Karl Zinsmeister - The American Enterprise

The American Enterprise

For a dozen years before becoming the White House Domestic Policy Adviser (1994 to 2006), Zinsmeister was Editor in Chief of The American Enterprise, a national magazine covering politics, business, and culture. He built the publication into one of the nation's influential monthly publications of ideas. Author and former Cabinet Secretary William Bennett called it "one of America's finest magazines...intellectually interesting, well-written, lively, wide-ranging, and above all useful." In addition to editing The American Enterprise and running its business operations, Zinsmeister wrote hundreds of articles for the journal, and reported stories from around the U.S. and the globe, on topics like religion and politics, the European economy, new oil drilling techniques in Alaska, suburban neighborhood design, and Wall Street financial innovations.

Zinsmeister was an embedded journalist during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and then served three subsequent months-long embeddings with combat units during the insurgency stage of the war. He shot a documentary film about soldiers in Iraq, called "WARRIORS", which was nationally broadcast by PBS.

He wrote three books of Iraq reporting: Boots on the Ground: A Month with the 82nd Airborne in the Battle for Iraq (the first Iraq War book published by an embedded journalist), Dawn Over Baghdad: How the U.S. Military is Using Bullets and Ballots to Remake Iraq, and Combat Zone: True Tales of G.I.s in Iraq (a non-fiction graphic novel from Marvel Comics). He edited a book on world population trends, and edited and contributed to a collection of non-fiction short stories.