The Nation ( ) is a weekly U.S. periodical devoted to politics and culture, self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865 at the start of Reconstruction as a supporter of the victorious North in the American Civil War, it is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. It is published by the Nation Company, L.P. at 33 Irving Place, New York City.
The Nation has bureaus in Budapest, London, and Southern Africa and departments covering Architecture, Art, Corporations, Defense, Environment, Films, Legal Affairs, Music, Peace and Disarmament, Poetry, and the United Nations. The circulation of The Nation is rising and was last placed at 184,296 (2004), more than double the neoliberal The New Republic, and larger than the neoconservative The Weekly Standard, and the conservative National Review. The Nation magazine has lost money in all but three or four years of operation and is sustained in part by a group of more than 25,000 donors called The Nation Associates who donate funds to the periodical above and beyond their annual subscription fees.
The publisher and editor of The Nation is Katrina vanden Heuvel. Former editors include Victor Navasky, Norman Thomas (associate editor), Carey McWilliams, and Freda Kirchwey. Notable contributors to The Nation have included Albert Einstein, Franz Boas, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bertrand Russell, Barbara Garson, H. L. Mencken, Gore Vidal, Christopher Hitchens, Hunter S. Thompson, Langston Hughes, Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanan, James Baldwin, Clement Greenberg, Tom Hayden, Daniel Singer, I.F. Stone, Leon Trotsky, Franklin D. Roosevelt, James K. Galbraith, John Steinbeck, Frank Lloyd Wright, Edward Witten and Jean-Paul Sartre.
