Except for a short break in the 1960s, he has been continuously involved with intellectual magazines from the time he became assistant editor of Commentary in 1947 until now, when he easily (and from my point of view, embarrassingly) combines being editor of the Public Interest and publisher of the National Interest with a variety of other activities. In between, Irving launched Encounter, in the opinion of many the single most important journal of ideas to appear during the Cold War period; in his six years as its nominal co-editor but real editor (1953–58) he gave the magazine its definitive character. (His partner, Stephen Spender, while distinguished and well-connected, was too impractical and vacillating to be effective. Not long after the Russian repression of the Hungarian Revolution, Spender was still feebly objecting to the term “Soviet empire” as unduly provocative.) Irving was also editor of Max Ascoli’s lively magazine, the Reporter, for a short period in the late 1950s.