On the afternoon of Friday, March 15, the last day before spring break, New School University President Bob Kerrey made one of his periodic star turns on the Tishman Auditorium’ stage in lower Manhattan. In his last such appearance, in April of 2001, Kerrey had answered questions about The New York Times Magazine‘s revelation that […]
Scott Stossel
Scott Stossel is Culture Editor of The American Prospect.
Scott Stossel joined The American Prospect as associate editor in early
1996, helping to preside over its first transformation from quarterly to
bimonthly, and served as the magazine's executive editor from 1997 to 2001.
As executive editor, Stossel helped found and run the Prospect's writing
fellows program, oversaw the magazine's second transformation from a
bimonthly to a biweekly publication, and brought a number of exciting new
writers into the magazine.
Stossel has written for the Prospect on such diverse issues as TV imagery,
race and sports, the 2000 election, and literary critic Edmund Wilson.
Stossel's articles and essays on culture and society also appear regularly
in such publications as The New Yorker, The New Republic, The AtlanticMonthly, and The Boston Phoenix. He is currently working on a book about
Sargent Shriver (founder of the Peace Corps, the War on Poverty, and the
Special Olympics, as well as the brother-in-law of John F. Kennedy).
Stossel came to The American Prospect from The Atlantic Monthly, where he spent
one year editing the Arts & Entertainment Preview and four years as both a staff
editor and editorial director for new media.
An avid sports fan, he plays tennis, squash, and soccer regularly. He considersthe United States's victory in the 1999 Women's World Cup one of the best thingsto happen to the country in recent years. One of his biggest heroes is the soccerplayer Mia Hamm. Since 1999, he has been a visiting lecturer in American Studiesat Trinity College, where he teaches a graduate seminar on sports and culture.Born and raised in the Boston area, Stossel graduated from Harvard University in1991 and presently lives in Cambridge with (in the order in which they moved in)a cat, Atalanta; a wife, Susanna; a dog, Honey Bear; and another cat, Lil' Sage.He believes himself to have the largest collection of oversized- superballs-with- strange- objects- inside- them of any magazine editor in the country.
Posted inBooks
The Sexual Counterrevolution
The sexual revolution brought excess as well as progress. In the aftermath of AIDS, a new puritanism threatens to repeal both.
Posted inFeatures
Born-Again Bipartisanship
Here’s a dictionary entry straight out of Ambrose Bierce: bipartisan politician–a Democrat who’s afraid of being indicted. Stirrings in the Justice Department have led some observers to predict that indictments are forthcoming against two 18-year Democratic veterans of Congress. In the Senate, New Jersey’s Robert Torricelli has reportedly been under scrutiny for possible fundraising improprieties […]
Posted inFeatures
Echo Chamber of Horrors
Let’s get one thing straight right from the get-go. We would rather be last in reporting returns than be wrong… . If we say somebody has carried a state, you can pretty much take it to the bank, book it that that’s true. –Dan Rather, CBS News, early evening, November 7 We’ve always said, you […]
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
State of the Debate: Who’s Afraid of Michael Jordan?
There’s no denying that blacks dominate basketball and other professional sports. But have whites rationalized black physical prowess only by equating it with mental deficiency?
Posted inBooks
The Other Edmund Wilson
Today there is no shortage of writing about literature or of literature about writing. But there used to be writing that was about both.
Posted inFeatures
Bibliosophy
The Business of Books: How International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read, Andre Shiffrin. Verso, 181 pages, $23.00. Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future, Jason Epstein. W. W. Norton, 188 pages, $21.95. Once upon a time, the major American publishing houses could be counted on to bring controversial new ideas, […]
Posted inFeatures
Terror TV
The television moments that can even begin tocompareare few: On November 24, 1963, Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald in front of 20million television viewers–more than 20 percent of the United States populationat the time. On January 28, 1986, millions of viewers–many of themchildren–witnessed the loss of American lives in real time as the space […]
Posted inFeatures
Sports: War Games
After September 11, it wasn’t long before martial terminology returned to the airwaves: There was talk once again of blitzes and bombs, of aerial assaults and ground attacks, of going on the offensive and making moves to shore up the defense at home. There was talk of heroes and warriors, of duty and sacrifice, of […]