"Thanks to a new wave of small intellectual magazines, an infectious buzz has returned to public debate in the United States. Roman Schmidt talks to David Marcus who, as a new editor at Dissent, is well placed to provide the lowdown what's driving this genuinely critical movement." - Maitani

"Roman Schmidt: A few years ago, it seemed like the genre of the American intellectual journal was to going to die, slowly and unnoticed, followed by a smaller and smaller flock whose average age gradually approached that of one of their most celebrated shepherds, Bob Silvers, now 84 and the editor of The New York Review of Books. But not so. In the past decade, a whole new set of journals has emerged, and all of them seem interested in establishing a space for critical debate outside of academia. n+1 just celebrated its 10th anniversary, which makes it (and its editors) oldies among the young crowd of the L.A. Review of Books, The New Inquiry, Triple Canopy and Jacobin. It would probably be too bold to say that people roam the book stores, waiting to see who's on the cover of n+1 the way they did for Les Temps Modernes in 1950s Paris or for Kursbuch during the German student movement. But it definitely has become something again to publish "little magazines". Dissent, a flagship of postwar democratic socialism, appears to also be a part of this resurgence – to the point in which they appointed someone from this younger generation co-editor. What has happened?" - Maitani