"The Atlantic Monthly was founded in 1857 by a remarkable group that included some of the towering figures of nineteenth-century intellectual life: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell. For 150 years, the magazine has continued to honor its distinguished pedigree by publishing many of America?s most prominent political commentators, journalists, historians, humorists, storytellers, and poets"--Publisher website (February 2008).