republic represented intelligent, sane progressive ideas.

Then Israel won the 1968 war. TNR was awash in articles telling its readers that this was the Second Coming, that the expansion of the State of Israel was an enormous victory for democracy and the interests of freedom and progress. The Left in the United States in general took a turn to the Right, as in Neo-Conservative, trumpeting the interests of a small Mideast country with no oil and the support for which brought this country no discernible political or economic benefit.

Nobody at TNR protested when Richard Nixon went on nuclear laert to support Israel in its invasion of Egypt in 1973 (to be fair, Israel responded to an invasion by Egypt across the Suez Canal). The Left was pretty silent in general; just as there was little outcry when the next popular Republican President, Reagan, carried water for Israel in the Iran-Contra affair -- I oversimplify I admit.

My point is that The New Republic, and the progressive outlets in the U.S. in general swung to the right a long time ago, at the beginning of the 70s, and it was at the same time that Israel became an Occupying Power.

I dunno about my fellow commenters finding The Atlantic palatable despite its history of gay-bashing and other red-meat conservative takes. I know I don't. I'll tell you what attracted me to and has kept me reading The New York Review of Books -- it has a serious attitude toward history. Rather than the window dressing to establish that you once went to college and learned a few phrases to drop in polite conversation, history in the New York Review of Books valuable for its own sake.

That is, the attitude is one of a humanist.

There are a few in the blogosphere who try and put things together - Billmon, Newberry, Orcinus - a few others.

Who's painting the larger picture? Who's putting all the raked pieces of muck together in a larger yet easier digestable narrative?

you are. and all the other bloggers who do high quality work like yours. the blogroll is like a table of contents in a magazine, and instead of having to wait a week, i get news, commentary, opinion, culture and anything else i want at a click. free.

i prefer the london review myself, but being an embittered former academic, i don't spare much time for high theory anymore. in my own former field (assyriology/religion) i found my way off the reservation right around the time when the museum in b'dad was sacked. all that "critical" theory, and how many voices were raised when something could've been done to stop it?

*crickets chirping.*

the academe has far too many problems for me to take it very seriously these days. i mean, we're sliding into actual tryanny here, and just take a look at the topics at most conferences of "leading" intellectuals. burning issues like deciding if bathhouses in ancient times should be considered "gay spaces."

more people have read my blog than i ever could've hoped would read my "professional" work even if i'd published a hundred papers. besides, i'll get to see all my old colleagues again at gitmo, when we're rounded up as traitors.