Is there intellectual life in America? asked the Times Literary Supplement recently and responded: 'At present, the answer is no.'
This notion is supported by Hollywood films like Forrest Gump and Dumb and Dumber, or by utterances like 'In America nobody reads any more' or 'They all have MTV attention spans of 2.1 seconds'. But then on the other hand all the new ideas come from America, usually with a time lag via England.
Hidden from the public's and Hollywood's view, however, American intellectual life can be detected in a large number of magazines such as The New Republic or The New Yorker. Here are the eight most serious publications of this type:

	Aims to be a forum for politics, science and the arts. Contributors from both sides of the political divide. The writing is more literary than journalistic.Circulation: c. 400.000
	A collection of neo-conservative political essays, published quarterly. Circulation: c. 10.000
	A democratic socialist quarterly. Grew out of the McCarthy era, providing an outlet for left-wing writers. Polemical writing style. Circulation: 10.000
	A bi-monthly Jewish/progressive critique of politics, culture and society. written in the language of left-wing academics. Circulation: 25.000
	A Jewish/neo-conservative monthly review of politics, religion and arts. A 'high-brow' magazine for 'thought-leaders'. Circulation: 30.000
	Weekly review of world events and the arts.Liberal during the Reagan-dominated 1980s. Now moving towards a more centrist position. Circulation: 100.000
	Current events from home and abroad each week. Aims to be non-ideological, though used to be known as 'the house magazine of the Republican party'. Circulation: 4.1m
	Weekly conservative commentary on events, preaching Christian values, free markets and limited government. Often to the right of congressional Republican orthodoxy. Circulation: 230.000