Robert Messenger, Senior Editor

Robert Messenger joined Simon & Schuster in early 2021 to acquire works of history, politics, and culture with an emphasis on conservative points of view. His first two decades in publishing were spent at newspapers and magazines. He started his career as a junior editor at the New Criterion, working for the art critic Hilton Kramer. In 2002, he was one of the founding editors of the New York Sun, the first new broadsheet newspaper in that city in more than fifty years, and the architect of its highly regarded arts and sports sections. He helped revitalize the Atlantic with its move to Washington, D.C., in 2005. In 2010, he created the Wall Street Journal’s Saturday “Books” supplement and for seven years managed all the paper’s book reviewing. In 2017, he became executive editor of the Weekly Standard.  
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He has a B.A. in Islamic history from Northwestern University, where he also studied writing under the essayist Joseph Epstein, whom he blames for getting him into this racket. He has written for periodicals from the Times Literary Supplement to the Yale Review on subjects as varied as the classic cocktail revival, the battle of Dien Bien Phu, and the achievements of Benjamin Britten. He has been a juror for the Pulitzer Prizes and taught writing at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He lives year-round in Blue Hill, Maine.